How do you practice Lent with a toddler in your household? Today I’m going to share with you some of the ways we will be practicing Lent with a 3-year-old and diving deeper into Christ’s sacrifice for us.

Alright friends, where did time go?! How is it, Lent? Weren’t we just taking down the Christmas decorations?

As time moves on so does our Church calendar and today we’re starting Lent with Ash Wednesday so I thought I’d share with you some of the things we will be trying to do with Caroline, our big 3-year-old!

If you don’t already know, John and I are both practicing Catholics. We love our faith so very very much! We actually met because of it in college through the Catholic Student Union at FSU. Go Noles!

With the deep love of our faith, we want to be able to pass it down to Caroline and share in the traditions of the liturgical year with her.

I did some thinking and searching around and came up with some actions that we will be trying to implement this year. Some might be too difficult but I know there are one or two that she will love.

Practicing Lent with a 3-Year-Old

Paper Chain Prayers

I saw this on Sarah J Creations and thought we could totally do this in our own way.

Our plan is to write down 40 names and/or groups of people who we would like to pray for over the next 40 days. We did this during Advent but only wrote 25 and Caroline loved it.

This time we will do the paper links but instead of cutting away the paper link chain, I think we will add a link each time we pray.

I found this short lenten prayer we will pray together at the end of dinner and light a small candle as we pray for the person or group on the link for that day.

Almighty and ever-living God,
you invite us deeper into your world, your people, your Lent.
May this time be one of outward focus;
seeking you in those we often ignore.
Help us live a Lent focused on freedom, generosity, and encounter.
Give us hearts hungry to serve you
and those who need what we have to give.

St. Therese Sacrifice Jar

Now I would love to be able to do this activity with Caroline to its fullest potential but I think she might be still a little too young.

But what I do want to do is begin to introduce the idea of sacrificing for the Lord to her. I am going to use the word sacrifice interchangeably with the phrase “good deed” as Lacy does from Catholic Icing.

My plan is to make the jar with Caroline color the printables and talk about making sacrifices. And when something comes up that we can sacrifice together or I see she has done a good deed or has a difficult choice then I will reintroduce this concept to her.

I will circle back around on Instagram to let you know how it goes! I think it will be a great way to introduce the concept to her, especially with St. Therese.

Stations of the Cross

Since we got married (10 years ago), John and I have always prayed Stations of the Cross on Fridays in Lent. And this year, I wanted to bring Caroline into our prayer too.

The prayer is pretty long but I thought if we made these from Catholic Icing she might be a little more intrigued.

I’m planning to do both projects and have Caroline help me create them.

Stations of the Cross Eggs

Stations of the Cross Folder

I’m not going to try introduce fasting and almsgiving unless it comes up naturally with her this year. I will tell her what we are doing as family like not eating meat on Fridays and giving more to the poor and that will probably we as far as I take those subjects with her for this year.

Let me know if you do any of these! I’m so thankful for these great Catholic bloggers sharing their ideas! I’m super excited to get started on these!

Hope you have a beautiful Ash Wednesday!