Back to School Printables: Monthly Devotions and Lesson Planning

Here we go! It's back to school week for me, and I know that many of you are starting school and religious ed over the next few weeks.  Today I've got some basic printables for you to help enhance your classroom, whether in school, parish, or home.

I have been working on growing our rhythm of living the liturgical calendar in my classroom over the past few years, and just added these monthly devotion signs to our calendar area. Each month has a traditional Catholic devotion, often associated with the season or a particular feast day.  We typically remember that October is the month of the Rosary, but I thought with some signs right in our calendar area, we might be a little more intentional in celebrating the devotion of every month, even by simple things like the prayers that we say at the beginning or end of class.

I have the signs, two per page, ready to print for you in both cursive and manuscript. I cut mine out and put them in a 8.5x11" page protector, folded the page protector over, taped, and stuck it on my white board.  Now all the months are stored right in my calendar area, so on the 1st of a new month, I can just slide out the new sign instead of scrounging to find where I stored them. ;) (And I've got a fun project planned for the new calendar year to help bring these devotions into your home.  Hopefully I can get it all finished before December!)

 Click here for the monthly devotions signs in cursive:

Click here for the monthly devotions signs in manuscript:

I also have a couple of new pages to use for planning religious ed in your classroom.  This annual planner lists the main nine months of the school year and gives you space to choose a prayer and Saint to focus on each month, as well as a place to list the key content you plan to cover.  It's a great idea to start with a big picture like this, even if the plan has to deviate from week to week.

Click here for the Catechesis Annual Plan:

And I also made up a basic lesson plan for a single class, giving you space for big picture planning, as well as listing supplies and steps.  It would be great to have a blank stack of these in a binder and fill out as much of them as is helpful each week.  Not only will it be good method for planning your class, but also could be a source of reflection for coming classes or even the next year if you are teaching similar material.

Click here for the lesson plan:

May the Lord guide us and give us the tools to draw our students' hearts closer and closer to His Sacred Heart during this coming school year!