Adding Color (and Prayer) to Your Lent: A Lenten Coloring Book

Happy Monday!  This week Rita from Open Window is guest posting with a coloring & activity book she's made.  I gave John Paul and Cecilia each their own copy yesterday and they LOVED it!  Cecilia (4) has just gotten really into coloring, and John Paul adores dot-to-dots and word searches.  Normally I just give them these coloring books and leave them to their own devices, but I tried really hard to engage with them while they completed the activities, and they loved it!  John Paul and I worked hard on the word search together, and Cecilia kept excitedly showing me every picture she colored, each time exclaiming, "I stayed in the lines!"

Rita is a wife and mother of two boys. She works full-time outside the home, owns an astonishing number of flyswatters, and blogs at Open Window about faith, family, adoption, and parenting after infertility.

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.

I hope you are enjoying this Lenten season with your children. Thank you for hosting, Rosie, and encouraging us to find tangible ways to share our faith with our children at home!

Thank you so much for sharing, Rita! I hope this coloring book is a blessing to anyone who's able to use it!

Want a free coloring & activity book of your own?  Download it here!

Looking for more ideas?  Here's a sensory bin you could create, or a prayer chain (it's never too late!).