Give your students some educational and enjoyable activities to lead up to class.

It’s a rare day when all students in your class walk in the door at the same time and you can begin to teach your religion lesson. More likely, students trickle in over a period of time. You’ll always have one or two early birds, and a few latecomers.

Start each class with a gathering activity, something the students can work on while you’re all waiting for everyone to arrive. Make it relevant to the lesson, so that time isn’t wasted. Make it extra fun, so your students will want to arrive early.

The perfect gathering activity requires no instructions from you. It should be something the students can pick up, figure out easily and start in on while you take attendance, talk to parents, and set up the classroom for the session. If you use printed worksheets, be sure instructions are printed on them.

• Keep it simple. You should be able to easily put out supplies as soon as you arrive in the classroom, and quickly clean everything up to get ready for the start of class. Don’t have a gathering activity that involves so much time that you’re halfway through class before it’s wrapping up.

• Be sure your gathering activity doesn’t rely on partners or work that requires a group. You may have one early student for a while.

• Make your gathering activity something that relates to that day’s lesson or reviews the last lesson, but is not required material. A latecomer will miss out on it.

Some ideas for gathering activities:

Word Search Puzzles

Make a personalized word search puzzle with Discovery.com’s puzzle-maker tool. Fill it with review words for the last few lessons, seasonal or holiday terms, or put the names of your students (first and last names with no spaces) and call it “Friends of Jesus.” Make sure all the names are spelled correctly.

Other Puzzles

Discovery.com has other puzzle ideas that you can tailor make for your class. Crossword puzzles, cryptograms and more are easy and fun to make online.

ChristianAnswers.net has printable mazes in various levels of difficulty.

Coloring Sheets

Kids of all ages like to color. Even junior high schoolers, while they may not admit it, like to put crayon to paper. Coloring sheets are an easy gathering activity. All you need are enough sheets for each child and a big box of crayons.

Suite 101’s Kids’ Crafts Page has dozens of printable coloring sheets in different themes.

Suite writer Denise Oliveri has more coloring pages in Sunday School lesson idea articles, indexed in Sunday School Lesson Ideas.

Hands-on Activities and Simple Crafts

Play with saint cards. Gather up as many different saint cards as you can and mount a common background on the back. Cover with clear Contac paper or laminate them. Set them out for students to play with: They can sort them, and see how many they can name. If you have two cards for each saint, you can play the match game with them. (Similar to Concentration or the Memory Game, players in the match game turn over two cards at a time, trying to get a match.)

Make fans. Put out plain white paper and crayons and tell the students to decorate both sides of the paper with as much color as possible. Just before class begins, show them how to fold their paper accordion style and use as a fan.

Make valentines with construction paper, crayons and lacy paper doilies.

Set out some pre-folded and outlined paper doll chains and have the students cut them out, open them up and draw on faces and clothing.

Have students decorate pre-cut doorknob hangers or bookmarks.

Look for more simple craft ideas in Suite 101’s Kids’ Crafts page.