Lent Week In a Glance - M is 36 Months & R is 15 months

For Mardi Gras we enjoyed a delicious dinner of Red Beans & Rice. 

We played this fun Kings Cake Board Game from DLTK.  I used some lids to the baby food squeeze pouches as our game markers.

We set up a few activities that we will follow for the rest of Lent.  The first is our Jesus Tree.  It is similar to the Advent Jesse Tree that we set up back in November, except we are using all New Testament stories.  Every day we read the story of the day from our children's bible and then M get's to put that day's ornament on the tree.  I am making the ornaments myself and will post the file soon in case anyone is interested.

In the middle of our Jesus Tree is a cross (purple which is the season's liturgical color) with the three major things we are asked to do during lent - pray, fast, and give.  We sat down together as a family on the night before lent began (Mardi Gras) and came up with ways to each of them and wrote those down.

Under the cross is our Lent Calender (which we found here).  Each day M puts a sticker on the current day to countdown to Easter.  This is a similar idea to an Advent Calender counting down to Christmas.

We also have a Sacrifice Jar set up on the entryway table.  It is a little jar with a bowl of lentils next to it.  Every time M is really good, or gives up doing something she wants to do for something I've asked her to do she gets to put a handful of the lentils in the jar.  On Easter Sunday the lentils will be traded out for something really awesome like jellybeans or whatever else I can come up with. :)

We established the similarities between Lent and the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar - which was inspired by this Preschool Lent Lesson Plan.  Basically it is based off of the idea that Lent is all about our attempt to change, just like the caterpillar changes into a butterfly.

We don't have the book and I forgot to stop by the library so I found this neat video on YouTube.  It won't let me embed it, but it is a really great video version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  M liked it so much she watched it a bajillion times.

We didn't do too many TVHC activities but we will be doing a few more throughout Lent.

That's it!  We'll continue with our countdowns to Easter, but this next week we will also be doing an awesome St. Patrick's Day theme for the week!

We'll be linking up to Preschool Corner as well as Tot School.  Visit their websites to find some more great learning activities!