Activities for the Feast of St. Anthony

May 11, 2026 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

St. Anthony of Padua is celebrated on his feast day of June 13. Born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1195, he was made a saint just a year after he died, and is known as the patron saint of lost items as well as fishermen and sailors, priests and travelers.

It’s that lost items one he’s most known for, and lots of people with kids celebrate the feast day with treasure hunts for that reason. Let’s look at some St. Anthony feast day activities for kids.

Love & Messiness has a cute St. Anthony scavenger hunt, though if you don’t live in a community that has a lot of statues of Mary and St. Anthony you might want to write your own for things that you can expect to find on a neighborhood walk or around your church.

Catholic Homebody has a set of St. Anthony printable coloring pages and ideas for other activities you can do with kids, like playing hide and seek. They also have a book list if you want to learn more about St. Anthony for kids.

Faith Filled Freebies has some printable St. Anthony clip art that you could print for activities such as hiding the images around a room or the backyard to see who can find them most or find them all.

Some of the links are missing in the post about St. Anthony’s Day at Equipping Catholic Families, but there are still some good ideas there. The Pope shelf sounds like something my grandmother would have done! Ideas include a St. Anthony peg doll, I Spy and a magic box that causes things to disappear and reappear.

Speaking of I spy, check out this video from Catholic Crafts on how to make your own St. Anthony I spy bottle.

And I don’t know why St. Anthony rolls are called St. Anthony rolls, but I found a recipe from Cooking with Nonna that looks delicious if you want to try them for the holiday. Or any other time.

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Printable Letter Books for Preschoolers

I did a post earlier this year with activities and ideas for teaching the alphabet, but a lot or learning letters and recognizing them just has to do with seeing them and working with them a lot.

That means coloring, tracing, identifying things that start with different letters and more.

One way to reinforce the letters is through little activity books like these cute printable alphabet books from Life Over Cs.

These are available for free when you subscribe to her newsletter, and I’d say that’s well worth it if you have a little one (or a group of little ones!) working on the alphabet and letter recognition.

Each mini book includes a collection of things that start with that letter to color, color and read with words that start with the letter, tracing the letter, finding the letter in a grid and other coloring pages with objects that start with that letter.

These little books are super useful reinforcing the different letters and giving kids different activities related to the letters.

If you do a letter of the day or letter of the week you can use a new book for each one, and then keep the copies in your reading center or in a basket where kids can look at them again.

And of course you can add in all the other letter activities you like, go on a scavenger hunt for items that start with that letter, read alphabet books, practice writing letters in rice or with pompoms or playdough or whatever sensory activities you like.

You can grab the free printables when you enter you email address at Life Over Cs, and check out her other great alphabet resources and activities while you are over there.

Do you have favorite activities for teaching letters to kids? I’d love to hear about them!

[Photo: Life Over Cs]

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