4Real Forums: May We Ask For Your Lent Ideas?

Oh, Dearest Mother, Sweetest Virgin of Altagracia, our Patroness. You are our Advocate and to you we recommend our needs. You are our Teacher and like disciples we come to learn from the example of your holy life. You are our Mother, and like children, we come to offer you all of the love of our hearts. Receive, dearest Mother, our offerings and listen attentively to our supplications. Amen.

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Topic: May We Ask For Your Lent Ideas?

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Mary Fifer
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Joined: Oct 25 2009
Location: Kansas
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 100

Posted: Feb 16 2010 at 9:24am \| IP Logged

Here are some Lent ideas from our house!

In a way, our family starts our little Catholic Lent the day before Ash Wednesday or Shrove Tuesday. We don't make too, too many festivities on that day since it is hard to eat up leftovers during the rest of the week. We usually have ice cream or something like M&Ms or Skittles for the little ones so that we can store them till Sunday.

It helps us to answer the children when they ask, "What is Lent?" to show them ideas for making sacrifices or saying extra prayers. We have used what a dear friend taught us to do with a Crown of Thorns made of very salty dough and toothpicks that the children can remove when they do a sacrifice for Our Lord. On Ash Wednesday braid the dough to make the "Crown". then as the dough is drying, insert many, many toothpicks, especially if you have many children. It is similar to the straws in the Crib for Baby Jesus during Advent. Then remove the toothpicks for any good deeds, prayers and sacrifices. We were happy to have had to reload several times since the children's enthusiasm caused them to make many sacrifices, yet the children were sad to add thorns, too. Watch out! Those toothpicks can be oweee! They can also get stuck so hard that we had to use vise grips to get some of them out.

Other years we have made either a path of blocks or a grid of calendar squares 7x7 to cover the weeks of Lent on a large piece of paper or poster board with Lenten symbols. Then we made a legend of hearts for acts of Charity, Crosses for sacrifices, diamonds for Mass and Rosaries, pearls/circles for other prayers, etc. Each child had his or her own different colored pen to make the marks. This worked wonderfully well since they saw the times that they were slacking and worked harder on the other days. We outlined Laetare Sunday in pink and decorated days like Ash Wednesday, St. Patrick's Day, St. Joseph's Feast, St. Benedict... Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter with little piles of ashes (dots), THREE leafed shamrocks, palms, the three crosses and a radiant sunrise, etc. This was the best project we have done for Lent since the children saw the fruits of their efforts in a more varied way with the different sacrifices, prayers and acts of Charity.

May we ask you to share your Lenten recipes and good ideas on our new Lent page?

http://www.roman-catholic-catechism.com/what-is-lent.html

We are happy to leave links to your own site from your submission.

Have a holy Lent!

Mary
Wife to 1, mother of 8, 7 in God's care
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