During Lent, we don’t say “Alleluia” or “Gloria” during worship. A good way to symbolize this to children during Lent is the “bury the Alleluias”. All you need to do is create an Alleluia of some kind (like a poster or banner), and then on Shrove Tuesday (aka, Mardi Gras), take it to it’s hiding place… then you resurface it on Easter!
I’ve seen a lot of examples of this idea around the internet that were beautiful, but as always, I needed to find a cheap (or better yet- FREE) way to do this, and then I found these free printable letters on Martha Stewart’s site! I knew it was meant to be 🙂
{Edited in 2023 to add: Unfortunately, these appear to have been removed from Martha Stewart’s site.}
All you do is print the letters you need and cut them out. I glue-sticked (is that a word? lol!) them to another paper and cut another circle around it for a border. Cut a slit on each side of the letters at the top for threading your ribbon through.
This came out looking a lot classier than I thought it might! And look closely at my pictures- the cutting of my circles was far from perfect! For Lent, we are going to wrap it in purple tissue paper and place it on our family altar, awaiting its return on Easter morning!
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On Easter, we will unwrap it and prominently display it across our mantel for the entire Easter season! 🙂
After the printed copy was used in our home for several years, I decided to make a more permanent version. You can see how to make one from wooden letters here.
Thanks so much! I've been putting off planning for Lent and I'm trying to get something easy together this weekened, preferably without a trip to the store. This and your printable Lenten calendar are saving my rear end! 🙂
Beautiful! We will probably use this idea in our Lenten Workshop this coming weekend.
Thanks so much.
Lara
What a great idea this is!!! I love the kind of things that hopefully will help the kiddos remember our faith and why we do things!
Thanks so much!
Thank you for linking to the letters – they are lovely and can be used for so many things. We do the Alleluia in wooden letters, but now I can hang one as well.
Thanks SO much for posting this idea. It was the perfect quick, simple way to pull this together for my girls at the last minute on Ash Wednesday afternoon. 🙂 Thanks — and of course I credited you on my blog. 🙂
Thank you – we are a small every-denominational church for the British military community in Hameln, Germany, and our children are loving this great lenten calendar – I think we might make pretzels for everyone for tomorrow – how cool is that story! Thank you, Thank you, Thankyou…….
That is definitely fantastic articles. I'll certainly be writing a blog and also downloading and sharing all of this. Exactly what I'm trying to find.
I'm finding this post a year late, but love the idea of displaying the word Allelujah for the Easter season!
My family has such an involved, beautiful set of traditions for Advent/Christmas, but really nothing for Lent/Easter. After I noticed my kids getting a little too secular with their Easter celebration this year (thanks, daycare), I resolved to develop a set of traditions. I really like this idea paired with the idea you linked to about…raising?… the Alluluia during the week from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday and pairing a craft with each day of Holy Week. I think we’ll adopt this, take care to bury the A with the string attached and each of the other letters separately, then raise them one by one until Easter day and leaving it up for the rest of the Easter season. Thanks!
So awesome! Just did it! Thank you.
Just love this idea and your thoughtful sharing. Thank you very much.
– Sheryl Boother
So happy to hear that! This is one of our favorites!
I am happy I found your site. I am so grateful you are so generous in sharing ideas and resources. We teach Religious Education to small children and these activities are just so beautiful! Thanks a lot