Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Lent

I always like to go to Mass on Ash Wednesday, but it simply wasn't possible today. Instead I spent the morning cobbling together a last minute Lenten calendar, based roughly on Dawn's.


I printed out footsteps for each day from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday and stuck them onto purple card, then added small pictures for a few notable days - Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Mother's Day (mid-Lent here) and some saints' feast days. I was stumped as to how to have Little Cherub cross of the days. Stickers would have been good, but I hadn't thought to buy any. Colouring wouldn't work - she would want to do it herself, but a Cherub scribble would cross off ten days in one go. Then I remembered I had some scraps of purple felt, so I cut 46 tiny squares so she can stick one on each day. Felt and glue stick is manageable and not too messy. I love Karen's ideas for Lent with young children, and next year I think I will do her Lamb of God calendar, sticking cottonballs onto a picture of a lamb. I think Cherub would enjoy making a Lenten caterpillar this year, but we'll leave that until it gets close to Easter.

Thanks to Suzanne and Margaret I put in an Amazon order on Saturday for a couple of books for Lent reading, which with excellent timing arrived this morning ... Small Surrenders: a Lenten Journey by Emilie Griffin, and My Life With the Saints by James Martin, SJ.

So in a small, last minute sort of a way, we are set.

1 comment:

Myth said...

Just as an idea for colouring - I made a lenten calendar for my almost three year old - he wanted it in the shape of a cross with a square for each day (I offered him the lamb idea but he preferred the cross). I wanted to let him colour it in himself, but like your daughter, he wouldn't be able to stay within the lines. My solution was to cut a second piece of cardboard with a 'window' cut from it that is the same size as one day square. He chooses what colour today has been, I line the window up over today's square on the cross, and he scribbles away. He is very happy when I lift the window away and he can see his 'perfect' square! This is working really well for us :D

(I came here via the 4Real forum, to download your stations of the cross and rosary cards - THANK YOU!)