An Illustrated Lent

5 Illuminating Ways of Celebrating Holy Week with Children

Holy Week with children seems like a time we could be cultivating rich traditions. It is, after all, at the heart of our faith. But, does it ever sneak up on you or pass you by without you giving any real intention?

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If you’re anything like me, you can feel overwhelmed finding ideas to make Holy Week “a thing.” Well, guess what? We’ve saved you a ton of time! We did the research and found five ways of keeping your family’s Holy Week holy this year.

We’d love to hear what traditions, new or old, you’re doing this year to celebrate Holy Week with children. So, don’t forget to leave your comments below!

Cultivating a Rich Holy Week with Children

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Do a Holy Week Easter Egg Hunt. Most of us do an Easter egg hunt annually. Yet, how often does the Easter Egg hunt communicate the significance of Easter?

So, how can we use this tradition to invite our children to reflect? It only takes a bit of prep in filling some of the eggs with Easter symbols. Head over here to learn how to make it happen.

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Bake Easter bread or rolls. Baking is a really fun activity to incorporate into Holy Week with children. Of course, they get to learn a valuable life skill. Also, if you’re having family or friends over for a meal, the children enjoy showing off their creations.

Baking bread for Easter morning breakfast is a great option. For example, a yummy recipe can be found here. Alternatively, resurrection rolls are fun and easy to make. Head over here to learn how.

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Take time to pray each day. During Holy Week, really any week, we often feel like we don’t have enough time. Parents and caretakers are often spread so thin. Perhaps this year, take the opportunity awaiting you to engage in your own spiritual practice with greater intention.

So often our children gather up our attention along with our jobs, the grocery and to-do lists, other activities, the house cleaning, on and on. But, as we all know, we cannot give from a well that is all dried up.

So, each day of Holy Week, carve out a couple minutes of stillness to say one prayer. A wonderful list of Holy Week prayers are here.

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Plan to do a coat giveaway. During Holy Week, we remember the crowds laying their coats down for Jesus as he entered Jerusalem. Additionally, we reflect on the sacrifice Jesus made for the world.

Spread love around to others by donating coats that your family no longer uses. Local shelters and charity organizations can almost always use more warm apparel. And consequently, opportunity opens to reflect on these two stories with children.

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Enjoy a Seder meal together. Attend an interfaith Seder meal as a family. The Seder is a meal shared on Passover in the Jewish tradition in remembrance and celebration of new life after liberation from slavery.

Invite your children to learn about the Seder meal prior to going. Find concise, valuable material here and here about what to expect and the meaning of the Seder’s symbols. With a little bit of preparation, the experience can be meaningful for your whole family and give way to illuminating conversations.

We hope you have a rich Holy Week and blessed Easter. And we hope this list has been helpful in making that so. Don’t forget to share your Holy Week traditions with all of us. We look forward to reading them!

4 Fabulously Rich Ways to Celebrate Lent With Children

Alissa Ellett Leave a Comment

Celebrate Lent with children this year and make this season of reflection and preparation rich for the whole family. Pick and choose from our ideas. And we’d love to hear from you, too. Don’t forget to share how your family celebrates in the comments below!

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Celebrate Lent with Children through Education

First, increasing understanding helps us all understand what it is we’re celebrating and why. It adds significance to the experience as you celebrate with children. Share these facts with them and invite further conversation through questions that come up.

Explain that on Ash Wednesday we use ashes of the burned palm branches used last Palm Sunday. Additionally, explain that there is nothing that God can’t use, even when it is seemingly worthless. Moreover, speak about the circle of the year and the connection we experience to the past, present and future in our faith.
Describe for your children that the ashes remind us that we are all united by that fact that we’re made from the dust of the earth. Additionally, we are truly and simply dust passing through the universe, one with everything and with God.
The word “lent” comes from the old English word “lencten”, which means lengthen. So, this points to the fact that in the spring the days are getting longer.
Purple is the liturgical color that is often used in worship spaces during Lent. Explain that purple was a color of royalty as well as mourning. Therefore, we use it preparing to mourn the death of Jesus, called the King.
Lent lasts 40 days because it’s the amount of time Jesus spent in the wilderness before going to the cross.
Some people fast and can do so for several reasons. First, they may use it to remember how Jesus’ time in the wilderness. Second, they may reflect and prepare for the mystery of Easter. Third, they may remind themselves of their dependence on God.
Fasting means to refrain from something, usually eating but not always. Discuss with your children what else we might fast from, e.g.: technology, TV, sweets or soda.

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Celebrate Lent with Children through Study

Second, studying God’s word and reflecting together illuminates areas of our lives and hearts in which God is working. Additionally, as you celebrate Lent with children, as with any other spiritual practice, we learn a lot about each other. As a result, this deepens connection and intimacy within the family and increases the variance of our own perspective.

There are several Lenten devotional guides out there. If you’re searching for the right one for your family, you can check out our newest edition of An Illustrated Lent for Families, here.

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Celebrate Lent with Children through Service

Third, in your community, search for a way that you and your children can give back. Also, talk with them about the abundance you have and why we give of ourselves sacrificially. Consequently, this opens the possibility, as you celebrate Lent with children, to speak about Jesus’ sacrificial giving that he taught during his life and in his death.

For example, perhaps serve at a homeless shelter or food pantry. Also, you may consider heading over to an animal shelter to donate blankets or food. Alternatively, head to a local park or beach and pick up trash. Or help out on a local farm. There are myriad ways to help our children offer themselves to others. So, get creative and invite them into the process of gathering ideas for service.

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Celebrate Lent with Children through Prayer

Fourth, choose a prayer that resonates with you and your children that you’d like to say at dinner or bedtime each evening of Lent. For example, St. Francis of Assisi has several lovely options. Here’s a portion of one:

Lord make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy.
Amen.

We hope this has been helpful and given you some ideas for your own Lenten journey. Don’t forget to share in the comments below!

Engaging Lenten Family Devotions and Lenten Coloring Pages

Adam Walker Cleaveland 2 Comments

Our congregation thought the resources were a really great quality and easy to access. Parents felt they could discuss the ideas without needing to check with the vicar first, and children were keen to undertake the activities. The quality of this product is wonderful! We loved that the devotionals were geared towards families, but weren’t in any way dumbed down. Adults felt they were just as relevant to them as to our youngest members.
-Deb Scoble, Authorised Lay Minister (Worship Leader), St Mary-the-Virgin Dover, Kent, United Kingdom

We are excited to announce the launch of our newest family Lenten devotional resource: An Illustrated Lent for Families (2018 edition)!

This is our third year of providing families with a resource for faith formation at home during the Lenten season. Our Illustrated Lent for Families and Illustrated Advent for Families have been used by thousands of families around the world. We are excited to share with you this new edition for 2018.

It can be challenging to find meaningful ways to engage your family in faith formation. It can even feel awkward at times. We don’t always know what to do, and sometimes we have a difficult time finding the words to share our faith.

Downloadable Free Sample: Click here to download a free sample of An Illustrated Lent for Families and check it out.

An Illustrated Lent for Families is one way to do that – to slow down, ask questions, have fun, be intentional about how you spend your time, and try new things. There are coloring pages for your children, but we’ve often found that parents enjoy coloring them as much (if not more…) as their children enjoy the coloring. And there are devotions for you to do with your family – no matter the ages of your children.

Keep reading to learn a bit more this year’s edition, and to hear testimonials from people who have used previous editions of An Illustrated Lent for Families.

Family Lenten Devotions

This year’s Lenten devotions are based on the Gospel passages from the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings (Year B) and are written so they can be used by both children and adults. We believe you’ll find questions and discussion topics in each devotion that will work for all ages. Each devotion consists of the below elements. We invite you to take a look at the devotions and see what will work best for your family.

Scripture: The Gospel passages come from the Revised Common Lectionary (Year B) for Lent.
Reflection: A brief reflection is offered for each of the scripture texts. It might make sense for you to read this section with your family, or you may just want to read it for yourself. See what questions or themes will resonate best with your family.
Discussion and Coloring Page: This is a chance for some discussion for your family. We find that often some of the best conversations happen while coloring and doing something creative together as a family. We suggest discussing the questions offered while coloring the week’s coloring sheet. This works great because it ties in with both the weekly scripture and activity.
Family Activity: The activity provided each week invites your family into an act of fasting aligned with the week’s scripture reading. Each activity is written to allow for your act of fasting to both challenge your family and be incorporated simply into your week. As with all our suggestions for spiritual formation, please feel free to adjust for your family so that it works within your daily lives and also opens you up to mindfully participating in the opportunity for spiritual formation.
Prayer: Finally, each week’s devotion ends with a short prayer that you can end the devotion with. This is a simple ritual to end your family’s weekly devotion time. You can also use the prayer throughout the week with your family.

This year’s edition of An Illustrated Lent for Families also comes with a bonus Ash Wednesday devotion (with an accompanying Labyrinth activity sheet) to use with your family.

The illustrations are beautifully drawn and invite—almost compel—one to get out the markers and spend time with it. The devotions that are assigned to each week are easily adapted for whatever age person is in the conversation. They don’t presume that you’ve been to seminary to engage the questions. They also serve as prompts for how Jesus calls us to live.
-The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis

Coloring Pages

Click on the images below to see the coloring pages in more detail.

I am a Beloved Child of God — Child of God

Obviously, we love coloring here at Illustrated Ministry. But it’s not just that we like getting messy with markers and crayons. It’s really the conversations that happen when you’re coloring that we treasure. If you’ve used any of our products before, you’ve probably experienced these types of conversations with children. When they’re immersed in coloring, you’ll be amazed at what they share with you.

Our coloring pages for this year’s Illustrated Lent for Families all connect to the theme of the week’s devotions. These pages will provide you with a creative outlet to work on with your family while you are discussing the devotions. Above you can see a few examples of the coloring pages (which come as black and white PDFs). We’ve colored a few of them to give you an idea of what they could look like.

Illustrated Children’s Ministry is making faith formation fun, beautiful and creative. It is wonderful to reclaim time for being artistic which frees the mind to be open to the Creator. Coloring and pondering are natural tendencies, I believe, and ICM uses those opportunities to enter what could be intimidating conversation and reflection spaces. But those spaces become accessible because our hands are busy creating (co-creating) something beautiful.
-The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis

Grab a Sample & Check it out!

Over 900 churches purchased last year’s An Illustrated Advent for Families – and we’ve heard amazing feedback from those churches and families. I was recently at the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators Annual Event, and I was amazed at how many people stopped by our booth just to let me know that their families so appreciated our family devotional materials. Of course, that’s the main reason that Illustrated Ministry exists: to support families!

We hope you’ll take some time to check out An Illustrated Lent for Families, and let us know if you have any questions. If you’d like to download a sample of the resource to check out before you purchase, you can click here.