5 Fantastic Ways to Celebrate Catholic Schools Week

I’ve celebrated Catholic Schools Week (CSW) every year since I was in kindergarten.  When I was younger the week was always filled with school spirit and fun activities each day.  Now I’m in charge of creating the fun! For the past 12 years, I have led a team of teachers to plan the best CSW activities around!

Here are my top 5 favorite Catholic School Week Activities:

1. Get the kids out in the community! Each year we pick one day and have most of our grades go out and perform service around the city, including visiting with the elderly at nursing homes and cleaning up trash around our school.  There are many options, but it is important to remind students that service is a major part of our faith.
2. Celebrate Vocations! On the Thursday of CSW our school is always bustling with priests, deacons, religious sisters, and lay people who have answered God’s call.  I used to think that we should only bring in the ordained and vowed when talking about vocations, but a few years ago I thought our students would greatly benefit from meeting adults in our community who answered God’s call by serving as a lay person.  Each year now we reach out to local nonprofits, area high schools & universities, and people in our community who have been greatly impacted by their faith. This is always a great day of community and faith sharing.
3. Penny Challenge! Do you have a cause that your school supports!? Raise money using a penny challenge.  There are a few ways to do a penny challenge, but we always set up milk gallon jugs near the main office labeled with each grade level.  Students can add money to the jugs all week long– pennies are positive and dollars and silver are negatives. Over the years we’ve raised thousands of dollars for our sister school in Uganda.
4. Honoring Teachers! A few years ago we started honoring our teachers who worked at our school 5, 10, 15, etc. years.  We put together personalized gift bags for each of the teachers as a thank you for their service. We also include hand-written notes from former students.  We honor the teachers at our pep rally at the end of the week.
5. Teachers vs. Students Game.  This is a classic CSW activity, but I LOVE it!  We always have a teachers vs. 8th grade volleyball game and it is so much fun.  The younger students always make signs for the team they are cheering for and the entire school gets into it.  We have students announce the game, which really adds to the atmosphere. 

There are so many more fun ideas for Catholic Schools Week. What is your favorite activity during the week? Share in the comments!

Looking for even more Catholic Schools Week activities? Check out my bundle of activities here!