Stations of the Cross

Lenten Activities for Kids

February 13, 2012 By Lacy

You can see all of my Lenten Posts by clicking here, or browse the links below.

Print my Lenten Countdown Calendar!

See all the Ash Wednesday Posts Here.

Preparing for Lent With Children- are you ready?

Bury the Alleluia

Pretzels for Lent

Sacrifice ideas for kids

The Lent Song for Kids

Counting Down the Days of Lent:

Print this Lenten Countdown calendar- this is by far the most popular Catholic Icing post of all time!

Make a crown of thorns

Easy Crown of thorns craft

Giving Alms- a coin every day!

Check out all the Lenten Printables Here.

See all my posts about the Stations of the Cross Here. You can also see the links to individual Stations of the Cross posts below:

Stations of the Cross Eggs

Stations of the Cross Montessori Activity

Stations of the Cross Eggs- this is one of my favorites!!!

Printable Stations of the Cross for Kids

Stations of the Cross Games

DIY Candle Stations of the Cross

Stations of the Cross Grottos

See my Palm Sunday posts here.

Palm Sunday crafts and ideas

Palm Sunday Handprint Craft

See all posts for Holy Week by clicking Here.

Catholic Resurrection Eggs, or “Holy Week” eggs.

Holy Week Crafts

Holy Week Food Ideas

See all the Holy Thursday posts here.

Last Supper Craft- it’s printable!

See all the Good Friday posts here.

Other Lenten Posts:

Make an offering box

Veil of Veronica Craft

Make Sacrifice Beads

Holy Weeky Linky

Lenten Linky 2011

Meatless Meal for Kids

Almsgiving Box (with download!)

I’m going to be hosting a Lenten link-up here on February 15 (that’s Wednesday!) so don’t forget to come share your ideas and check out what everyone else is planning for this Lent.

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Filed Under: Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Holy Thursday, Holy Week, Lent, Lent Preparation, Lent Printables, Lenten Food, Liturgical Year, Mardi Gras, Navigation Page, Pro Life, Stations of the Cross Tagged With: Navigation Page 5 Comments

The Ultimate Guide for Celebrating Holy Week With Kids! {And a Linky!}

April 8, 2011 By Lacy

There are so many ways to teach your kids about holy week, and I want to know what your ideas are! First, here are some of my posts from the archives!

Holy Week Craft Round Up

Holy Week Coloring Pages and Printables

Food for Celebrating Holy Week

Palm Sunday Craft Round-up

Holy Thursday Craft of the Last Supper

Stations of the Cross File Folder Activity

Printable Stations of the Cross for Kids

Stations of the Cross Games

Stations of the Cross Eggs

Votive Stations of the Cross

Stations of the Cross Grotto Crafts

DIY Catholic Resurrection Eggs

I’ll update this list as I make new posts for Holy Week. Now it’s your turn!

Feel free to share more than one link if you have more than one post! I will be hosting another linky soon for religious Easter ideas, so get those posts ready- but hang onto the links! Use this linky for celebration ideas from Palm Sunday through Holy Saturday. Please link straight to your post address, not your generic blog address. Also, share a link back to this post. Thanks!

(If you don’t have a blog, feel free to share your idea in the comments, or even link to a facebook or flickr picture!)

Filed Under: Easter, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Holy Week, Liturgical Year, Palm Sunday, Stations of the Cross 6 Comments

Stations of the Cross Montessori Activity for Catholic Kids

March 25, 2011 By Lacy

Yesterday’s stations of the cross eggs have 2 parts for us, even though either activity can stand on its own. My Catholic preschool class has been needing some new Montessori activities to do during the “works” portion of our class, so I put together a stations of the cross file folder activity. (I want to go ahead and insert here that while I do love to use “Montessori-type-methods” for educating my children, I don’t actually have any professional training in the area. So when you see “Montessori” stuff on this blog, I’m just doing my best and trying to share it with you.)

This was really easy to put together. Start by printing off 2 matching sets of stations of the cross (unfortunately the ones I used are no longer available for printing from the internet, but you can find some printable stations of the cross here). Glue one set down to your file folder, and cut the other set out like individual cards. I also labeled mine 1-14 so this can be used for number learning as well. (I also labeled the backs of the cards with numbers). Then, laminate your file folder with clear contact paper, and your stations of the cross cards can be laminated with clear packing tape. Shuffle the stations of the cross cards, and have your child match them up to the ones on the file folder.

Matching the Stations of the Cross

Matching the Stations by number

Also, try pairing them with your Stations of the Cross Eggs !

Just have your kids match your stations of the cross symbols to the corresponding station.

Here’s the front

On the back I taped on a baggie to hold the cards.

I think this would be a great take-along activity for kids during the stations of the cross at your church. My 5 year old is totally familiar with all the stations now! I’m working on it with my 2 year old.

And for anyone who’s interested in Catholic Montessori activities for kids, I’m having a giveaway today on Catholic Icing’s facebook page for a free Catholic Montessori e-book! The author was trained by the
Catechesis of the Good Shepherd people, and I was skimming over the stuff yesterday- it looked really cool! Enter to win here!

Filed Under: Lent, Liturgical Year, My Crafts, Stations of the Cross 13 Comments

Stations of the Cross Eggs for Catholic Kids!

March 24, 2011 By Lacy

I’ve been trying to teach my kids about the Stations of the Cross this lent, and it’s going really well! We just came up with these Stations of the Cross eggs, and I’m so excited about them!!!

Because there are 14 stations, and only 12 eggs in a dozen, I used an egg carton that holds 18 eggs. The first 14 (for the stations) I used purple eggs with the numbers drawn on top with a sharpie. Then I used a yellow egg for the resurrection (because I wanted this to be included, but not to look like a part of the stations of the cross). There were 3 spaces left in the carton, so I added Lenten eggs labeled “pray, fast, give alms”. For these eggs I put in a rosary for prayer, a goldfish cracker for fasting, and some coins for almsgiving. I wanted these eggs to be a different color than the stations of the cross eggs, so we went with blue.

I was lucky enough to find these Stations of the Cross stickers at the Dollar Tree! Aren’t they awesome?!

I got a package of little wooden hearts at Michael’s for under $3, and painted them red. On one side I put our stations of the cross stickers, and on the back of the hearts I wrote in what each station is.

Each one of our stations of the cross eggs has one heart, and one symbol for that station. You can use these as an activity for the children to match up the symbols, or you can just use them to go through the Stations of the Cross one at a time. I plan on taking ours to church when we attend stations of the cross so my kids can follow along.

I also wanted to make these with the kids in my preschool class, and I needed them to fit into a regular dozen eggs. I was able to do that by combining all 3 falls into 1 egg. (We used band-aids to symbolize the falls, so I just labeled the band-aids “1,2,3″ and shoved them into one egg and labeled it for all 3 stations where Jesus falls, which are 3, 7, and 9. I had the kids put the stations of the cross stickers on the outside of their eggs (although you could totally do this without the stickers at all).

Making all the pieces for 8 different sets of these was more of an undertaking that I originally anticipated, but it was so worth it!

Symbols we used for Each Station of the Cross

Station 1: Jesus is condemned to death. Piece of string for binding Jesus’ hands.
Station 2: Jesus carries his cross. Popsicle sticks cut down with scissors and glued into a cross shape.
Station 3: Jesus falls the first time. A band-aid.

Station 4: Jesus meets his mother. A Miraculous Metal, which has Mary on it. (For my preschool class, we used small wooden hearts with a Mary sticker on them. You could also paint a Mary peg doll, or use a rosary, or even just use a small blue piece of felt to symbolize Mary).
Station 5: Simon helps Jesus carry his cross. A hand-shaped button hand for Simon being a “helping hand”. (You could also just cut out a hand shape from paper).
Station 6: Veronica wipes Jesus’ face. Scrap of fabric with Jesus’ face sketched on it.
Station 7: Jesus falls the second time.Another band-aid.

Station 8: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem. A tissue to dry their tears.
Station 9: Jesus falls the third time. Another band-aid.
Station 10: Jesus is stripped of his garments. A small garment cut from felt with a piece of embroidery floss tied around it. (This doesn’t have to be all “cutesy” like our garments- it could just be a square piece of felt).
Station 11: Jesus is nailed to the cross. A nail. (I actually bought a big box of masonry nails at my hardware store because I love how square and old-fashioned they looked. The perfect “Jesus nails”!)

Station 12: Jesus dies on the cross. A small plastic crucifix, usually used to make rosaries.
Station 13: Jesus is taken down from the cross. A picture of Michelangelo’s Pieta. (I just printed pictures from the internet and laminated them with packing tape).
Station 14: Jesus is laid in the tomb. A rock- for sealing the tomb. (I did have some actual decorative stones from the Dollar Tree, but you could easily use a piece of gravel or something from your yard).

Lydia helped me laminate all our Pietas with some packing tape!

Here’s one of our masonry nails.

These garments didn’t actually take long to cut from felt at all! Just

double over a long rectangle, cut a head hole, and tie on some string.

I wanted to have the kids color the popsicle stick crosses with a

brown marker, but we didn’t have time.

Salvage a broken rosary if you don’t have any crucifixes on hand.

These actually took longer to put together with my preschool class than I though it would, so I ended up letting them eat animal crackers while we worked. (All the kids in my class are only 2).

I let them put their own Mary stickers on the heart for the 4th station.

For the set at preschool, there were 2 stickers leftover at the end (the extra “falls”) so we used them to decorate the outside of their egg cartons. For our set at home, we painted the egg carton purple, and decoupaged a Stations of the cross label on. This actually turned out nicer than I was expecting. The mod podge made the egg carton seem almost like plastic. If you’re going to paint your carton, I would suggest using a cardboard carton (not Styrofoam) and using tempera paint. It was pretty time consuming to paint the egg carton, which is why I only painted the top. It would have been nice to have some spray paint so I could do the whole thing purple. We used purple since that’s the liturgical color of lent.

In the yellow egg for the resurrection, I put in an angel. We actually happened to have this weird Grow Your Own Guardian Angel thing. It actually fits very nicely into our yellow egg when it’s small.

Grow Your Own Guardian Angel: Collectible Magic Growing Thing

In resurrection egg sets, the last egg is empty to symbolize the empty tomb on Easter morning. That’s a great idea, but I honestly feel like it’s a little disappointing for kids to get to the last egg and *gasp*!… nothing’s in it. So I really like having the angel in ours. You can get little wooden angels at Michael’s, or you could also symbolize an angel with a white feather from an “angel wing”. Or you could leave your Easter egg empty- totally up to you. I also considered putting candy inside and taping it shut, not to be opened until Easter.

These eggs really are a great tool for teaching your kids about the stations of the cross! They’re fun, they’re hands on, and the egg delivery makes them appealing during this Easter prep time. We’ve really enjoyed these!

And if you’re not the “do it yourself” kind, you can order sets of Resurrection Eggsthat are already made, although you can’t buy stations of the cross eggs.