Our Lenten Spiral 2013

Our Lenten Spiral 

Last Tuesday, the kids and I made our Lenten Spiral.  A Lenten Spiral is basically a advent calendar leading up to Easter instead of Christmas.  Last year, we made ours out of salt dough and this year we did again. I made some changes based on what worked and what didn't work last year.  Instead of a salt dough cross (which kept falling and breaking last year) we are using a marble as the counter that moves from the outside to the center where we have a wooden cross.  This is a visual reminder of the preparations and reflection we do as we await Easter.

Hannah made a cross with Jesus on it.  Unfortunately, she squished it up before I could stop her.

Here she proudly holds up her second cross.  

Ethan and Hannah hard at work making more crosses.

Our finished pieces ready to go into the oven.  On the left are the crosses Hannah and Ethan made, in the center is a tomb and a rock, and on the right is our spiral.

All set up.  I have everything here for now.  But the tomb will be for our Easter garden which we will make closer to Palm Sunday.

Here you can see the spiral up close.  The marble works well.

The tomb.

I also included an Easter book basket with a few books we already owned as well as a bunch of library books.  We made the crosses into ornaments and hung them on our branches.  

Our Lenten Spiral

I came across a very interesting article a couple of weeks ago, while looking for activities for lent that I could do with Hannah and Ethan.  In the article over at Joyful Mama's Place, she shared her heart for about she was learning about the liturgical year, lent, and reaching the hearts of our children.  I could not summaries this article and do it justice, so if your interested click the link and read it for yourself.  It jump started me into my own Lenten preparations.  

Today, as it is the first day of Lent, Hannah and I set to work making a spiral to count down the days until Easter. I always like to give credit where credit is due, it is part Holy Experience, part Catholic Family Vignettes, and part me (hahahaha).  Our spiral is made out of salt dough, it took forever to harden in the oven so even though its set out neither of the kids have seen it  finished yet.  I am excited to see their reactions.

It is my hope that as the cross moves closer to the center of the spiral, that we would understand the cross better.