Catholic Fun & Games for Second-Graders

Distribute cards with different Catholic-themed words on them, such as Advent, Lent, Jesus, Christ, God, Adam, Eve and so forth. At the second grade level, you have a couple of options as to how you want to play bingo. The first is to simply call out a word and have students put a marker on the word if they have it. Another option is to give a description of the word. For example, you could say "a time of fasting and giving up things in preparation of Jesus' resurrection." Students who have the word "Lent" on their cards would then put a marker down.

Pass out index cards with the name of patron saints. For example, include Saint Apollonia, the patron saint of dentists, Saint Frances de Sales, the patron saint of writers and Saint Gabriel, the patron saint of mail carriers. Each student must act out the saint and the rest of the class has to guess who he is pretending to be. Provide a list of some of the various saints, as well as what they are the patrons of, to the class.

Ask students in your classroom to create a post based upon a theme, or ask the principal to get the entire school involved. Select a quotation from Jesus, such as "Love Your Neighbor" to base the poster contest around. Another idea during the Christmas season would be to ask students to create a poster that demonstrates the popular quotation, "Keep Christ in Christmas." Award a certificate of recognition or a homework free pass to the winner.

Students usually attend confession for the first time in second grade, so introduce this concept into their activities. Create a word puzzle with the words "reconciliation," "confession," "absolution," "penance" and "repentant" and their definitions. However, leave a few letters out of each of those main words, and put them in a box on the bottom. Based off of the definitions, students have to figure out the missing letters and ultimately the word.