Lent!

Lent with older kids gets easier in some ways.  When figuring out what to do for Lent, I ask them to finish this sentence: It wouldn't be Lent without...

The vine and the branches.  Basically it's a 7 foot tall vine cut out of brown paper with branches for each member of the family. We cut out tons of leaves and grapes and put them in a basket. Whenever anyone sees someone doing something good, they put a leaf or fruit on that person's branch. On Easter we decorate the vine with Easter lilies. We often put a picture of Jesus and the "vine and branches" quote on the vine.

Gospel desserts! No desserts or sweets except for Sunday, and the Sunday desserts are related to the Gospel of the day.  We have a lot of fun with this!  Also, we keep the cookie jar filled with pretzels.


Sacrifice bean jar. (Klenda's idea) One bean for each sacrifice and on Easter they are replaced with jelly beans to show that Jesus' sacrifice makes our sacrifices sweet.

My basic plan is to follow the classic Lent idea: Prayer , Fasting, Alms-giving.  The no sweets thing takes care of the fasting, and we'll decide together which charity to save for during Lent.We make a jar decorated with pictures related to the people for whom we are raising money.

My prayer idea is to try for daily Mass, and (because scripture , in my mind, is always tied to prayer as part of the ongoing conversation with God) the Lenten Cross.

The Lenten Cross  This is made of 40 squares of light purple paper, each the size of a post-it note. You do a scripture reading, have a kid draw a representation of the reading on a square, and then tape the square to a wall. By Easter the squares form a large cross representing Salvation History. We've done this several times and the kids loved it. You can find the readings and more info here.

That's about it, simply because that's about all I can keep track of for 40 days!    Except of course, tomorrow, we'll watch this: