Most of my posts here are not personal in nature; they are typically printables or activities to make from paper, but I thought I’d share what we are planning to do this year for Lent.
Last year at this time I was pregnant, and in my first trimester. So most of my time was spent… well you can read about it at Mama Knows Honeychild: First Trimester Playbook. So for Lent last year I gave up doing school, cooking, cleaning, eating, sleeping, feeling human, enjoying life… etc. In some ways it was a very sacrificial Lent (for me and also everyone who had to suffer being around me), but this year I’d like to do things a little more traditionally.
Fat Tuesday:
I’ve never done a whole lot for Fat Tuesday. Honestly, I love baking and we often have cake or treats here lol. But I love the idea of pancakes on Fat Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday. I learned about this idea at A Slice of Smith Life.
Countdown/General plans:
Early this week, I’m going to print out Jennifer’s Lenten Promises cards, and fill them out. I know my 6 year old can handle this task, we’ll see about the 3 year old. His extra prayer might just be an extra Sign of the Cross each day!
We did the sacrifice bean jar a few years ago, and I think this year we’ll be even better at it. We even have the same little wooden box as in Lacy’s picture, lol.
For a count down, we’ll make a chain using my Lent Countdown Chain printable. Each day I’ll let my 6 year old tear off a chain and read the scripture on it before breakfast! (The printable chain has the passion story written out on it, one or two verses at a time.)
Almsgiving:
For some almsgiving, I think this is a great year to go through several areas in my house to do some decluttering. I’ll be going through my closet to donate some stuff, or just plain throw away things that I’ve kept since middle school. If you’re here often, you know we do a lot of coloring and crafting, so I’m also going to designate Lent as the time to make encourage my daughter to purge her enormous pile of *treasured* coloring pages/crafts etc.
Fasting:
I love the idea of Soup and Stations that Kendra does at Catholic All Year. It might be ambitious, but I’d love to have my daughter color all the Stations of the Cross Coloring pages I made and make popsicle stick borders for them. And maybe even glue some pebbles or something pretty to them? Ambitious, I know. We should have started on this project a long time ago. As a back up, I still have all the tiny 3-D printable Stations of the Cross Grottos. This year we’ll be using battery operated “candles.” (We have a 3 year old boy, I’m sure you understand why we can’t have real fire in the house anymore).
What are your favorite meatless soups? So far I’ve got French Onion Soup… I’m sure there are more though, this is obviously not a food blog. Let me know your go-to meatless soups in the comments!
Prayer:
Two years ago we started saying the Rosary pretty regularly, we even had a rosary basket. But something about having a baby throws everything off track. I’m grateful for the Catholic Church’s liturgical season, which causes us to get back on track. We used to do just a single decade a day (you know, I have young kids), but maybe we’ll give a full Rosary/day a shot this year. Our fall back will be a single decade.
We always say a prayer before starting school. Sometimes it’s the morning offering, sometimes an Our Father and Hail Mary, and sometimes we practice spontaneous prayer (or *made up prayers* according to my kids). But during special liturgical seasons I do print a special prayer and stick it to the wall for praying. . Here’s the Lenten Prayer we are using this year, which I got from Catholic.org. All I did was print it and stick it to some purple construction paper
Download the Lenten Prayer
(For the best results, download and save to your computer. Open using a pdf program like Adobe Acrobat and print!)
It’s a really simple printable, but hey maybe you just need something quick to print and pray!
And lastly, throughout the season I’ll be incorporating all my free Lenten Printables in our homeschooling. If you don’t feel like digging through the 40 something posts, you can download all of the printables in one document from my shop. Thanks for supporting Drawn2BCreative!
Lastly, I have some beautiful Rosary Cards I’ve been working on FOREVER. Seriously, I think I started these in January. They’re watercolored images of the mysteries, which I want to print card size. If I ever finish them, they’ll appear in my shop. I’ll have to sacrifice something in my life to make time to finish these up. I wish I could sacrifice cleaning… but it’ll probably have to be sewing time or netflix time in order for these to get finished. 😉
A preview of my Rosary Cards- coming soon!
So there you have it. All of this I think is attainable with a 6 yr old, 3 yr old and a baby I hope. I know some families do more, some do less. You just have to do what is right for your family. Find a way, even if it’s a small way, to fast, give and pray a little extra and you’ll grow in your spiritual life this Lent.
Praying for a most blessed season for you all. Thanks for being here!
Kristen
How about Broccoli and Cheese soup?
Love all your ideas and thanks so much for linking to my blog post about the pancakes! 🙂 Your rosary cards look beautiful! And I linked up your Stations of the Cross coloring pages to my Lent post! 🙂 Have a blessed Lent!