Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, our church has provided materials and activities for families to engage in faith formation and learning at home together. Currently, this consists of kits, or boxes, filled with a selection of materials that fit into a particular theme.

These Kits are Intergenerational!

For Lent 2021, households can sign up to receive a “Lent at Home” kit that includes a variety of activities people of all ages can use to observe Lent, Holy Week, and Easter at home. These kits are designed to be used intergenerationally. Households of all shapes and sizes can participate. We will send kits to singles, couples, and families with children and youth.

The Kits: Nine Resources/Activities

1. A devotional
2. Lent activity cards (for families, this includes a set of plastic eggs with objects to correspond with the activities)
3. Pretzel making
4. A movement activity
5. A “prayer catcher” activity
6. Decorating a Paschal candle for use in the home
7. Making an Alleluia poster for Easter
8. Ashes for Ash Wednesday
9. A coloring sheet to use on Palm Sunday

The Kits: Materials & Supplies

Below you will find a list of what activities and supplies are included in our Lent at Home kits. For most of these activities, I utilized resources that were already available; some are one-time purchases (like the devotional book and coloring pages); others come from curriculum subscriptions or websites. The kits include most of the supplies needed to complete the activities at home. Households will supplement with supplies that we know they will most likely have (crayons, scissors, computer paper, glue, etc.) This may look different for you, based on the resources available to your families.

1. Devotional Book – Illustrated Ministry’s Reflections on the Heart family devotional
2. Lent Activity Cards
   • For families: A set of Activity Eggs and activity cards to go with them. This is a set of twelve plastic Easter eggs; each egg is filled with an object that corresponds with an accompanying activity. This activity comes from the children’s Lent Digital Activity Kits available through Sparkhouse Digital. Households that receive the Activity Eggs will also receive a baggie of treats. These treats can be put in the emptied plastic eggs and used to have an at-home egg hunt on Easter morning.
   • For households with older youth, young adults, and adults: A set of Bless this Mess activity cards from SALT Project.
3. Pretzel Making – Yeast packets and a recipe card for making pretzels from this Building Faith article.
4. Movement Activity – This activity comes from the youth Lent Digital Activity Kits available through Sparkhouse Digital.
5. Prayer Catcher Activity – A Prayer Catcher template and instructions for using it. We are using the Spark Prayer Catcher from the children’s Lent Digital Activity Kits available through Sparkhouse Digital, but you can find a variety of other prayer catcher templates on Pinterest or other sites.
6. Decorating a Paschal Candle – A white pillar candle enclosed in a jar, some scrapbook paper, and buttons. Further instructions can be found in this Building Faith article.
7. Alleluia Poster – A set of the family-size poster tiles of the Alleluia Butterfly coloring poster from Illustrated Ministry.
8. Ashes – A small container of ashes to be used on Ash Wednesday.
9. Palm Branch – A palm branch coloring sheet to use on Palm Sunday. Here’s one from Illustrated Ministry.

We will send out kits in these boxes. However, you could also use gift bags or paper bags. I also sometimes use large, padded shipping envelopes.

A Few Notes

Creating kits can be expensive, especially if you are sending out a lot of them. Purchasing downloadable, reproducible materials (like devotional books) makes planning easy, and they are very cost-effective! I also try to utilize things we already have in our supply closets (like paper and buttons) or purchase items in bulk (like yeast packets, white pillar candles, and plastic eggs) to make kits budget friendly.

Throughout Lent, I will invite people to send photos of their families completing the activities at home together. We’ll share these photos with the congregation, so it creates a more communal feel.