Make your Catholic religion lessons last throughout the week with take-home reminders.

Your CCD lessons fill your class time, but can you get you students to take what they've learned home with them?

The best religion lessons address your students' everyday lives. Help them to remember what you've taught by giving them reminders for long after class is over.

When coming up with craft ideas, try to think of things that they’ll see in their everyday lives during the week: picture frames, doorknob hangers, trinket boxes and other containers for their dressers.

Reward your students for thinking of your CCD class when they’re away. Announce to the class that they can win a candy bar for every time they share with the class a Bible verse that they’ve seen in public. They’ll be on the lookout for bumper stickers, signs and advertisements with Bible verse passages.

Make Power Bracelets

A simple beaded bracelet is a fun craft for kids of all ages. First-graders can simply thread beads onto a string. Older children can use more difficult bracelet-making techniques.

Make power bracelets as a class and send home a slip of paper signifying what each color means.

Clear bead – represents life

Black bead – represents sin

Red bead – represents the blood of Jesus

Blue bead – represents the waters of baptism

White bead – represents purity of a life following the laws of Christ

Green bead – represents Christian growth

Gold bead – represents heaven.

Find Bible verses that explain each concept and include them in your take-home sheet.

Send Home a Prayer Rock

To remind your students to say their morning and evening prayers, send home a prayer rock with a poem instructing them to put the rock on their pillows.

Print the poem on paper in a narrow column, about 2 inches wide, and mount it on a backing of white contact paper. Trim with zigzag scissors and punch a hole in the top.

Gather up rocks, one for each of your students, each about the size of a lime. Wrap each rock in a square of brightly colored fabric that’s been cut with pinking shears. Wrap up the rock in the fabric and tie it like a knapsack with a piece of ribbon.

Thread the ribbon through the hole in the poem and pass them out to your students.

Prayer Rock

I’m your little prayer rock

And this is what I’ll do –

Just put me on your pillow

Until the day is through.

Then turn back the covers

And climb into your bed

And WHACK! your little prayer rock

Will hit you on the head!

Then you will remember

As the day is through

To kneel and say your prayers

As you wanted to.

Then when you are finished

Just dump me on the floor.

I’ll stay there through the nighttime

To give you help once more.

When you get up the next morning

CLUNK! I stub your toe

So you will remember

Morning prayers before you go.

Put me back upon your pillow

When your bed is made

And your clever little prayer rock

Will continue in your aid.

Because your heavenly Father

Cares and loves you so

He wants you to remember

To talk to him, you know!

Pocket Reminders

Make pocket reminders, a small wooden token or a small flat rock they can keep in their pocket to remind them of something from your lessons.

Small wooden flat discs can be purchased by the bag at a craft store. Have the students draw with permanent marker on the rock or disc a symbol of something they want to remember. Perhaps each of your students can come up with a trait they’d like to improve, a virtue – being kinder to others, helping around the house, praying more often. Think of a picture, a word or a symbol that will serve as a reminder and draw it on the disc. Tell your students to put the reminder in their pocket every day.