Lent is the time of prayer, fasting and alms giving in order to bring us closer to God before celebrating the fundamental truths of our faith at Easter, that Jesus suffered, died and rose from the dead. It is clearing the spiritual cobwebs and making our hearts ready for the risen Christ. What a wonderful season we are blessed to celebrate!
Once again many of us will be spending a lot of time at home this year. If you are looking for a way to celebrate Lent with your kids and honor the season as a time of prayer before Easter, you are in the right spot! Below are ideas I have found for families. Some are suitable for younger kids, some for older, and I’ve included that as well. All of the websites included have wonderful ideas, and I have used all of the sites. Keep in mind, however, that you may not find all of the sites useful for your own family, so I would definitely check it out and see if it will work for you before letting your kids on. I have tried to organize the activities from easiest to hardest.
Finally, please don’t try to do everything on this list. I know I don’t! I pick a few things each year that I think will work based on where our family is at. I have teenagers now, so food activities are a huge hit. When they were younger, we did a lot of crafts. There is no right or wrong way to add some faith to Lent.
General Lenten Activities Websites
Holy Heroes- super easy- This site is actually a store that sells Catholic items for families. However, each year they run several free programs for kids ages 5-12. For Lenten Adventure, you’ll be emailed a link every other night for videos, coloring sheets, puzzles, and audio activities for that day. The videos are done by the children of the family that owns the store, and they are excellent. Children will learn about Lent and our wonderful faith traditions, and all you have to do is turn on the video. The videos are free and the activities are free to print out, but they will occasionally mention their products in their emails to parents. Sign up here.
Catholic Icing- easy- This site is run by a Catholic mom who posts really fun craft and snack ideas. She has some great things for Lent! Some of her downloads do have a fee, but there are also free items on her site. My personal favorite is the Lenten Calendar. The Lenten posts can be found here.
Busted Halo- super easy- Busted Halo is great for older middle, high school and college kids. It is a ministry of the Paulist Fathers. There are many cool things there for students to explore, including the InstaLent photo challenge and the Lent in 3 minutes video. https://bustedhalo.com/
Miracle Madness
This is a Catholic version of Lent Madness, which is based off of March Madness, but with saints. This link will take you to the site where you can learn more about the saints, vote for some of your favorites, and make predictions about which saint will be this year’s most inspirational!
Food Ideas
There are many recipes that are traditional to the Lenten season, and you can find many of them on the wonderful blog, Catholic Cuisine. This blog will give you both recipes and the association that the dish has with our faith. Some quick ideas to start you off.
Pretzels: Pretzels were traditionally only eaten during Lent, at a time when the Lenten fast included abstaining from meat, eggs and dairy for the entire season. Pretzels were a simple food of flour, water, and yeast. Their shape comes from the way in which people used to pray, with their arms crossed and hands brought up to their shoulders.
Hot Cross Buns: These are a traditional Good Friday food, as they are simple and make only a small meal. If you purchase yours (which I often do) they will probably have frosting on them, and the inevitable question is why, especially on Good Friday? The cross on the buns traditionally was imprinted and then baked into the bread, although it’s common for frosted crosses to be added today. If we end up with frosted ones, I like to think that the little touch of frosting, especially on Good Friday, remind us that Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross gave us the sweetness of Heaven. I tell my children that the frosting reminds us that Good Friday is not the end of the story.
Other Ideas
A bean jar: My kids love this one, and now insist on doing it every year. Take a clear jar and bowl and place them in an accessible area of your home. Fill the bowl with beans, big beans. One year we had the tiniest beans and my husband and I were pouring handfuls in it by the end of Lent! Lima beans work well. For every good deed or sacrifice your children do, let them put a bean in the jar. On Easter morning, the beans are replaced with jelly beans. Note for 2021: I am planning to include all of the many sacrifices our children are making due to COVID. Any time they are having a tough time, but try to handle it with kindness, I will remind them that our suffering is an offering to God and tell them to add a bean. Our kids are giving up so much right now, and I want them to recognize that everything they are dealing with can be an offering to God.
Decorate for Easter: Okay, hear me out. What we do in our house is decorate early, so that it is done. We then cover all the decorations with purple, not to be uncovered until Easter morning. This is a ton of fun for the kids, and it allows us to stay in the Lent/Holy Week mindset until it is actually Easter.
The thing is, I want the house to be full of Easter when it finally arrives, but I want the children to understand the differences between the seasons, and the reasons for these differences. I wouldn’t be able to clean and decorate in a day, plus put all the Lenten things away, so this gives us a way to clean throughout Lent, and then cover things so that our house still looks like Lent, but we are ready for Easter! Anything purple will do the trick- napkins, plastic tablecloths, or burlap would work well too.
I decorate specifically for Lent in some parts of the house as well, and this photo might give you some ideas. This is a simple contemplative area that I set up for Lent. We participate in the Rice Bowl every year, so I fill a bowl with rice for the kids to touch and to hopefully remember that many children around the world only have rice to eat. The boys made a cross out of twigs tied with pipe cleaner, and we anchored that in a cup full of rice and draped the cup in purple. We added the rice bowl donation box, our own bowl of rice, rocks and some votive candles. This picture was taken near St. Patrick’s Day several years ago, so the Irish blessing frame is there as well.
I have also put printables we are using up on a science fair board, and displayed that in the house. This way countdown calendars, sacrifices, prayers, etc. are all contained on the board, but the printables are clearly visible to help keep us focused. This idea works well for tweens and teens.
Have a very holy Lent!
First School of Faith 