Help your kids enter into lent with simple ways to Pray, Fast & Give. Let them follow the Path to Easter while deepening their faith and serving those around them.
Kid Lent Calendar Download HERE
This is all you need to have a faith-filled, enriching Lenten season. Print out the CRS Rice Bowl wrapper and tape it to a coffee or soda can, small box, or whatever you have around the house-it will serve as a centerpiece for your Lenten journey.
Use the daily reflections in the Lenten Calendar to challenge your family to live more intentionally this Lent and learn about Catholic social teaching and share the stories of other families around the world along the way. CRS Family Lent Kit Download
CRS Meatless Meals We have simple, meatless meals from around the world for you and your family to try each Friday this Lent.
Download printable sheets around Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving. Take time as a family to explain the 3 categories and how they each deepen our relationship with God. Then allow each member of the family to write down ideas for the 3 areas. Make sure to fill at least 40 (not including Sundays - or if including 46) activity cards. You can then put them in a jar and pick one out each morning to do as a family (or individually). Or your family can make a Lenten Calendar and put one on for each day.
Make one crown of thorns for the family and each kid puts in 40 toothpicks. At dinner, each of kids tells of one sacrifice they made or one way that they showed God's love to someone. They then each remove one thorn. (Parents should also participate). By the end of lent, our crown of thorns doesn't have any thorns left so we decorate it to become our Easter
crown (with paint, flowers, glitter, etc.).
Make a wreath out of old sticks, rocks, etc (in the shape of a cross or circle). Place 6 candles to represent the 6 weeks of lent. We start with all 6 candles lit and each Friday of lent (except the first Friday, because we start on Ash Wednesday), one candle is not lit. It is opposite of an advent wreath in the sense of extinguishing a light each week. On Good Friday, the wreath is dark because "The Light of the World" (Jesus) has died. It is nice to start with the prayer with the lights off. This makes it a bit more dramatic for the kids to understand. After Good Friday, we replace our wreath with a Big Easter candle. This link uses 7 candles, but is the same idea.