Theme

General

Age Range

Below 14

Type

Activities

Number of Participants

4+

Timescale

30-60 minutes

Quick overview

Whether Advent, Christmastide, Lent, Eastertide, Ordinary time or just a special feast day or solemnity this is a great way to get the young people to enter into the liturgical season and contribute to either the Church or their families’ celebration of the period.

Supplies you’ll need

Scissors, Glue, Paper, Cardboard, Coloured paper, Pens, Pencils, Colouring pens, String, Sellotape, Blutac, anything else arts-and-crafty that you think will be useful. Bible or saints story.

Prep

Lay the objects out neatly on a table; you may like to make some items ahead of time to give some inspiration.

If you are making decorations for the church you will want to have asked the priest if that’s okay!

Leading the Activity

Depending on the season or celebration, different decorations may be more appropriate.

To help young people have an idea of what sort of decoration they want to make, before getting started on the decorations themselves, it’s often a nice idea to do some kind of talk on the saint or season involved. A simple way of doing this is to tell them the story of the saint or read a bible passage that the season focuses on. As mentioned in the prep, you may like to have some examples of decorations they could make to motivate those with less imagination.

From here on, you can pretty much just supervise and help when they need it. It’s nice to get involved in making some of your own decorations as well as this helps build relationships with the young people through shared experience. It also gives you some decorations of your own!

Suggested decorations

• Banners and posters
• Baubles
• Paper chains
• Pictures
• Sculptures