Adding color (and prayer) to your Lent: A Lenten Coloring Book

Today I am blogging at A Blog for My Mom, where Rosie is hosting a series of bloggers sharing Lenten craft ideas. You should go see the other wonderful ideas!

Most of the crafts we do in our house are spontaneous creations. They involve a lot of paper and tape, and they are usually airplanes or other flying vehicles.

For Lent I thought I would take on a quieter activity, a coloring book we could even bring into our pew at Mass. When I talked with our sons about the idea, I realized that they actually wanted to draw some things on the pages themselves. I kept that in mind while creating this book.

To be honest, drawing is not my strength.

“How does this picture look?” I asked Leo, who is 7.

“Mama, it’s not perfect,” he said. “But it is pretty good. And no one is perfect.”

That’s for sure. I’m far from perfect. And what I’m doing certainly isn’t perfect. But isn’t that the purpose of Lent? To take what isn’t perfect within us and stretch ourselves and try to improve?

So here is the coloring book. You can print it and then use the pages separately or staple or tie them together. Then see what happens. It’s a coloring book, so the beauty of it is that your child can only improve it and make it even more beautiful.

I slipped in a rosary coloring page, which offers an interactive way to introduce that beautiful prayer. And because we love activities in our coloring books, I added a connect-the-dots page, a maze, and a word search.

I hope the coloring book will offer an opportunity to pray together as a family. I used to think that the stories of Lent and Holy Week were difficult ones to take on with our children, but I find that our children actually talk quite simply and openly about Jesus’ death on the cross and how he suffered for us.

Children have such an amazing faith, and I so often underestimate what they are capable of understanding—and appreciating.

Download the free coloring book here!

I hope you are enjoying this Lenten season with your children. You can find more Lenten craft ideas at Rosie’s blog. Thank you for hosting, Rosie, and encouraging us to find tangible ways to share our faith with our children at home!

Joining Theology Is a Verb and Reconciled for You for Worth Revisiting Wednesday on Feb. 22, 2017.