How Lent Went (2)

:) 1. artwork    2. Lenten basket

Inspired by Montessori-style seasonal baskets, I decided to make a small grouping of items for M to look at and use as a springboard for his own little reflections during Lent.  I feel like I could’ve added a lot more to this, but I wanted to keep it simple, and honestly couldn’t come up with a lot of ideas that would be quick to put together (Lent had already begun when I finally got around to this – next year I intend to be a bit more on the ball).
I used a large rectangular basket, covered it with a purple cloth, and put the following items in it…

First, a wooden cross from Dollar Tree, which we’ve been using to learn about the various liturgical colors.  I originally came across this idea in Maria Montessori’s book, The Child in the Church , and then saw some “Father Pines” over at Catholic Icing.  I made simple little vestments for our cross and M enjoys changing them depending on the season and/or day.  To prepare the cross M sanded it a bit:And then gave it a good rub down with some olive oil, which apparently didn’t make it onto the camera, darn it.
We also have a little laminated flip booklet with the stations of the cross:I used scrapbook paper and stickers (Dollar Tree!) on the fronts of the cards, and some meditations and prayers, found here, on the backs of the cards.  We have gone over these, simply by stating what each station is called, looking at the picture, and thinking a bit about it.  I’ll save the meditations and prayers for another year, as this seemed to be enough for M right now. 
The sticker pack had two sets of stickers in it so I used the other one to make simple little stations, backed with felt:M used these to match up to the cards mentioned above, and he could also place them on the flannel board if he wanted.
I also placed a wooden crucifix into the basket (this is a San Damiano Crucifix, which I absolutely love):
We read quite often from Little Acts of Grace: So into the basket it went too.  It’s a sweet book of little ideas for showing our love for Jesus.
Last of all, the “A” word was hidden in an egg, and taped shut. :)  All through Lent we refrain from saying “Alleluia”, and then on Easter morning the Alleluias break out all over the place. :)  It really makes for a joyful Easter!  We placed our little felt Alleluia inside a purple egg, taped it shut, and waited.  This was a big deal to M; he loved the idea of a secret word!  Then Easter morning we took it out and placed it high on our Lenten Countdown Cross, which is what I’ll post about tomorrow. ;)  Stay tuned!
Have a beautiful day! :)
 

How Lent Went

:)  1. Artwork

Ah, it feels good to be back blogging. :) 

Before I forget everything we did while observing Lent this year, I want to write a few posts about it.  So today and the next couple of days may not bear much relevant reading, but it will give me something to link back to next Lent, heh.  ;)

First, I’m going to share the Lent-specific arts and crafts we worked on.  We have a door that goes from our kitchen into our breezeway and is made up of glass panes.  I want to call it a French door, but I’m not sure that’s correct.  Anyway, you get the idea.

It is perfect for filling up with sun catcher-type artwork, which, as you know, is really overdone around here.  Although, as I sit here and look at my kitchen walls which are covered with the creations of a 4 year old, I’m realizing maybe we just overdo art, period.  Or maybe Mama has a problem with throwing some art away from time to time.

Or maybe we are just happy and don’t want to change a thing. :)  It won’t always be like this, right?!

Anyway, back to my kitchen door.  To celebrate Lent and a few special days within Lent we decided to create 7 pieces of art and arrange them on the glass panes of the door in the shape of a cross.

And, for fun, we experimented with a few new (for us) artsy ideas in the process. 

I started by cutting black frames for each section of the door, then brought one out on each special day, along with whatever other supplies were needed.  We looked through the calendar and chose 7 special days to create something for our door.

First, on Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent), M made a purple cross pane.  The cross was made from construction paper, and sandwiched between two pieces of wax paper.  To make it pretty M sharpened some old crayons then used the shavings to decorate the empty areas, and I ironed it a bit to get them to melt:

  
This was our first attempt at this, and I like how it turned out, although I could have used a bit cooler iron, I think.

Next up was St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th.  We melted crayons and painted with them, which was a huge amount of fun!  The texture of the finished artwork is fabulous.  We made a shamrock with a rainbow stem, and talked about how St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain the Trinity.  We used some sketch pad paper for this one.  It is heavy enough to hold the melted crayon and still let the light through a bit.  I’ll be writing more about this fun activity in an upcoming post.       

M had so much fun painting this way that we decided to make a heart also, for the top section of our cross.  After painting it, I cut it out and taped it to a piece of wax paper:

And our window cross began to take shape:

 

For St. Joseph’s feast day (March 19th), and The Annunciation of the Lord (the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary, celebrated on March 25th, 9 months before Christmas), we used small cut-out pictures from online or magazines, contact paper, and tissue paper…

St. Joseph:

I love how this simple activity looks so pretty and a lot like stained glass: 

For the Annunciation, we added in some pieces of aluminum foil around the picture of Mary and the angel, for a bit of bling:

 

The finished pieces made the horizontal cross piece:

For Palm Sunday I knew we should use a palm leaf in some way, but I wasn’t quite sure what to do.  M cut one of our palms into sections and we arranged it on a piece of contact paper.  M wasn’t interested in using tissue paper again, so I dug through my ribbon collection and found some beautiful sheer ribbon that looks gold on one side and red on the other.  We snipped it into pieces and placed them on the empty areas of the contact paper: 
Doesn’t it look nice?  However, once it was hanging in the window, the fact that it is very sheer ribbon meant that you could barely see the colors of it.  We took it down and lined the back with white tissue paper, which helped a bit; but, as you can see in the picture below, this one didn’t turn out as vivid as the other panes:I like the idea of using ribbon in this way, but next time we’ll find something a bit more solid or use a darker color behind it.

 

Last, but not least, was Holy Thursday.  We used a picture of the Last Supper printed from online, and some wax paper.  You could use parchment paper for this too, but I really thought the wax paper gave more of a pretty glow in the window. 

I intended to use our oil pastels, but could not find them – ack!  I love those things, so I hope they turn up soon.  We ended up using some Elmer “Slicks” which are very much like oil pastels.  They are a creamy sort of crayon, but a bit messier than pastels.  Window crayons would work too.  I used a gold paint pen to draw random lines on the wax paper, and M (who, I must say, learned to color within lines overnight it seems) used the Slicks to color each section:

Then we taped our picture of the Last Supper in the middle, framed it and hung it on the last pane of our cross:(I think this was my favorite of them all!)

 

Our window cross was finished just in time for Good Friday:

To finish up our Lenten artwork, we made a super easy Easter (or Paschal) candle.

This idea was straight from Catholic Icing’s Paschal Candle post.

Simply scratch your design into the candle with a toothpick, paint over it, then rub off the excess with a wet paper towel.  We didn’t have cloves, but M did want to add some star “jewels”.  We kept the design very simple – a cross with the year, and a shining sun on the back.  

We’ll leave our window cross and our Easter candle up for the entire season of Easter (it’s a 50-day feast!).  Our “door cross” is beautiful, and a really lovely reminder to take time to reflect on our faith; while our candle reminds us of the wonderful Light we have been given.

Have a beautiful day! :)