During last evening’s Lenten Webinar, I invited participants to share brief descriptions of some creative things they have done for Lent either for themselves or with a group they were teaching. SO MANY GREAT IDEAS! Thanks for sending them in. Enjoy perusing them!
Under the Influence of Jesus
More Comments and Questions from Under the Influence Webinar
Here are some more wonderful comments and questions from last evening’s Webinar on my new book, Under the Influence of Jesus: The Transforming Experience of Encountering Christ. Love your reference to the lightness of being in children. I teach first graders and they remind me of this everyday when we stop our day to teach Religion and kearn about the love of the Trinity. (Kathleen K.) The idea of simplicity in how we approach others […]
Newsworthy
Free Webinar!!! Teaching During a Year of Faith
Don’t miss the free Webinar I’m offering on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 (7:00 pm CDT), “Teaching During a Year of Faith!” Details are below. A recording of the Webinar will be available here on my blog within a week of the live event for those of you who cannot participate on Tuesday evening. In the meantime, here is a Note Taking Sheet that you can download and use during the Webinar to help you keep […]
Lent
Pop-Up Catechesis: Dealing with Temptations
You know what it’s like to have a mosquito bite that you want so badly to scratch! Of course, the more you scratch, the more it itches and, eventually, you risk breaking the skin. It’s not easy to avoid the temptation to scratch such an itch. Similarly, in life, we sometimes grow restless or “develop an itch” that we are tempted to scratch in a variety of ways, not all of them healthy. These temptations […]
Here is another Lenten idea — I did this last year with a group of kindergarteners and also with 1st and 2nd graders and it worked out REALLY well:
During the first week of lent, take a piece of posterboard and color the bottom brown for dirt/ground. Hand each of the students a little brown “seed” (out of construction paper) and ask them to write their name on it and what they gave up for Lent (or what they are doing extra). Help each child tape or glue their seed into the ground.
Ask the students what else we need to help seeds grow.
Add a sun to the poster. This sun represents Jesus who is the Son of God. He brings us into God
Theresa, thanks for sharing your idea!
I didn’t attend the webinat but wanted to share an idea. This year, we are having families decide what to do for Lent as a family. Then they will decorate paper cups (as flower pots) in a way to remind them. for the closing prayer, we will “bury” the alleluia by giving them seed crosses (which we have started germinating) to bury in their flower pots as we sing an alleluia. As they bury theirs, they will stop singing. Hopefully it will start with many voices and end with just one and eventually none.
Maureen, thanks for sharing your idea. Be sure to check out the recording of the webinar that will be available on my blog in just a few days.
Joe, would I be able to get a copy of some of the material from the Webinar from last evening: Making Lent Easy. I had three Catechists with me, and we would like to share your information with our students, especially Jr. High.
Awesome presentation. We surely would like to view another.
Peace Barb
Hi Barbara, perhaps you’ll be able to arrange a viewing of the recording of the webinar which will be available in just a few days here on my blog.
Great job Joe. Enjoyed the presentation. Always good to see you. One of the challenges of Lent is that we get into ruts doing the same thing over and over. It was good to get some other ideas.
Mark
Mark, thanks…I hope things are going well for you. Have a good Lent.
Thanks, Joe, for the Lent webinar. Viewing the presentation helped me to answer my 7th grade students’ questions as we discussed Lent during our RE session last night.
Here’s a Lenten reflection that our class did last night that I originally found off a link from your blog a few years ago that I have been doing with my students every year since.
I put some medium sized rocks in a small glass bowl and tell the students that the rocks are the symbols of
Thanks, Bernie. I appreciate you sharing your reflection with us…very nicely done and so appropriate for the age group you work with…a good concrete visual image.
Unfortunately I missed the webinar, but I do have several good Lenten ideas that we use with our kids. We have monthly Liturgies and we usually prepare some kind of visual focal point that includes all the kids in our program. This year we are doing a felt board with crosses. At the top of one of the felt boards its says Jesus Remember Me…the second one say Whe You Come Into Your Kingdom… Each of the kids will receive a piece of paper and they will write their Lenten Promise, then the paper will be stapled to the cross, the cross will be place on the felt board and displayed for the congregation during our Lenten Mass.
Another project that we have done in the past was a cactus with flowers. The kids write their good deeds on the flowers and we then attach the flowers to the cactus to make the desert cactus bloom.
Thanks for sharing your ideas Karla! You’ll be able to view a recording of the webinar soon…a link will be posted here on my blog in just a few days.