Celebrating Palm Sunday with your family is a great way to live the liturgical year at home with your kids! It begins the last week of Lent, and there are a lot of fun and meaningful ways to celebrate Palm Sunday with your kids. You can find all of my Holy Week resources for families here. But now let’s see how to kick it off with Palm Sunday!
Special For Those Who Can’t Attend Palm Sunday Mass This Year!!!
Because most of us are stuck home due to the global pandemic, I made a printable version of Palm Sunday palms for this year! I have one that prints and you tape it into a life size long palm, and also the printable crosses. Totally free and easy to download. Get your pritnable palms here!
Palm Sunday is a great day to attend Mass with your family! (and I mean it’s a Sunday so you were hopefully planning to anyway- haha)
Tips For Attending Mass On Palm Sunday
- Wear Red! It’s the liturgical color of Palm Sunday! I am not sure why this became such a popular thing because usually only the priest dresses in the liturgical color of the day, but it’s a real thing! More than any other day of the year, you will actually see the congregation wearing red along with the priest! Pretty cool, huh?
- Arrive at Mass early! In many parishes, everyone receives a palm and the people process into Mass together. If you arrive late it’s going to be a mess- trust me on that lol. You need to get there early enough to get your palms, put your stuff in your pew, and then line up outside.
- Arrive extra extra early! So for real, if you’re late, there might only be straggly palms left.
- Fold your branches right away. If you arrive early enough, you can even go ahead and fold your palms into crosses before Mass starts. I fully recommend this with little kids because it keeps them from whipping the palms around like swords through Mass. Ever been hit in the face with a palm branch? I have.
Palm Sunday makes every Catholic a crafter! You can see my 10 easy steps for folding a palm into a cross here– a long and honored tradition of Christians on this day. This is the super easy palm folding version with the “x” in the middle.
I can’t recommend enough my printable book for kids Holy Week In Handprints! It tells the entire biblical holy week story, starting with Palm Sunday, to kids. They illustrate the book with my step by step handprint directions to create a keepsake to use for years to come. Palm Sunday is the perfect day to start this book! Here are the Palm Sunday pages.
Go print Holy Week In Handprints now!
Some Catholics traditionally like to veil their statues and/or images with purple cloth. You can read about the tradition of veiling images here.
Our favorite Palm Sunday tradition is to have “Palm Sundaes” or rather… Palm (ice cream) Sundaes! It’s super easy for mom and the kids love it!
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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.
I love to teach my littles with Montessori type lessons (kind of like what we would have if we had access to an Atrium) and so I have a little Palm Sunday Montessori type lesson for littles that I like to do. This includes the link to my free printable donkey.
This Palm Sunday donkey craft actually has a free printable version. Check it out!
This Palm Sunday donkey hand and footprint craft is super fun for kids and the result is pretty cute!
I also have a round up here for 10 things to do with palms if you’re tired of the same ‘ol crosses and looking for some new ideas. There are some good ones there!
The Symbolic Holy Week & Easter Cookbook is sure to bless your family in the upcoming seasons! Read more now.
I love the palm of palms made with the hands. What a great idea!
I spent hours searching for ideas for my window display and came up with the idea to portray the last two weeks of Jesus on the window display. How? This week until Sunday, a Palm display with a picture of Jesus on the donkey. Next week, Holy week. Display the stations of the cross. Thanks to your post I have now more ideas to use. Thanks
Awesome ideas! I love the Shower of Roses handprint palm branch. So cute. I also love the coloring pages. My little ones can totally do these:)
Hi, Lacy! I LOVE your blog, just wish I had the creative energy to do all the great crafts you post! One thing about the purple cloths: on the new calendar Palm Sunday is combined with Passion Sunday, but the final two weeks of Lent are still technically Passiontide and the purple cloths are put up the Sunday before Palm Sunday (on the "old" calendar used for the Tridentine Mass the Sunday before Palm Sunday is "Passion Sunday" to mark the transition to focusing on the passion in preparation for Holy Week). Another Sunday that is often forgotten is Laetare Sunday, the Fourth Sunday of Lent, which marks the halfway point of Lent and focuses on rejoicing. If you ever make a revision to your colorable Lenten calendar, it might be fun to add Laetare Sunday that the kids could color pink, and maybe note that the last two weeks of Lent are Passiontide.
Love the idea of decorating the table with palm trees! I love all of the ideas! Thanks!!
About the clothes, I know they are put up in Germany (and much of Eastern Europe) on Passion Sunday. Traditionally it was done in black, but purple is becoming more popular. I've never heard of this before, but our new parish observes it on a different Sunday. We are also in a different diocese. So, maybe each bishop does it differently.
I even know of parishes in our old diocese who followed a pastors way of doing, depending on the pastor. I'm sure with prior apporval from the bishop, I assume this because those pastors are actually missionaries from Europe. Just to clarify 😀
Can someone clarify for use newer Catholics, how Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday became infused? Our old and new parish have a different way of celebrating…in fact, there was no homily today just the reading. Is that normal? All masses are canceled for the rest of the week as well. There is one evening Mass at 7:30, but this parish is HUGE, we'll be outside no doubt…and they canceled a Mass on Easter Sunday. We normally have 2-4 police cars/men directing traffic between Masses…I can imagine the chaos…
Thank you for the printable palms! You are amazing! God bless you for thinking of what we need!
I love all of your resources ! I really want to do a Palm Sunday procession with my children in our back yard (since we won’t be able to attend church). Wondering if you might be able to provide some guidance on how to do it, what to include besides the palms.
Thank you!
Thank you for these great resources! I’m sharing this page with my kindergarten class and our primary teachers at our local Catholic School.