The guardian angel feast day happens each year on October 2. This is a super fun feast day to celebrate with your family! This posts focuses specifically on resources that are good for learning about guardian angels, but you can find all of my angel activities for kids here. For today I’m going to share with you 10 ways to celebrate the feast day of Guardian Angels with your family.
Teach Children About Guardian Angels!
Don’t ever forget the important teaching step of celebrating a feast day with kiddos! Here are the main points I have taught my kids about guardian angels.
Guardian Angel Cheat Sheet:
- God made a special angel for you called your guardian angel.
- Angels are spirits, so they don’t have bodies like ours, but we can picture them with bodies, wings, and halos because this is how they appear to people sometimes, and it helps us to think about them.
- Your angel is always with you all the time, even though you can’t see him.
- Your angel has 3 important jobs; to enlighten you, guide you, and protect you.
- Although your angel may help protect you from earthly harms sometimes, it’s a more important job for your angel to protect you from spiritual harms.
- God gave you the special gift of free will, so even though your angel can help you in many ways, it’s still possible for you to choose to do bad or dangerous things sometimes. We must always be careful! (read: it’s not a good idea to run off into a forest by yourself and cross a rapid river on a rickety bridge)
(Later in the post, I make some angel book suggestions for kids, which can help with this “teaching” step.)
Say Extra Prayers
This is a big one! Whatever you do to celebrate a feast day, make sure it always includes extra prayers of some kind so your children understand the reasoning behind all of this celebrating. It’s pretty much a no-brainer that on the guardian angel feast day, the prayer to guardian angels is a good one to pray.
I do have a printable page in my “Learning Our Prayers The Write Way” ebook with handwriting practice for the guardian angel prayer.
Here is a video to help your child learn the classic guardian angel prayer if you haven’t already memorized it. It is traditionally said by many families at bedtime prayers.
Make A Guardian Angel Craft
You all know that I love crafts! They can be a great way for kids to have fun, and to reinforce concepts you’ve covered with them. They also tend to stay around the house for awhile, serving as built-in review, and helping kids to really remember and internalize what they’ve learned. Here are some angel crafts we’ve made in the past:
Check out this angel handprint craft: fun, easy, and free to print! I also love how handprint crafts become keepsakes over time. Adding the (optional) glitter to this one makes it even more heavenly!
Make a printable angel peg doll– it’s easier than you think! You just paint the head with my step by step directions, draw on the face with a sharpie marker, and decoupage on the printed body. You’re left with a peg doll that really looks hand painted! My kids love peg dolls and they have been the toy that has been played with the most in my house with 4 children. Seriously.
This angel picture frame craft from The Keeper Of The Cheerios seems perfect for the Guardian Angel feast day because it’s like the angel is looking over you!
I also think these pine cone angel crafts from Nini Makes would be perfect for the feast of the guardian angels because of the time of year. It’s pine cone season and these little guys will be so cute with your harvest decor this month!
Paper bag Angel puppet: My kids love making paper bag puppets, and I have virtually every template you could ever need to make Saints and Angels in My Saint puppet ebook.
Koala Mom has this super cute guardian angel prayer card craft. She shows you how to make this step by step!
If you have never made yarn dolls with your kids, this is a classic! I actually made this yard doll angel as part of our yarn doll nativity set, but this angel yarn doll would be perfect for celebrating this feast day, and kids always love making yarn dolls!
Faith And Fabric has an absolutely adorable guardian angel craft for kids. Isn’t this cute? I love how personalized it is.
You can find even more angel crafts for kids here!
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Make Fun Food
The way to a kid’s heart is through his stomach. Oh wait, was that actually for men? Whatever. There’s pretty much nothing my kids love to celebrate a feast day with more than delicious food. Here are some ideas for celebrating the guardian angel feast day with food.
Angel hair pasta for dinner, and angel food cake for dessert. Simple. 🙂
Easy angel cookies (with an easy-to-use icing recipe and decorating tips for kids!)
Read A Book
Catholic books aren’t usually available at the library, so I’ve been slowly collecting Catholic children’s books for birthdays, feast days, etc. over the years.
Pictured above is The Angels: God’s Messengers and Our Helpers. This is a Fr. Lovasik book, and it has pretty much every angel story ever, but these books are too lengthy for children to sit through. You could choose a few choice stories to read from this one if you wanted. We also like The Guardian Angel Prayer book
. It just goes through the Guardian Angel Prayer line by line, but it makes my 4 year old feel like she’s reading. 
By far, my very favorite book about angels for kids is Treasure Box book number 18. These books are a prime example of the phrase “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” They are beautifully written and illustrated on the inside! This book is not specifically about guardian angels, but I still read it to my kids on this day.
Sing A Song
My kids like “Angels We Have Heard On High,” even though it’s kind of Christmasy. The Guardian Angel prayer can also fit to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle” if you repeat the first lines again at the end:
Angel of God my Guardian dear,
To whom God’s love commits me here,
Ever this day be at my side,
To light to guard to rule and guide,
Angel of God my Guardian dear,
To whom God’s love commits me here.
Did you know Brahm’s Lullaby mentions guardian angels? It sure does! Try listening to this version.
Color A Coloring Page
Here’s a guardian angel coloring page that’s free to print. I love Paper Dali’s coloring pages- they’re so cute!
Use An Angel Centerpiece!
This always makes a feast day more festive! Think about your Christmas decorations when looking for an angel centerpiece. You can even use your light up angel for the top of your tree in the middle of the table. So pretty when you light it up!
If you don’t have an angel center piece to use, my stand up printable angel crafts are totally free and will make a great centerpiece on your feast table. There is one angel in my nativity set, and 2 others in my resurrection set. Your kids just color and cut these, and they make a great centerpiece when you’re finished with them!
A Word Of Caution…
We always have to tread carefully when teaching children about religion, and I have seen many resources for children about guardian angels that have weird messages in them. We wouldn’t want to shake a child’s faith by telling them something about guardian angels that doesn’t turn out to be true (for example, a child falls and gets hurt after someone tells them their angel will keep them from harm, or someone tells them something like if they pray long enough, their angel’s name will be revealed to them, which might turn out not to be true.) Specifically, I do not like the guardian angel movie from CCC. I would recommend throwing it in the trash if you have it.
You can find all of my angel resources for kids here. You will find rafts, printables, books, recipes, and more!
We love the story of Pascual and the Kitchen Angels. A bit story, a bit legend (and there is an explanation of the legend in the back). A fave around here!
http://www.amazon.com/Pascual-Kitchen-Angels-Tomie-dePaola/dp/0142405361/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412261199&sr=8-1&keywords=pascual+and+the+kitchen+angels
Awesome post, thank-you! Thank-you for the idea of fitting the Guardian Angel Prayer into the “Twinkle Twinkle” tune, our littles will like that!! The following lines could also be used at the end, instead of repeating the first lines: “From simple stain, O keep me free; until death’s hour, my helper be.” That’s how we were taught the Guardian Angel prayer when we were little. 🙂 Happy feast day!!
So cute- love it! 🙂
Teaching a class tomorrow on angels and free will. I have lots of stories, videos and discussion questions about angels but still searching for an easy game to teach the idea of free will to 9 and 10 year olds! Any ideas?
I can’t think of anything off the top of my head. Have you tried the Catholic Toolbox? She’s got great stuff!
Angels have been my friends since first grade, when Sister Alma Mary O.P. had us name our guardian angel. I named mine Linda. Since then have always asked for help from her, 3 years ago we broke down in Arizona. The towing service wouldn’t help us, so I prayed and found a Michaels Tire Repair on my phone who helped us get the spare attached. Then in Gallup New Mexico, the tire shop couldn’t fit our RV. We turned and found another tire shop that did. As they are changing our tire I looked across the street and 2 angel statues were at the entrance to the cemetery. Then I knew we really had been helped by angels that day! Today is the feast of the Archangels( Sept. 29) the feast day of our Guardian Angels is October 2nd.