Our Simple Lent

For Lent this year we decided to try to keep things simple and just focus on a couple of activities for David to help him learn about the season. I made this sacrifice/kindness jar for him to put a bean in every time he makes a sacrifice, does something nice or says a prayer. On Easter morning they will have turned into jelly beans. He doesn't really seem to care about the jelly bean part yet--I'm not even sure he knows what they are--but he sure does love the noise the beans make when he throws them in! This is currently the centerpiece on our table, but we'll see how long it lasts there.......

We have also been counting down the days until Easter. David loves this calendar--mostly because it resembles a train track. He was driving his bus up and down it all morning. I drew his attention to the pictures of Jesus at the top and our exchange went something like this:

Me: Who's this? (pointing to Jesus on the cross)
David: Jesus
Me: They put him on the cross and he died. That makes us very sad. But then what happened here (pointing to the risen Jesus)
David: He fell off!

Well we'll have to work on the whole rising from the dead part...... I just got a beautiful book, The Easter Story, by Brian Wildsmith to read with him during Lent and help him learn about why Easter is so important!

We also put these NOW crosses that I made on the radio, TV, and computer to help remind us of our Lenten resolutions--one of which is giving up the time we were wasting using these devices and using it for Bible study, reading, and other more worthwhile endeavors. You can read more about the NOW cross here.