Lent Plans

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. (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 more daily Mass, this wonderful Lectio Lenten Journal, and the Lenten Cross.

The Lectio Journal is Lectio Divina (a deep, prayerful way of reading Scripture) using each of the daily Gospels during Lent.  Well, that's why I bought it, it turns out it is much more than that: drop dead gorgeous, reverent art, and a structured way of thinking about how to grow in virtue this Lent.  Solidly Thomistic, but accessable.
 I think it was intended to be used with high schoolers, but, of the fifteen people I know who are using it this Lent, all of them are adults!

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.


And, of course, we'll do the Walking with Jesus Poster

That's about it, simply because that's about all I can keep track of for 40 days!  

More Lent Ideas here.