Lent: 40 Days Preparing Our Family for Easter

Discipleship in the home is the primary focus of my life right now as a mom, and the Lord has filled me with great passion for learning how to disciple my children well during these little years. Kennon and I have shared in DownLine how the Lord has helped us create special traditions that fill our days and our year. Every tradition is established with the goal of cultivating a home of continual worship, teaching, and celebration of who God is and what He has done for us (Deut 6). Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and I have pulled out my Lent/ Easter basket for the kids and thought I would share in more detail some of our Easter traditions.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, a season of reflection on our lives and our need for a Savior.  Easter is the highest celebration of the Christian year. As believers, our hope is in the cross! Our faith is meaningless without the atoning death of Christ for our sins and His resurrection that we might have eternal life with Him! Lent helps us prepare our hearts to more fully understand Easter as truly the greatest celebration of the year! Easter morning is full of excitement because for 40 DAYS we have been talking about our need for a Savior and the hope we have in Christ! We can finally shout, HE IS RISEN!

Our Lent/ Easter basket will sit on our kitchen counter for the next 40 days. Every day during Lent (at least once and usually more, since the basket is available anytime the boys want to look through it), we read one of the Easter books, go through the Easter story with the Resurrection eggs, and do a Lent activity. During the holiday seasons, usually Lifeway puts a few of its childrens' books for that holiday on sale for $5 which is when I  have grabbed all these different little Easter books for our basket. 

I LOVE this Lent activity book! Last year I simple made copies so that I could continue using it every year. There is an activity page for each of the 40 days of Lent. This is a fun, simple activity book for young children that helps me daily talk with the boys about the meaning and purpose of Lent in preparing our hearts for Holy Week and Easter. There is a guide inside with tips for family use, and it explains Lent, Holy Week, and Easter very well in clear and simple terms.

For the next 7 weeks the boys get to watch the following dvd every Sunday. As a 3 year old last year, Caleb basically memorized the entire movie and could tell you with great detail the events of Holy Week which start with Palm Sunday (the Sunday before Easter) and go through the last Passover supper, the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus' betrayal, his trial before Pilate, his cruxifiction and his resurrection. 

The boys can not get enough of the Resurrection Eggs!! They play with them constantly. Here is a video of Caleb walking us through the Easter story with his resurrection eggs last year.

I look forward to sharing more things we'll be doing as a family over the next 40 days such as: 1. How and why we teach and celebrate Passover in our home and 2. Making the events of Holy Week come alive for our kids. Really fun stuff!