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In the craziness of 2020, we were all thrown into a digital world. Classes were suddenly being held through Zoom Calls, Google Meet and other online platforms. For many people, those online calls are still continuing. Getting students to connect and feel comfortable on a virtual call can be tricky. We are asking them to use technology designed for adults, sit still and stay focused on a screen for extended periods of time. It is important that we engage them during these calls.
I've come up with some specifically Catholic ideas that you can use on a Zoom call or even just start your virtual call with these. These are perfect for Catholics schools that have moved to remote learning. They could also work for religious education programs that are using distance learning instead of face to face learning.
Say a Memorized Prayer Together
Start your time together by saying a memorized Catholic prayer.
If your students are just learning the basic prayers of our faith, make sure that they have a resource with them like a Catholic Prayers Lapbook or Catholic Prayers mini book. This could be a whole Zoom call by itself to assemble these together. You could also send home all the pieces and have students assemble them with parents. Either way, use these as a tool for students, so they have the words in front of them.
For students who have prayers memorized you could ask for suggestions of what prayer to say and have a particular student (if they are comfortable) start the prayer and others can join in.
For young students who can't read the words yet, you could find the prayer set to music and teach them to sing the prayer. You could also do it as a "repeat after me" activity where you say a line and they echo you.
Play a Bingo Game Together
Playing a game would be a great way to take the pressure off students to talk and share. Everyone can focus on playing the game, but it can still have lots of teachable moments.
Depending on the age of your students you could try Saints Bingo Jr, Saints Bingo Jr 2, or Saints Bingo. They each come with background about the saints included, so you can teach about these holy men and women as you play the game.
Another fun Catholic version of bingo is Catholic Mass Item Bingo where students can learn about the different items we see and use during Mass. This is a great way to build vocabulary.
Depending on the time of year, you could do some type of seasonal bingo like Christmas Nativity Bingo that helps to retell the story of the First Christmas. Or at Easter time you can retell the events of Holy Week with Religious Easter Bingo.
For any of these games you could print out and send home a game board ahead of time depending on how your school/church is handling supply pick up. Each game comes with 30 different boards, so you can easily print a different one for each student. You could also assign them a page and have them print it at home. If you want students to have just their page and not the whole file, try the "print to PDF" option and print just the pages you want included. Check out this tutorial if you need help with printing to PDF.
Introduce a Saint
Introducing a saint during each Zoom call is a great way to teach kids about these holy men and women that are with Jesus in Heaven cheering us on as we pursue sainthood on earth. You could pick the saint of the day that has a feast day on the day you are meeting. You could also just pick saints that are represented in your church or school through statues and artwork. Or you could simply pick saints you think students would be interested in.
Some ideas for sharing about a saint in a quick and kid friendly way:
- Read a book about the saint (often the books that cover multiple saints have shorter biographies)
- Color a picture of the saint and read the mini biography in a Catholic Saint Coloring Book
- Use the anchor charts in my Catholic Saints Interactive Notebook to hold up and read the basic facts during a call
- Show a short video about the saint
- If you have an Amazon Alexa Smart Speaker you can enable the saint of the day skill from Franciscan Media, and it will give a short biography of the saint for that day
- Play an episode of the Saint Stories for Kids Podcast. These are short and geared toward kids and include popular saints as well as not so well known saints
Say the Rosary
This will depend on the age of your students and their familiarity with the prayers of the Rosary. You may just want to do a decade with younger students and you will probably have to lead them.
For older students they can take turns leading a decade if they feel comfortable.
For students who are still learning the prayers of the Rosary, try a Rosary Lapbook. This again could be something you could assemble together during a call or have students do at home on their own. Then they can use this a tool to help them feel more comfortable until they learn all the prayers.
Another fun idea would be to share a rosary from their house (maybe check first that everyone has one and provide cheap ones for students who don't have one) and talk about where it came from and if there is any special meaning behind it.
Catholic Scavenger Hunt
To get your students up and moving, have them do a Catholic scavenger hunt. You give them what to look for, and they have to search their house. Some of these you might want to let parents know ahead of time as it could be tricky to be searching for some of these items. You could even just do one each time you meet based on what you taught during the previous lesson or even as a preview of what they are about to learn.
Here are a few ideas:
- find a Bible
- find a rosary
- find something related to a saint
- find a prayer card
- find something from your Baptism - candle, picture, white garment
- find something that represents a sacrament
- find something that starts with the same letter as Jesus (or a saint)
- find something that is the same color as the liturgical season we are in
- find something related to praying
Read a Bible Story
Share a story from the Bible. This could be one of the readings for the day, or it could even be a passage that you think they would be interested in like one of the miracles of Jesus or an Old Testament story that they have heard about (Noah, Adam & Eve, Moses, etc.)
Depending on the age and comfort level of your students, you could assign them a day to share a favorite story from the Bible.
Share a God Moment
Have students share a highlight of their day/week that showcases a time when they saw God in someone or something that they interacted with that day (or over the weekend, or since you last met, etc.) When you first start this, you will probably need to give examples from your life to help them start to notice God in all the little parts of their lives.
Gospel for the Week
Depending on the age of your students, read and discuss the Gospel reading for that week. You could have younger students attempt to draw what that passage is about. Older students could write about it. This would be great to do before Mass so that they can hear it again during Mass and hopefully relate to it and understand it better.
Eucharistic Miracles
This would be a great way to engage students. Read about a different Eucharistic miracle each time you meet. Heavenly Hosts by Kathyrn Griffin is a great book for kids and each miracle is explained in 2-3 pages in a story format. You could easily read one miracle at each meeting.
You could also use the Miracles List on this website to teach about different miracles. The miracles are broken down by location and year and then when you click on them, you will find an explanation and some pictures. You could do a screen share with this so they could see the pictures from that website.
Take a Virtual Field Trip
A fun way to learn more about the faith when we are stuck at home is to do a virtual field trip. Pick some locations important to the Catholic faith and do a screen share to show them what it looks like up close. Here are some ideas to get you started:
Looking for more ideas?
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