In the Catholic Church there are many days set aside for prayer for special themes. Two recent days are World Day of Prayer for Grandparents and the Elderly, which was held July 23, and World Day of Prayer for Creation, scheduled for Sept. 1.

These days give us an opportunity to focus on important issues in our lives of faith, but more importantly, they serve as a catalyst to help us remember these issues throughout the year.

Loving and respecting our grandparents and elders and the world God created are not one-time, over and done with, events. One day of prayer is good, but our faith calls us to be loving, grateful and responsible carers of our elders and our environment every day.

With a new school year just around the corner, it’s a good time to review the year’s schedule and create ways to engage children throughout the year in activities that carry on their role as young disciples, caring for grandparents, elders and, also, protecting the world in which they live.

What follows are a number of suggestions for nurturing love and gratitude for grandparents and older adults. Anything that’s not done during the school year may be sent home as suggestions for parents during the summer months.

Sometimes, of course, students will have no living grandparents, or their family situation doesn’t include time with grandparents or older family members. Some creativity is needed to adapt an activity in those cases. With younger children, all adults appear old, so allowing them to substitute a parent or teacher or neighbor will keep them engaged and not feeling left out.

A school year full of caring

Tell stories – Encourage students to share stories of special things they do with their grandparents, or with older aunts and uncles, or elderly neighbors. Why are these experiences important to them or their special elderly person? You might get the stories rolling by sharing one of your own.
Create a memory book – Children who are old enough to write may decorate a small notebook of their choosing and spend 15 minutes once a week logging a memory of time spent with their grandparents or special person and include illustrations if they like to draw. Books may be given as gifts at Christmas time or at the end of the school year.
Write prayers – Children’s prayers are always inspirational. Provide an opportunity for students to create their own prayers for their grandparents. After they are displayed for a time in the classroom, they make wonderful and well-loved refrigerator art.
Invitations – Help children create invitations for the special elders in their lives to come to school events, Masses, luncheons, teas or read alouds. Being in the presence of youth can be a joyful experience for elders.
Good Advice – Create a bulletin board of sage advice given by grandparents and special elders to children. Written in the children’s own words, they are certain to bring a wealth of smiles.
Nursing home penpals – Connect with local senior centers or nursing homes and ask permission for children to send personal notes about God’s love and care for them to residents who may have no family, or who are often alone. One class may adopt one resident, or permit the staff to distribute to those most in need.
In-class prayer service – Create an age-appropriate prayer service around the beautiful prayer below from Jesuitresource.org, adapting it as needed to other special elders in the lives of your students. It can be a time of insight and appreciation on the value of elders for students:
Our Grandparents
We thank you, Lord, for our grandparents who have played such an important role in our lives. We remember with joy all of the time spent together doing simple things like fishing, doing a puzzle, baking cookies, taking a walk, reading a story and learning about the wonder of nature.

Thank you for the privilege of hearing their stories of life in another time and place that inspired us to work hard, be patient, courageously endure hard times and to dare to follow our dreams.

We are forever grateful for the wisdom and stability they provided when we felt our world was falling apart.

What a great gift to us that they loved us just because we were their grandchild. Thank you that they counted it joy to spend time listening as we told them about the big and little things going on in our lives.

May we continuously feel their hugs and feel the warmth of their smiles so that we can better comprehend your constant and unchanging love for us.

We ask your kind forgiveness for the times we failed to appreciate our grandparents, for the times we were too wrapped up in ourselves and our own activities to spend more time with them.

Help us to become more like them as we age, learning how to accept with grace the limitations of aging bodies. Give us their strong and supernatural grace to face the loss of our own aging friends and family the same way our grandparents have. May we learn from them how to face the prospects of our own limited time on earth and our own deaths with the dignity, peace, and assurance of eternal life.

And when our time comes to be grandparents ourselves, help us to follow in their loving footsteps.

From Jesuitresource.org.

About the Author
Mary Clifford Morrell, mother of six and grandmother to ten, is a Catholic journalist, editor, and author who has served the Dioceses of Metuchen and Trenton, New Jersey; Burlington, Vermont, and RENEW International in the areas of religious education and communication.