Lent Activities for Kids: Journey to Easter Cross

A Child’s Journey through Lent

The best way to help a young child travel through Lent is to ask them what Easter egg they want, right? Just forget about the actual Lent disciplines because they are too young to understand them, right?

But what if there was another way for a young child to journey through Lent?

Children can ‘fast’ from small things like giving up watching a favourite TV programme and offering this up to God. Children can ‘give alms’ by giving someone with a smile or giving a helping hand in the kitchen. In today’s blog, I encourage you to support your child in a 60-second prayer every day of Lent.

What is Lent?

Explain to your child that Lent is the countdown to Easter, just like Advent is the countdown to Christmas. There are 40 days of Lent (not counting the Sundays). During Lent we try and grow closer to Jesus through prayer, fasting and giving something away to someone else. We will be focusing on prayer.

Please show this video below to your child today to help explain why we celebrate Lent in preparation for celebrating Easter.

Outline of our Lenten Activity

We will make a cross and attach it to a window in your home with some ‘blue tac’. As your child does his/her daily Lenten duty, then they are allowed to stick one piece of coloured tissue paper inside the cross as well as make a painted footprint to go along the wall. The footprints will start far from the cross, but with each day, the footprints will get closer to the cross. Simultaneously, the cross will become more colourful as more coloured tissue paper is added to it. In this way children will connect that Lent is a journey to the cross and that this journey is fun and worthwhile.

For this activity, you will need:

1. A piece of black or dark sugar paper/ thin card that can be folded. This will be used for the outline of the cross as shown on the video in the section below:
2. One sheet of A3 laminating/ transparent paper. This will be attached directly to a window with Blu-Tac. If it is laminating paper, please make sure the ‘sticky side is facing you. The outline of the cross will be attached to this paper. Use blue tac if needed.
3. Some coloured tissue paper cut into roughly 1cm or 1/2 inch pieces. It might be easier to use the tissue paper from wedding confetti, as this is already cut into small pieces. You will need glue to attach the tissue paper directly onto the transparent sheet on the window and inside the outline of the cross..
4. One medium to large cardboard box (the tomb for Good Friday)
5. A much smaller flat box/ small bean bags that can be used as the slab of stone onto which you will lay Jesus’ laminated body.
6. Laminated images of the crucified Jesus and 2 angels. (Please use the button below to download the images.)
7. A bandage or 2 strips of white material. One to wrap the body and a smaller piece to wrap around the head. 
8. A boule of bread for Good Friday. This will be the stone to put across the tomb.

Walking through Lent towards the Cross



First, make the dark outline of the cross for your window as they do in the video below. You don’t need to laminate this. Just make sure there is a sheet of transparent paper stuck directly onto your window and the dark outline of the cross on top of that.

After your child does his/her listening prayer each day, not only will they get to make a footprint for the wall, but they will also get to stick (with glue) a small piece of tissue paper inside the outline of the cross so that it will look like stained glass.

You will need at least 36 small pieces of tissue paper per child/adult. Wedding confetti might be an easier option as the pieces are already cut for you.

Walking through Lent One Footprint at a Time



Each day your child does his/her listening prayer for one minute, they get to make their own footprint with paint as below:

The lovely, cut-out footprints start their journey to the cross either by gracing your walls or going around the edge of your room on the floor. Whatever works for you. If you have pets, perhaps the wall is a better setting for the footprints. Will you be adding your footprints too, mum??…dad??

How to Teach Your Child to Listen to Jesus in Prayer – A Guide:

• Do this instead of bedtime prayers. Turn off the TV and music. Set a timer for 60 seconds. Make sure the alarm is subdued by covering it with a pillow or keeping it in a box. Make an atmosphere of stillness and silence. Ask your child to kneel down (use a prayer cushion or pillow if they like) and make the sign of the cross with them.

• Please set an example and listen to Jesus with them.

• Ask them to close their eyes.

• Then pray for them and for yourselves as parents:

• “Jesus, protect us with Your Precious Blood. Speak Lord, your servants are listening”.

• On the first day ask them to ask Jesus, “Jesus, do You love me?” Then ask them to stay still and see what they can hear inside the stillness of their bodies. The answer is of course ‘Yes!” After the minute ask your child what happened in the silence. If they felt they heard/ sensed a  “No!” in whatever form, please tell them that wasn’t Jesus’ voice, because we know that Jesus loves us hugely.

• Explain that listening to Jesus like this is a new thing and it takes practise to hear Jesus clearly. The more we listen the better we will get at it.

• Say, “We can listen again tomorrow.” Ask this same question every day till everyone hears/senses a “Yes!”

• Then, once this is established, leave the listening prayer open-ended. At the end of 60 seconds. Just ask your child did Jesus say anything to you in your thoughts? Did you feel anything in your heart? Did you feel anything on your skin? Feeling ‘goosebumps’ is simply a sign that the Holy Spirit wants to tell you, “I am here!” He is speaking through this! Feeling ‘goosebumps’  would also be a “Yes!” to the question, “Jesus, do you love me?”

• Some days we may hear nothing at all. That is fine. We must trust that God was with us while we prayed by silently keeping  us company. If any of you feel emotions like joy, happiness, peace these are gifts of the Holy Spirit and is God speaking to you, bringing you tangible gifts! How lovely!

• A thought may have come to your child or to you. Was this from God or from themselves? Time will tell if this thought keeps coming up over the days ahead and if there is a new ‘peace’ that you see in you or your child.

• How is it going for you in your 60 seconds listening to Jesus’ time with your eyes closed, alongside your children? Expect Him to speak to each of you. You are embarking on an exciting journey!



•  remember in my early days of listening to God, I wasn’t sure if I was holy enough for God to say anything to me…..but I was wrong. God’s main way of speaking to me, back then, was through images that He gave me in my mind’s eye.  In fact, this is still true today – some 38 years later!

Preparing for Good Friday

By the time Good Friday comes the stained-glass cross should be full of coloured tissue paper. There should also be several footsteps across your walls which have come to their journey’s end at the foot of the cross.

On Good Friday at 12 noon make it a ceremony to place Jesus on the cross with a bit of blue tac, while one of the parents reads the final moments from the bible as Jesus breathes His last.

“Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed His last.”

Mark 15:37 Catholic Prayer Bible

On Good Friday at 3pm, take Jesus down from the cross ceremoniously while an adult reads from the bible:

“When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away.”

Matthew 27: 57-60 Catholic Prayer Bible

Easter Sunday



The tomb now needs to be prepared after the kids go to bed on Holy Saturday night so that they can witness the Resurrection for themselves on Sunday!

Open the tomb. Remove the laminated Jesus and fold the grave cloths and place on the slab. Place a laminated angel on the inside of both cardboard flaps with some ‘blue tac’.

When your children awaken, encourage them to go to the tomb!

You can tell them the story of the Resurrection in your own words: how the women went to the tomb at the crack of dawn to finish applying the spices to Jesus body that they had started on Friday before sunset. They saw the tombstone rolled away and two angels resting on the tombstone. Jesus’ body had gone. His grave cloths remained! He had risen from the dead and left the tomb! He showed Himself to the disciples over the next 40 days!

To understand more about death and burial customs in Jesus’ time, please see this interesting 17-minute video below:

At Easter, we celebrate the empty tomb and Jesus’ new life by giving each other something special. Know what this is? A hollow Easter egg! For Christians, the hollow Easter egg has a special meaning for us. The new life of a chick comes from an egg and the chocolate egg being hollow reminds us of the empty tomb. Jesus has bought us all a new life through His Resurrection! Enjoy!