Are you looking for a way to draw families closer to Jesus during Lent? Want to plan a Lent event for families at your Catholic church or school but aren't sure where to start? I've got you covered.
I am part of a Young Families group at our church. There are 5 couples on the team. We plan different events throughout the year to draw families with young kids into fellowship with other families in the same place in life. We decided to plan an afternoon of Catholic Lenten Family Activities that included different stations that the kids could visit and learn about our faith and the liturgical season of Lent.
I'm going to share my process for planning, prepping and getting the word out for an afternoon of family activities. I've also linked all the resources we used. Hopefully it saves you some time and makes it easier to plan your own Lenten activities for the families in your church or school.
Planning a Catholic Lenten Family Activity Afternoon
Decide when you want to hold your event and reserve space at your church/school. We used our activity center but also had access to the church so we could walk over to the Stations of the Cross.We opted for a Saturday afternoon during Lent with an ending time of a half hour before our evening Mass starts. We encouraged families to attend Mass after. Some did, but this also makes for a long afternoon/evening for youngers kids.
Our group is a young families ministry, but that can be hard to define. Families like mine have young kids that are 4 and 6, but also older kids that are 11 and 13. Decide on your target audience and create activities with them in mind. We have a lot of 1st grade families that have come to past events, so I planned with them in mind, but with options at each station for older and younger children. We also use older siblings as helpers at the stations.
After looking at our RSVPs we learned we had a lot of 2 and 3 year olds coming so we added some toddler friendly activities since many of the other activities would be too much for kids that age. We had about 50 people total at our event.
Decide how many activities you want to offer based on how many people will come, how many helpers you have, how much time you have, etc. Our big focus was on familiarizing the kids with the Stations of the Cross and giving them a chance to walk by the ones hanging in our church. I also tried to keep the other activities about Lent, Holy Week, Stations of the Cross, etc. versus Easter activities.
Create a way for families to RSVP. We use a Google Form and ask for name, email, how many are attending, and ages of the kids. This helps us to make sure the activities are geared toward the right age and we prep and purchase enough supplies for the amount coming.
Inviting your Church/Parish/School to your Lent Family Activities
To let our audience know about the event, we did a few different things to publicize.
- Made a flyer with the event details including a link and a QR code to RSVP.
- Shared the flyer in our parish bulletin, parish Facebook page, school newsletter, school classroom group chats, emails to our religious education families and emails to families who have come to previous events.
- Printed copies of the flyers for our Preschool-1st grade school students. I also personally talked it up to each class when I taught them during Catechesis of the Good Shepherd in the weeks leading up to the event. This personal invite and explaining what activities we are doing really seems to boost RSVPs.
We have found that our audience waits until the last minute. The week of our events, we always worry that no one is coming or that it is just the 5 families on our committee. But at the last minute they seem to commit. This is also after several reminders and seeing things through email and text and possibly on social media.
Prepping and Setting Up the Lenten Family Activity Stations
The following are the stations we decided to use. Whenever possible, we used supplies the members of our group had on hand or the religious ed department had for us to use. We bought some things but between the five families in our group, we usually have to buy very little. I've linked as much as possible to the exact item or similar items to make it easier for you to find them.For each station, I prepped them at home with the help of my kids and put each in a grocery bag. When we got to the event I put each grocery bag on a different table with all the needed supplies to make for a faster setup. I also included signs for each station saying what it is.
When the families arrive, they are invited to go to the stations they are interested in, in any order they want. The helpers at each table explain the activities and sometimes do a little teaching.
Welcome Table Supplies
Plastic Table Cloth Covers Purple (we cut rectangles in half to fit our round tables)
Sign In Sheet
Snack & Story Supplies
When we plan events like this, I try to have the snack connect to the theme/liturgical season. In this case, we use the book Pretzels by the Dozen. A parent volunteer would read it as they ate their snack. The book talks about how the pretzel developed throughout history, the connection to the Holy Trinity and to Lent along with several other occasions different cultures ate pretzels.
Coloring Station Supplies
Printable Coloring pages
We found this station was really popular at our Advent activities so we did it again with Lent themed coloring pictures. We basically just set out crayons and coloring pages and let the kids do this one independently without a helper at the station.
Stations of the Cross Mini Book & Visit The Church Supplies
After they finished their book, they walked into the church and walked through our Stations of the Cross that are hanging on the wall. This was very informal and just connected what was in their book with what was on the wall. With older kids they had them take turns reading the stations. For younger kids, they read to them and talked about what was in the picture.
We talked about doing the Stations of the Cross as a whole group at the end of our activity afternoon. I'm glad we decided against it and just did it with a small group at the station so that the kids could get up closer and see better.
We also put 2 middle school helpers at this station so that if one was walking the kids through the church, the other could still be at the table helping kids who were making their books.
St Patrick Study Supplies
Heart cut outs (from an old die cut machine)
- Book - Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland
For this station, I picked a saint who has a feast day during Lent. We went with St. Patrick. We used the crown, coloring page, and the shamrock printable from my March Liturgical Living kit. There were several different activities the kids could do depending on their age. I had my daughter use the book so she could give background knowledge to the kids and if they asked, she could read them parts of the book.
St. Patrick Crowns
For this they colored the crown that includes basic facts about St. Patrick. They cut them out and could use the "pray for us" strip to make the rest of the crown. If their head was too big for that option, we had sentence strips that we stapled or taped on, then cut down to the correct size.
St. Patrick Coloring Pages
For another coloring option we had these pages with a few basic facts about St. Patrick.
Shamrock Printable
This shamrock activity is designed more for the younger kids. They had to color and then cut out and glue the words "Father," "Son," and "Holy Spirit."
Heart Shamrock
For older kids this was similar but instead of cutting and gluing on a shamrock, they created a shamrock out of 3 hearts and wrote the words on it. Then they glue it to a thick popsicle stick.
Holy Week BINGO Supplies
Mini Erasers or Bingo Chips to use as game pieces
Prizes
- water bottle stickers,
- temporary tattoos from an old Saintly Heart order
- Jesus Loves You bracelets
- craft kits (old Oriental Trading craft sets about the Trinity and Easter lily)
- desk pets
Bingo is always a hit at these events and this table was always full of kiddos playing Holy Week Bingo. Each square has a vocabulary word related to Holy Week or Easter.
For prizes I just found odds and ends that I had around the house. They were things leftover from Easter egg stuffers, extras that were put in Catholic items I've ordered, etc. It pays to save because I didn't have to buy any of the prizes!! We were going to use the Oriental Trading craft kits until more kids registered and we didn't have enough so I figured we could set those out as a prize option.
Painting Crosses Supplies
Cards/Pictures for Retirement Homes/Nursing Homes Supplies
This was a service project that we did. We have several nursing and retirement home communities that our church prayers for regularly. We had the kids make Easter pictures or cards that we can deliver. This was the only activity that was specifically Easter. We figured that would give a us a few weeks to get them delivered in time for Easter.
We made some examples but kept it open ended with a variety of supplies the kids could use to make a spring picture for Easter.
Matching Games Supplies
This was a last minute add on when I realized I had Stations of the Cross and Holy Week matching cards from my website already printed and laminated and cut apart. With these, kids could match the words to the pictures. Or they could just use the picture cards and try to put the events in order.
For younger kids I printed Easter write and wipe cards from The Stay at Home Teacher. They could practice writing words from Holy Week with a dry erase marker and then wipe it off.
Toddler Area Supplies
Sensory bin with
Sensory Bin with
Books
Easel to color/draw on (similar one here and get chart paper)
The toddler area was a last minute add on when I realized how many younger kids we had coming. I tried to come up with toddler approved activities that had very little mess. We set a plastic table cloth on the floor to define the space and catch any mess. Here are the things we included, again mostly from my house and things I already owned.
Easter Week Sensory Bin
For this bin I used green easter grass and large plastic eggs. I threw in some foam crosses for another texture to play with. Then I used these Easter sensory bin puzzles from The Stay at Home Teacher. I put the pieces in the bin and laid the board with velcro on it next to it. They could just play with the items in the sensory bin or they could look for the matching pieces.
Color Cross Match Sensory Bin
The color cross was a similar concept where the laminated pieces go into the bin and have velcro on them. Then there is a board with the colors on it and more velcro that they can stick the crosses too. The base of this bin was different colors and sizes of pompoms.
Duplo Blocks
We brought our Duplo blocks and encouraged kids who were old enough to try building a cross out of them. Some kids just played and snapped the Duplos together.
Easter Dot Pictures
This was some mess free art. I printed a few dot pictures and we had dot stickers that the kids could stick on to complete the picture. You could also use dot markers/bingo dabbers but the stickers definitely keep it mess free and work on fine motor skills.
Easter Board Books
We set out of a few Easter board books from our collection that kids and caregivers could read.
Easter Picture on the Easel
We've had this easel for years. There is a dry erase/magnetic option but we also attach notepads of anchor chart paper. I drew a big cross and set out the circle stickers and encouraged them to put stickers all along the outside of the cross.
Day of Lenten Family Activities Tips and tricks
Tip #1 - Get Help! We recruited my daughter and some of her 7th grade friends to help run the stations. We also had a few 5th graders that we could trust helping out. You could definitely use even older teens too. We explained the station to them and gave them all the needed supplies and they ran it with my supervision.
The members of our group could also help run stations and a few of us did, but I like to bring in older children to help so that our group can be with their own children during the event and to build responsibility for the older kids.
Tip #2 - Try to Engage the Parents too - it is so easy at events like this for the parents to stand around talking. We had a balance of that (which I think is great for fellowship) and parents who went with their children to each activity and helped them. We ran into a few behavior problems with boys who weren't at a station and were making their own games with water bottles and throwing hats around that had to be redirected to a station since their parents were not with them and were talking with other parents.
Tip #3 - Have help at clean up - We had a hard end time so they could prepare for evening Mass so the members of our team, our middle school helpers and some of the families who came to the event helped with cleanup.
For the activities, we just put each table's supplies back into the grocery bag they came in and loaded those back into my car to take home for storage. Then we threw away the plastic table clothes. Stacked up and put away chairs and tables. Swept the floor and took the garbage out.
You can do this!
This definitely takes some teamwork, planning, prep and creativity but it is a great way to encourage young families to get together during Lent and learn about the Catholic faith in a fun hands on way. Creating an afternoon or evening of Lenten family activities for your Catholic church or school doesn't have to be overwhelming, you've got this!
