Ideas for Lent

Here are some of our favorite ideas :

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.  We often put a picture of Jesus and the "vine and branches" quote on the vine.  I love having the focus of catching others bearing fruit, it really encourages us to look for the good in others. Picture here

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!  Although I haven't lived down the time I made an angel food cake and devil food cake for the temptation in the dessert.  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.  A friend just told me a twist on this: popcorn kernels that you pop each Sunday.  That has the huge advantage that they can really see how much they are doing each week.  We're going to try the popcorn this Lent.

 

 

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 love it, but we seem to alternate years doing it. You can find the readings and more info here.

 

The Walking with Jesus poster:  I look at the readings for the Sundays of Lent and draw out a map on a big roll of paper for where we will be going with Jesus. Then I draw footsteps for all the days in between. We start at the heart on Ash Wednesday ("Turn to me with your whole heart...") and go into the desert for the Temptation, then the mountain for the Transfiguration, you get the idea. Along the way, as we make little sacrifices, acts of kindness, or extra time with Jesus, we draw flowers near the arrow for that day. We are strewing flowers on Jesus' path. Here is a blog post with a picture for Lent Cycle A

For older kids we try to do all the Works of Mercy during Lent.  There's a great resource here that can work for elementary kids: Look to Him and Be Radiant: Year of Mercy Resources

Here's the master post on Lent ideas with the resources linked.  That has tons more ideas for all ages, but we end up just doing the ones our kids love over and over because if we try too much we crash and burn four weeks in...

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. For prayer we try for daily Mass more often and we make a Lenten altar in the dining room where we can pray and just be reminded of Our Lord in a Lenten way.

God bless and happy Lent!