On October 11, 2012 the Catholic Church will begin a celebration of the “Year of Faith” to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council and the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The year will be quite busy, beginning with a Synod on “The New Evangelization for…
Activities
4 Ways to Help Students Learn the Books of the Bible
Every year that I teach young people, I’m amazed by how little they know about the Bible. I’ll say, “turn to Luke, chapter fifteen” and wait for four or five minutes for students to find the right page. It doesn’t matter what age group it is. High school juniors seem to take just as long…
Feast of the Ascension Activities
Forty days after Easter Sunday we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus’s ascension into heaven is recounted in Mark 16:19-20, Luke 24:50-53, and Acts 1:6-12. There are a number of Ascension activities that you can do in your classrooms or at home with your children from various websites below….
A Ten Commandments Activity
The ten commandments are such an important topic in Catholic religious education curricula. They have a place in almost every year’s course. This Ten Commandments activity asks students to creatively interpret and understand these great laws. An important disclaimer: the risk of using this activity is that students lose an appreciation for the Scriptures as…
Catholic Easter Activities
Easter is such an a great time of year to share activities and worksheets that illustrate the important teachers about Christ’s resurrection and our redemption from sin and death. Explore the following Easter activities for kids as a part of your Easter lesson plans this year. Don’t miss the link to download a collection of…
Catholic Schools Week 2012 Ideas and Activities
The 2012 Catholic Schools Week theme is “Faith. Academics. Service.” I’m happy to welcome another excellent collection of ideas and activities from two master teachers and employees of the Alliance for Catholic Education, Jennifer Dees and Meghann (Robinson) Kirzeder. They have come up with some amazing ideas that should be useful for an entire school,…
Using Printables to Create a Personalized Advent Calendar
One of the most popular activities in religious education classrooms during the season of Advent is updating and using Advent calendars to prepare for Christmas. Advent calendars come in many different variations. Like the Jesse Tree, Advent calendars can become daily opportunities to focus each day on the preparation for Advent. The Advent calendars are…
St. Cecilia, Patron Saint of Music, Activities and Prayers
The feast day of St. Cecilia, patron saint of music falls perfectly right around Thanksgiving on November 22. The days around Thanksgiving can be either stressful with exams or laid back with movies and break.
How to Hold a Class Debate that Gets Kids Excited
One of the best ways to encourage critical thinking is to provide students with the opportunity to have a debate in class. Not all students necessarily know how to hold a class debate so they may need some in-class debate formats to follow along with some time to prepare for the debate. Consider using the…
Using Facebook Questions to Teach Religion
More and more teachers are integrating social media into education. I’m glad to see teachers taking small steps in this direction. One natural tool to do this is Facebook’s Questions function. First, let me admit that when I was a teacher I was very wary of Facebook. I was very afraid of my students finding…
