Community Bonfire - Learning About Lent

Sunday February 3rd was our seventeenth session together. Having spoken to the DRE earlier in the week about the plans for the day, I realized that I wouldn't be able to start a new lesson from our workbook. Instead, I prepared materials to support the lesson on Lent that the DRE was going to cover with the entire group. As such, I did not prepare a lesson plan for this week.

Packing Light: I didn't prepare a worksheet of activities for this week, although I did put together a package of Lenten activities, they are listed below

When we met in the common area for the whole group activity, we were all so happy to see Pragmatic Tiger and Fair Cheetah back with us! Rocking Horse and Courtly Polar Bear were not with us though, so we were not a complete team.

We gathered outside to prepare some ashes just like the ones used on Ash Wednesday. We put some palms from last year in the bin and one of the teachers lit them. As they burned we talked about Ash Wednesday and how it is the start of Lent, and why the priest will put the ashes on our forehead. Once they were finished, since it was also the feast of Saint Blaise, we listened to a little history about the saint and how he healed the child who was choking on a fish bone. We all went over to the church and had our throughts blessed by Fr. C.

By the time we returned, the ashes had cooled down. A small amount was placed in a cup for each class. As we adjourned to our separate classrooms, I distributed a Lent Activity Pack to each of the children. These little kits contained

• a bag of pretzels, along with an activity to do with the pretzels as a symbol of prayer and penance from CatholicCulture.com, which you can find here


• a calendar spanning the season of Lent, with a sticker for each day, which you can find here.

We found we would be having the third and fourth graders joining us for the remainder of the day. The first thing we did was to talk a bit more about the ashes. I dipped a finger in the ashes and drew a "+" on the back of each child's hand. We talked about why we used ashes, and we noticed how each "+" looked different - just like each of us is different! I asked the children to be sure to listen to what Father says as he puts the "+" on their forehead and tell me next week what he said.

Since there was not much time left, we spent our remaining time playing a quiz game about Lent. The questions we used were from a game called "Journey Through Lent" posted at the OTHER_Creative_Kingdom Yahoo! group. I knew there were too many children (and not enough time) to play the full board-version of the game, so we simply split into two groups, engaged a score-keeper, and started reading questions. The children seemed to have a good time taking turns reading the questions, and several of the questions - especially those about fasting and abstinence - were source for quite a bit of discussion among the group.

Next week we will will the next lesson, Unit 3, Chapter 11, "We Act on God's Word".

Side Trips: if you want more information, activities, and games... check out some of the Lenten activities at catholicmom.com