Here’s a fun idea for Lent.
If you have preschoolers (or kids a little older) and you want to help them prepare their hearts for Easter, you can read The Jesus Storybook Bible to them for the 40 days before Easter (Lent) and end up at the Easter Story at just the right time. You can read one story each day and end up on Day 40 at the story of The Resurrection on the day before Easter. Then there are 4 more stories in the book for follow-up.
The Jesus Storybook Bible is a wonderful retelling of the whole Bible that whispers the name of Jesus in every story. It portrays Him as the One who rescues us from sin, which is really what He did!
So, if you want to give your kids an overview of the Bible in 44 days, you can do it during this Lenten season. Or whenever you choose to read through this charming story Bible.
I have seen people recommend this book even for adults to get a good overview of the Bible, because it is so well-written!
And to make it even more wonderful, they now offer a deluxe edition which includes a CD with narration by David Suchet. I already owned 2 copies of The Jesus Storybook Bible, but upon the recommendation of a friend, I bought the deluxe edition, too, so that I would have the CD. I am so glad I did! Listening to David Suchet read it is like watching a movie. He is an excellent narrator. I enjoy reading aloud to my children, but this CD makes this Bible even better.
Now Garrett and Fiona can follow along in their Bibles, and I can follow along in mine while we listen to it. And when Emma gets a little older, she will already have a copy of this Bible.
I realize that Lent has already been going on for a couple of weeks, but if you want to catch up to Day 12 (we skip Sundays in the counting of Lent), you can read one story in the morning and one in the evening until you catch up. Or just read it at your own pace. Just realize that you can read an overview of the whole Bible in 44 days if you read one story a day, and do what’s right for your family.
I got this idea from In Lieu of Preschool. She has lots of great ideas for keeping your preschooler active and learning. Here is the post where she shares the Reading Plan for reading the Jesus Storybook Bible in 44 days, covering up to the Resurrection by the 40th day. She also links to a post about another activity to do with children to mark off the the days up to Easter using this Lenten calendar.
From the Catholic Icing blog here
"Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is placed in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into its soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,--she would see that in all God's world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no other's hands the sacred and holy trust given to her." -JR Miller
[…] We sometimes do some observance of Lent. We are not Catholic, but we do believe in fasting and self-examination and preparing our hearts for celebrating Jesus’ life and death. So I’m incorporating some things that have struck my fancy this year as a way to prepare the hearts of my younger children and get their focus off of the candy and onto the real meaning of Easter – the death and resurrection of Jesus. I wrote about them in this post. […]