Teach your religious education students important lessons about the lives of the saints, add some traditional Halloween fun, and a CCD class becomes an October celebration for All Saints Day or All Souls Day.
Children of all ages will love walking through a saint graveyard in the dark, with a flashlight, scary music and sound effects, looking for the gravestone of a saint.
This Halloween activity is perfect for children old enough to read, and can be fun for kids as old as middle school.
Materials Needed for a Saint Graveyard
- Poster board or cardboard
- Black and gray crayons
- Brown paper lunch bags
- Goodie bags filled with candy
- Flashlight
- Tape
- Scissors
- Information about saints
Make Cardboard Gravestones
There should be one gravestone for each child in the class. If the class is small, there should be extra gravestones so it’s not too easy to find the saint gravestone they’re looking for.
Cut different shaped gravestones out of poster board or white cardboard. Make some with rounded tops, make some shaped like crosses, and others rectangles. Make some of them look old and authentic by cutting jagged corners off, to make it look like it’s broken.
With a black crayon, write the name of a saint in big letters. Below that, write something about the saint. For example: “Saint Francis of Assisi” “Was a friend of all God’s creations.”
Set the cardboard gravestones on a sidewalk or other rough surface. Using the sides of unwrapped gray and black crayons, rub lightly on the gravestone, covering it with crayoned texture marks to make it look like marble. Use a black crayon to draw on cracks, curlicues, “R.I.P” and other gravestone designs.
Attach Candy Bags to the Gravestones
Using double-sided tape or pieces of masking tape rolled, attach a brown lunch bag to each cardboard gravestone. In a separate clear plastic bag, make Halloween goodie bags full of candy and small Halloween trinkets and party favors and tie it shut with a twist-tie. Place a goodie bag in each lunch bag gravestone stand. The weight of the goodie bag will hold the bag in place and keep the saint gravestone in place.
Set up Your Classroom Saint Graveyard
Set up the classroom saint graveyard with the children out of the room. Find a room in a basement or without many windows that can be darkened. Clear out a large section of the floor and set up the saint gravestones in random order. Leave enough room between gravestones so the children can walk among them.
Turn out the lights and play some scary music or Halloween sound effects.
The Saint Graveyard Activity
Bring the children into the graveyard, keeping the lights off or low. One by one, give each child the name of a saint. Give him a flashlight and have him walk through the “graveyard” looking for the gravestone of the saint he’s been assigned.
When he finds the saint’s gravestone, have him read to the class the name of the saint and what is written on the gravestone about him or her.
The child can then take the goodie bag out of the back of the gravestone and set the gravestone back down on the floor. He can hand the flashlight to the next child to find his saint.
A saint graveyard activity can be the activity that ties Halloween in to lessons about the saints and their lives and contributions. Depending on the class size and the children’s ages, the saint graveyard activity can be one of several religious Halloween activities for a CCD party.
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