Our Lenten Journey 2013

This was our 2nd year observing Lent. Our Lent lessons/ traditions are very much a works in progress. Since the girls are so young, we did not do whole lot in the way of penance. Also, since the girls do not yet get allowance or have a good understanding of money, the alms giving component was very limited. I think by next year Bug will be ready to explore this idea a little more.   Most of what we did consisted of reading stories, praying, or simply abstaining from meat and/or sweets for a day. So, I don't have many pictures to share.



  

We did an Ash Wednesday/ Lent lesson that I found online (I think at The Catholic Icing).
 The lesson used the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  I also made a simple Lenten
 calendar inspired by the story/lesson. Alycia used her cricut to cut out the shapes for me.
Each day we took a leaf off the calendar, said a prayer, and then placed the leaf in the basket.

Meatless Friday: stone soup! The girls learned about sharing and teamwork.

Meatless Friday: The girls made their own veggie pizzas on English muffins.
We talked about patience and the girls worked on manners by waiting their turn
for ingredients and using polite phrases, such as "Pass the _____ , please".

Alms giving: We handed out bubbles to kids at the park. I figured bubbles are
  worth more to the girls than money at this age.

We read The Story of The Empty Tomb and made resurrection rolls. Resurrection rolls
are an idea I found on Pinterest last year.  

anointing Jesus (the marshmallow) in the oil (melted butter) before rolling
him up in the tomb (crescent roll)



After baking. The tomb is empty!

Makenna couldn't believe the marshmallow was gone! She was so excited!

Makenna thought the Jesus marshmallow was hilarious! She told me
"You not supposed to eat Jesus. You supposed to LOVE Jesus!"

Our Palm Sunday stories. We read LOTS of stories during Lent. I found most of them on Amazon.

Last Supper Snack. We read a book about The Last Supper and looked at
pictures of the food from the Seder meal. We did not talk about the symbolism of the food. Instead
we talked about the fact that Jesus shared his love with his disciples and taught them ways to remember him when
he goes to Heaven. We also watched a cute video online that focused on those things.

In case it wasn't clear in the previous caption, we did not have communion or eat
full sedar meal. We ate a snack (fruit, crackers & grape juice) inspired by the last supper.



On Palm Sunday we made palm branches out of paint sticks. We made the leaves by tracing
the girls' hands on green foam.

My hopes are that our Lenten journey will get a little more in depth each year as the girls' understanding (and my knowledge) grows and develops.