Observing Lent with my kids

This year for the first time I am observing Lent with my girls. At our church we present Lent to the children as a time to prepare ourselves for the Mystery Easter by learning how Jesus' life prepared him for Easter. Each Sunday, the children learn a story from Jesus's life and are invited to connect that story to other stories they have heard in church school. So on the third Sunday of Lent when we teach the story of Jesus' baptism, the children might connect that to the liturgical lesson on baptism. On the fourth Sunday when we teach the story of Jesus' time in the desert, the children might connect that to the Old Testament stories that take place in the desert.

At home we are going to follow up on the stories told in church school by reading them together in a story Bible. I'm going to put a tray on the table where we had our manger scene this past Christmas, and as we read each story I'm going to discuss the story with the kids and then invite them to help me add things to the table. In church they will be connecting the stories about Jesus to other sacred stories. At home we will be connecting the stories told about Jesus to our own experiences and life stories. I have objects in mind for each week, but I want to leave it open to their ideas as well. The tray I have is fairly large and there is room on the table around the tray if we need it.

We started on Ash Wednesday. We read the creation stories, and I told them that in church on Ash Wednesday ministers take ashes and make crosses on people's foreheads, just like they do with water at baptisms. I told them that the ministers say to people, "Remember you come from dust." We talked about God creating man from dust in the creation story, and God creating us from the same dust as all the other people and creatures and dirt on Earth. Not having any ashes on hand, we put some dirt from a potted plant in a bowl and added that to our tray.

Today, the first Sunday of Lent, we read the story of Jesus' birth, which is by now very familiar to my girls. Alessia was almost bored in fact. I told them that Jesus came here in the same way that we did, as a tiny human child, to share our humanity with us. This got Alessia interested again. We put our baby Jesus from our Nativity scene on the tray, along with baby pictures of all four of us.

 

 

 

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