Sometimes Holy Thursday is also known as “Green Thursday” or even “Maundy Thursday”, and it’s a really important day to Christians! A lot of Biblical things occurred on this day, and there are a lot of awesome traditions to do for Holy Thursday with your kids while living the liturgical year at home with them. So let’s take a look at these ideas for celebrating Holy Thursday with kids.
The best way to be able to celebrate any day with kids with actual meaning is for you yourself to understand what the feast day is all about. So let’s take a look at the Holy Thursday highlights to begin with.
Holy Thursday Celebration Cheat Sheet:
- Falls during Holy Week and Lent
- Liturgical color: White
- Anniversary of the Last Supper from the Bible
- Jesus holds the first Mass
- Jesus gives us the Eucharist
- Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, and in the Catholic church, the priest washes the feet of the parishioners on this day
- Jesus asks his disciples to “keep a watch” and stay up with him all night while he has his agony in the garden, but they keep falling asleep
Holy Thursday Traditions And Celebration Ideas:
Check out this footprint craft for feet washing– I love the recipe for the fluffy shaving cream glue that looks like water! This craft can be easily modified to a paper bowl to look like feet washing.
Faith And Fabric have this super awesome printable Last Supper menu craft that you may find very helpful to your Holy Thursday celebrations!
My printable book for kids, Holy Week In Handprints, also includes handprint crafts for Holy Thursday (as well as every day in Holy Week) so be sure to check that out!
This is a simple Holy Thursday chalice craft from Flame Creative Children’s Ministry where kids can decorate plastic wine cups. They used some kind of paint markers but I bet you could use Sharpies or even oil pastels.
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I also have some free printable coloring note-booking pages for Holy Thursday here.
Great Holy Week Resources For Families!
Try celebrating all the days of Holy Week with my new cookbook for families– The Symbolic Holy Week & Easter Cookbook! This cookbook includes 23 recipes that point to the true meaning of Easter. It only includes 29 pages of bonus printables! You do not want to miss this amazing resource.
Going To Adoration For Holy Thursday
Because Jesus asked the disciples to keep watch with him Thursday night during his agony in the garden, it is traditional for Catholics to go to adoration and stay until midnight on Thursday.
Many parishes set up a special adoration in the sanctuary after Holy Thursday Mass, so even if your parish doesn’t have perpetual adoration, this is probably an option for you. This is a beautiful tradition and I fully recommend it with your older kids. Maybe have a plan ahead of time to send the little home with one parent, and keep the older ones there to try to stay awake and pray with Jesus.
For more resources on the Eucharist, you might want to check out my First Communion resource page.
The Symbolic Holy Week & Easter Cookbook is sure to bless your family in the upcoming seasons! Read more now.
