Make a Crown of Thorns for Lent

This is a great way to get kids involved with lent! Craft a crown of thorns, and then every time your child does a good deed, he or she gets to remove one of the "thorns". Hopefully, you have all of the thorns removed by Easter. Then on Easter morning, the crown is covered in beautiful flowers! There are several ways to go about crafting one of these with your kids. Here are some ideas:

Ten Kids and a Dog has some great tips and directions

for making your own crown of thorns.

Check out these colorful crowns of thorns

from Chasing Fireflies! A twist on the original idea.

Catholic Mom's Helper made a salt dough crown of thorns

and shares the recipe and great directions! By the look of

all these toothpicks, they're going to be making lots of sacrifices!

I love this crown of thorns from Busy with Blessings.

What a perfect purple place mat!

Family at Feast and Feria made their crown of thorns with

craft sticks rather than toothpicks to be more child friendly. 

Rejoice in Hope used a simple grapevine wreath in 

place of salt dough for their crown of thorns.

Chreished Hearts at Home is inspired by the visual

display of her own children's sacrifices half way through lent!

Memories of a Catholic Wife and Mother uses a 

certain number of toothpicks per child for her crown of thorns.

Growing With My Girls turned their crown of thorns

into an Easter wreath on Easter morning!

You can see another example of turning it into

an Easter Wreath at Famila Catolica.

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Almsgiving Activity for Children During Lent

I'm very excited about the Catholic craft I have to share with you guys today! The 3 biggies during lent are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. This Lenten activity will help you teach kids about almsgiving, and also count down the days of lent.

Supplies needed to make this Almsgiving Craft:

• Fun Foam
• Exacto Blade
• Poster Board (or Foam Board)
• Hot Glue
• Glitter Glue or Marker
• 40 Pennies 

Start by taking a large, rectangular piece of fun foam (available at a craft store for about .60) and cutting out the corners to make a cross shape. We used purple since that's the liturgical color of lent.

Next, you'll need to make 40 slits in it to hold the pennies. You want the slits to be about as wide across as a penny, but it doesn't have to be exact. In fact, I was really surprised with just how forgiving the foam was- it really does a good job of holding those pennies. *Use caution with a box cutter!

Insert all the pennies before gluing it down. Trust me- this will make it much easier! Lay your cross where you want it on your poster board or foam board. Peel back just one section of the cross at a time and go around the edges with hot glue, then firmly stick it onto your paper. *Use caution with your glue gun!

When the edges are all glued down, cut out a mound of dirt from fun foam and glue it to the bottom. Then write "Give Alms" with glitter glue or a marker. At this point you can let your kids decorate it with markers, sticker, etc if you want. I opted not to because I want to use these same boards year after year.

How to Use Your New Almsgiving Activity for Kids

For each day of lent, have your say a prayer and remove one penny from the cross and put it in their offering box. (I posted about how to make and offering box with your child here). 

Do not remove any pennies on Sundays- they don't "count" in the 40 days of lent! My preschool co-op did this craft last year and theirs came with stickers. Every Sunday during lent, they put a sticker on the mound of dirt at the bottom of the cross. Again, I don't want to do that because I plan on pulling these out and reusing them every lent.

By Easter Sunday, your pennies should all be in your offering box, so your cross will be empty. My plan is to fill all the slots with dimes on Easter Sunday! This money can then also go into the offering box and be taken for the collection that morning. :-)

(once they've already been filled with coins, the foam

stretches and makes replacing the coins very easy!)

I love how bright and shiny the dimes are in comparison to the pennies, and I think this will be a great surprise for my kids on Easter morning! This was surprisingly easier to make than I originally thought it would be. Wish I could take credit for this idea, but it was thought up by my friend, Denise, who used to teach my preschool class before me. She is awesome! Here's a picture of one she made. They had a chart at the bottom (also with 40 squares) and every day they got a sticker for saying a prayer, and then put a penny in their offering box. I love how the one below has a string at the top for a door knob. 

I would have done this to ours, but I have alternate plans for displaying them- hopefully I'll be posting pictures of our Lenten display soon! :-)

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Printable Lenten Calendar for Kids

I made this printable Lenten calendar for children last year, but it's good for every year including 2011! It's free to print because I love to keep the resources free for all of my readers here at Catholic Icing!

Printable Lenten Calendar Here

If you'd like to use this for your kids this year to keep track of the days of lent, go ahead and print or save it to your computer- don't wait to do this on Mardi Gras. Last Fat Tuesday this calendar "exceeded reasonable bandwidth" and google docs stopped letting people view it. So lets try and spread it out a little more than that this year. :-)

Last year, my Lenten calendar was used for CCD classes, and in many homes! I loved some of the displays I saw. Check out this one from Lord, Make Me a Saint.

My Lenten calendar was actually translated into Italian last year! Isn't that so cool?! I love the internet! :-)

And my favorite way that I saw it used (and something I am definitely doing with my own children and my preschool class this year) is to put it in a lapbook like Homeschool Goodies! Check this out- very cool!

*UPDATE* One of my readers changed the Lenten calendar up a bit to work for the Byzantine Catholic church! Isn't that cool? You can visit her blog, The Whole Trouble Is for a printable Lenten calendar for Eastern Catholics. Also, Xhonane from Familia Catolica translated it into Spanish, so the Spanish Lenten Calendar is also available to print for free. How awesome is that?!

Let me know if you have another idea on how to use this free resource for Catholic kids! Enjoy! :-)

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Printable Strips for Lenten Prayer Jar

Over at Paper Dali, Vee drew and uploaded some prayer starter strips for a Lenten prayer jar! You just print, cut on the dotted lines, and put them into a jar. When your child draws one from the jar, he or she finishes the prayer. They're super cute! Here are some pictures of the ones I printed for our family:

{Print your own for free!}

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Lenten Sacrifice Ideas and Activities for Kids

This year, my kids are putting together a lent box. What you do is, find any box and have the kids put in their favorite toys, games, or whatever they'd like to sacrifice for lent.

A Lent Box for an older child might look something more like this:

Then, put on the lid and label it "Good-bye for Lent- See You at Easter!".


Find a place in a closet or on a high shelf where it's out of sight. Don't forget to bring it out for opening on Easter! :-)


Also, I just love this sacrifice idea! Check out Karen in Mommyland's Sacrifice Garland for holding everyone accountable. She also has a beautiful Mercy Cross craft that's worth checking out!


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Activities for Families Throughout Lent

Here are some things that I've seen you guys do to help keep your families on track for lent!

Here you will find directions on how to make a salt dough crown of thorns with toothpicks. Every time your child makes a sacrifice, he or she removes a toothpick from the crown!Karen Edmisten posted about their Sacrifice beans- for every sacrifice your child makes, he or she places a bean in the jar. Find the details and other ideas for lent here.

Pondered in my Heart made a Mercyful Cross, the idea being that you cover the cross by the end of lent with flowers representing sacrifices and works of mercy. Get the details here.


Our Domestic Church made this really cool yule tide Lenten log to count down the weeks of lent similar to an advent wreath. Go to her site to read all the symbolism behind it.

Jessica at Shower of Roses shares her Jesse tree turned Jesus tree. She goes through week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4, week 5, week 6, and week 7. For each day she shows a close up of the ornament, a bible reading, and shares a link to a coordinating coloring page.
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Bury the Alleluia- Activity for Lent through Easter

During lent, we don't say "Alleluia" or "Gloria"during worship. A good way to symbolize this to children during lent is the "bury the Alleluias". All you need to do is create an Alleluia of some kind (like a poster or banner) and then on Shrove Tuesday (aka, Mardi Gras) take it to it's hiding place... then you resurface it on Easter!


I've seen a lot of examples of this idea around the the internet that were beautiful, but as always, I needed to find a cheap (or better yet- FREE) way to do this, and then I found these free printable letters on Martha Stewart's site! I knew it was meant to be :-)


All you do is print the letters you need, and cut them out. I glue-sticked (is that a word? lol!) them to another paper and cut another circle around it for a border. Cut a slit in each side of the letters at the top for threading your ribbon through.


This came out looking a lot classier than I thought it might! And look closely at my pictures- the cutting of my circles was far from perfect! For lent, we are going to wrap it in purple tissue paper, and place it on our family altar awaiting its return on Easter morning!

On Easter, we will unwrap it and prominently display it across our mantel for the entire Easter season! :-)


Want to see some ways others celebrated this same tradition? Check out these amazing posts!

Just Another Day in Paradise's post is inspiring!
What a beautiful job she did.

By Sun and Candlelight will show you how to
make this plaque that I just love!

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Printable Lenten Calendar for Children

I made this printable Lenten calendar for kids this week. It's a fun visual for kids so they can see the 40 days of lent of lent going by, and Easter approaching. I left room in the squares to write in daily prayers or sacrifices if desired. The important days are brought to special attention with fun visuals for kids that symbolize what's going on that day, and little fish symbolize days to avoid meat (although children are not required to do this). I also love how it shows kids that Sundays are not included in the 40 days of lent.

Free Printable Lenten Calendar Here

Here are some dates you might want to add to your calendar. (Lent can start as early at Feb 4, and end as late as April 25, so all of these dates will not fall during every lent).

*UPDATED TO SAY* This post is from 2010, so these are NOT the correct dates to add for this year's calendar! The printable Lenten calendar is good for every year because I didn't include any actual dates on the printable version. The calendar pictured above already has some of these things written in, but they aren't on the printable version. I hope this helps to clear up some confusion. 

• St. Agatha- February 5
• Our Lady of Lourdes- February 11
• St. Valentine- February 14
• Chair of St. Peter the Apostle- Feb 22 (If you write in this day, the liturgical color is white.)
• St. Patrick- March 17
• St. Joseph- March 19 (If you write in this day, the liturgical color is white.)
• Spring Begins (March 19 or 20)
• Annunciation of the Lord- March 25 (If you write in this day, the liturgical color is white.)
• St. George- April 23

I hope you enjoy this Lenten activity for kids! I think these would be great to print for a CCD class, or just hang on your refrigerator! Just have the kids mark off the days as they go by :-)

All printable coloring pages are my own artwork and are free for any not-for-profit use by individuals, families, or educational organizations. Copies may not be sold or reproduced for profit. If you'd like to post this project for others to find, I would ask that you link to my post and rather than my individual downloads. When printing or running copies, please do not remove my website from the bottom of the page. Thanks!
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