Sometimes, it can feel like Lent is the longest Liturgical Season in the Church calendar and that no matter how good your intentions are on Ash Wednesday, by Week Four of Lent it feels like you are barely holding onto your sanity.
How do you transform this Liturgical Season of penance and preparation into a time of fruitful spiritual growth for yourself and your family?
There are many suggestions and formats for capturing the spirit of the Lenten season, but many can seem overwhelming to the parents and/or uninteresting to the kids.
Can I tell you about what our family has developed over the last 12 years? We hear from many happy parents that it can be managed by the KIDS with minimal input from the adults (so we, too, can keep plowing ahead on Lent ourselves).
With the help of our eight kids, we have created a free online program to help CHILDREN have an educational, and prayerful Lenten Season…that is also easy on the parents!
It’s Lenten Adventure (register for free at LentenAdventure.com) and consists of daily pages of streaming videos and audios, printables, online quizzes, and the like to help kids learn about Lent, prepare for each Sunday’s Mass, and persevere through to Easter.
So far, so good. Then…why the books?
We began to get emails from LOTS OF MOMS telling us it would be even easier with a printed book of the printables so they wouldn’t have to spend the time everyday printing (or use up printer ink and paper).
That’s right: our books will save you TIME and $$. Then we added just a little bit more (read on or watch Clara’s video below).
You see, Lenten Adventure has been created to have activities that suit children ranging in ages from around 4 or 5 up to 12 or 13 years old. We asked our older kids to create activities that they would have enjoyed at different ages while also incorporating multiple facets of the Catholic faith and Lenten Season.
The result? Over 100 pages of multiple daily crosswords, word searches, hidden message games, coloring pages, and more, these two books will walk kids ages 5-12 through the Lenten Season AND Easter Octave.
Topics covered in these books include the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy, traditional Lenten and Easter practices, saint stories pertinent for the season and feast days, the Stations of the Cross, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, Sunday Gospel Readings, an in-depth, step-by-step walkthrough of the Mass, and so much more!
There’s so much that we couldn’t fit everything into just one book–there are TWO (one for up to Palm Sunday and one for Holy Week through the Octave of Easter to Divine Mercy Sunday).
(See why having everything printed in a book saves you time and printer ink? Two books worth!)
The books are also easier to manage with larger families (no piles of papers scattered everywhere), kids seem to be more focused when they have a book to work through day-by-day, and some parents even save the books to see how their children progress year-to-year.
In the activity books, your children will also have access to a daily Lenten journal to help them develop their prayer lives and focus on spiritual growth and insights they have as they work through the Scripture readings for each Sunday in Lent during the week leading up to that Sunday.
NOTE: The journal pages in the activity books are NOT in the free online Lenten Adventure program (there’s so much there already), and they are great for children who are preparing to make their First Communion shortly after Easter! One mom told us that;
“We’re only a few days into Lent and my children are already enjoying the activity book! We do the Journal pages as a family.”
Elizabeth from KY
Whether you complete activities as a family or allow the kids to have free range with their books, there is a variety of options (and no pressure to complete all of them every day)! Each page in the books is identified as Level 1, 2, or 3 by difficulty level.
Thousands of families have used these books and tailored this program to fit the interests and needs of their kids. One mom said,
“We are homeschoolers, and it is such a great way to enrich our curriculum. Having the different levels is nice as well, it allows for the different ages of my kids to do different things. Thanks for all the great work!”
Karla from TX
The most frequent comment we receive is that these books allow kids to pick and choose what they are interested in while absorbing a huge amount of information! Another mom explained how her family used the activity books, saying,
My 7 year old loves the different puzzle activities, like word searches and mazes, and my 4 year old, while young, loves the coloring pages!
Courtney from VA
Then–we added THIS:
Our Lenten Road to Easter Roadmap–with stickers! It’s a day by day “codebreaker” activity leading up to Easter Sunday, and we’ll add it FREE to every Lenten Adventure Book 1 or complete set of Lenten Adventure Books 1 & 2.
Kids put on a sticker a day (to help them persevere through Lent!), and a secret question is gradually revealed. Kids love to guess the answer to the question!
Only available with the activity books or you can buy 5-packs here (lots of parishes and schools hand them out on Ash Wednesday because we have steep volume discounts that automatically apply!)
With so many options for adults to prepare for Easter, it is important that you find an option that works best for the children in your family, too. If you are looking for an easy way to catechize your kids while giving you time to prepare your own heart and mind for Easter Sunday, this is the perfect program for you! Our goal was to create a program that kids could use every day without any effort from the parents—and families everywhere have told us that it worked!
Join the Holy Heroes Lenten Adventure community today and start preparing for your best Lent ever!
“Your materials are such a treasure–I can completely trust all the materials to be true to the Faith and to be fun and engaging as well. The illustrations are fantastic, and the activities do a great job of educating children about the meaning of Lent, in reasonable steps each day. Thank you for offering these wonderful materials!”
Tania from NM
For even MORE great resources, you can also sign up for Lenten Adventure! Check out this video to learn more about this fantastic resource!
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