When you are teaching your kids about being grateful for what they have, focusing on the grace before meal plans is a great idea! This craft includes the traditional Catholic dinner prayer, and I even include a free download for this craft at the bottom of this post. Check out this fun and easy grace before meals craft for kids.
Catholic Dinner Prayer:
Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Supplies Needed:
- Large paper for placemat (we used cut up paper bags) and assorted construction paper.
- Disposable plates, silverware, and cups
- White paper (for “napkins”. Don’t use real napkins because they’re nearly impossible to glue down.)
- White glue
- Catholic Dinner Prayer print out (link at the bottom of this post)
- Scissors
Start by crafting a placemat. We wove some placemats for ours. Here are some great directions on how to weave placemats with kids.
Here is the final version of the weaving placemat craft:
I thought I would do something a little easier than weaving for with my preschool class, so we did apple stamping to decorate the placemats. I told them all about how the Trinity is like an apple before we started.
For easy apple printing, cut your apple in half, squeeze some paint on a paper plate (we used tempera paint) and put your half-apple in the paint. To make an easy handle, stick a corn-on-the-cob-holder into the apple. (be careful that the children don’t remove the holder from the apple because it’s very sharp)
As long as kids are still having fun with this, let them stamp as much paper as they want. 🙂
After you’ve made or decorated your placemat however you like, glue on a disposable place setting. We used white glue. You need to be generous with the glue. Hot glue will probably stick more long term.
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Don’t forget to glue on the before dinner prayer! It fits right on your plate. 🙂
When the glue dries, these can hang right on the wall so your kids will always remember to say grace before meals!
Even though kids pick up on the dinner prayer pretty quickly if you’re praying it before all your meals, it’s good to take the time to talk to them about it, what it means, why we say it, and about being thankful in general. Sometimes it’s easy to fall into the habit of saying it and never bother actually teaching about it.
When teaching prayers to kids, I think it’s a good idea to always make sure they are writing it out so you know they are understanding the right words. So I made this Catholic prayers ebook for kids with handwriting practice for each of the most common prayers, including grace before meals. Check it out now!
I do also have a simple printable version of this prayer available for free for just this craft.
You can find your free download for this craft here!
How do you make sure your kids understand grace before meals? Tell us about it in the comments!
This is so cute! Our 3 year old recently began saying Grace with us and loves to set the table, so I think we’ll be doing this craft soon!
We found the paper towels from the restroom work great at “napkins”. They glue down very easily. 🙂
Great idea! Paper towels would be great because they don’t have all those layers that napkins do!
Lacy- THANK YOU for blessing all of us with your website. We have your A-B-C book and enjoy it as well. What a wonderful resource you are!! xo Janalin
Dear Catholic Icing
I came up with another idea for teaching my Sunday school kids about meal-time prayers.
I take your prayer printout and glue it to a paper plate and then have cutouts from old food magazines for the children to glue to their own paper plate on the outer rim. I also have them follow these simple rules; 1. there must be a veggie, main dish (like chicken, fish, or pasta,) a dessert and at lest one food word, (like Bread, baked, potato…) on their paper plate edges.
2. since I believe that the best way to teach kids how to share is by putting them in situwaions where they need to share. I have a basket of cutouts and they all have to share. I find this works very well for me.
Thank you for all your great ideas!
God bless!
Ruth~
Such a cute craft! We did something very similar once. 🙂
Thank You! This is exactly what I was looking for. I am going to use this to place on the plate of who’s turn it is to say grace. I printed it on card stock and am going to laminate it. I always find useful things on this site.
So happy to hear it! 🙂
Thank you for the many wonderful ideas you share and the encouraging manner in which you share them!
Thank you for the craft idea. I was looking for a catholic dinner prayer. Instead of the entire craft I printed the poem laminated it. It is placed on the dinner plate of the family member who’s turn it is to say grace. I leave it on a bowl we have designated as the “rice bowl” on the kitchen table between meals .
Thanks,
Kim
Hello! I want to try this with my children but the link to the “bless us o lord” printout seems to be disconnected. Any help would be appreciated!
Audrey
Hi Audrey –
Did you go all the way to the end of the post to find the rectangular graphic that has a blue background and says “Get Your Free Download” in pink and then “Click Here!!!” in white plus a Catholic Icing cupcake in the corner? When I clicked on it, I didn’t run into any problems and the printable came right up for me. So, maybe give it a try again and make sure that’s the graphic that you’re clicking on and not an ad elsewhere in the post.
I hope that helps!
Angie, Catholic Icing Project Manager
Dear Lacy: I just love your free printables. I print them out for my 2nd grade religious education class. I only have an hour with them and we do have a lesson in our workbooks to do every week. I can only pray and hope they do some of these at home (but I highly doubt it). Thank you for this wonderful site and I have been a frequent user for several years (except last year when we did not meet in person; we are back in the classroom now).
I used the same idea but printed the prayer in plate form onto construction paper with silverware printed on each side of the plate shape then laminated them to make placemats out of them. they go under the kids plates every meal and we have them done by liturgical season colors as well. Everyone loves them and when we have company that doesnt know the prayer they can still participate if they want to
Hi Lacey,
For this Sunday reading ( He knows every hair on your head, ) the little children at our Catholic Liturgy are making faces on paper plates and then gluing strips of paper around the top to be their hair. I hope it gets the message across to them.
Veronica in the UK