Saint Classroom Activities

Saints Cards

Have the students do a bit of research on one of their favourite saints.

Ask them to make a Saints Day Card using either a 8X11 sheet of paper or construction paper folded in half.

The top part of the could contain the name of the saint with a picture or drawing representing the saint.

Inside, there could be a brief biography of the saint and/or a prayer to this saint written by the student. They could also explain why they have chosen this saint - what do they find appealing about this holy person.

On the back of the card, ask them to draw a symbol that represents this saint. Under the drawing, they could explain why they have chosen this particular symbol

Patron Saint Trivia Game

Copy, paste onto a word processor and print the short biographies that constitute the answers to the Patron Saints Quiz - (follow the link and scroll down the page; below the 100 Questions, you will find short biographies of each of 100 patron saints.)

Divide the class into groups of 3-4. Tell them that they will be getting information on 100 patron saints and that they will participate in a trivia game as a team. They will have 5-10 minutes to go through the information before the game starts. Point out that because time is limited, teams that co-operate in going through the information will do better during the game.

Distribute the patron saints biographies to the your students. When time is up, tell them to put away their sheets and proceed with the game.

You could ask questions from the Patron Saints Quiz to each of the teams in turn, or you could take the first student who lifts his or her hand. If you take the latter option, you might want to give one point for right answers and take one point away for wrong answers.

A Saint for the 21st Century

Explain the following points to your students:

• God is the one who calls people to become Saints;
• Saints are people who love God and others - you can't seperate one from the other;
• Saints show their love for God by loving others;
• the love that Saints have for others is an echo, a reflection of the love that God has for others;
• Saints find out how God is calling them to love by being attentive to the needs of of people in the world they live in;
• the lives of Saints tell us something about God: when God calls certain people in certain situations to love in certain ways, God is telling us what is important in God's eyes.

For example, mother Teresa of Calcutta served the poorest of the poor, the dying, the children who would otherwise have been abandonned or aborted. If God called her to do this, what was God telling the whole world through Mother Teresa? The ministry of Mother Teresa proclaimed this love of God in the midst of what Pope John Paul II called the "culture of death". The ministry of Mother Teresa was therefore both a sign of God's love and a message to the world.

What was the "message" of God to the world given through Therese of Lisieux? or Saint Francis of Assisi?

Saints in the Supermarket

Saints in the Supermarket, a feature of the online edition of the Saint Anthony Messenger, has a more extensive reflection on sainthood and provides a number of links to online resources to facilitate this reflection.