Printable Lenten Passports and a Memory Verse Garden

Following up on last week's post of Lenten resources, I organized my memory verse garden with rocks and put together a very simple Lenten Passport. Details below.

The last time we made a Lenten garden, the girls were really little and picked all he flowers. But now we're old enough to try again. I wrote a phrase from each week's memory verse (from the Sunday Gospel reading) on a rock and lined them up leading to a jar. The last rock covers the jar opening like Christ's tomb. I will turn the rocks upside down and only turn over the verse for the current week, to mark where we are on the path. We planted a couple of succulents around the cave, put moss around the rocks, and then sprinkled wheat over the back. We love watching how quickly our wheat grows during the Nativity fast, so we're excited to use it again for Lent. (I meant to plant it during Clean Week, but the kids were excited, so we put it together during Cheeseweek!)

planning out the garden, before planting

a baby food jar, covered in dirt makes a cave

We covered all the dirt with moss, and planted a few succulents around the hill,
laid in our rocks, and sprinkled wheat seeds in the back where
they won't hid the rocks or cave as they grow.

Rocks turned over, except the first, revealing the first
memory verse we are learning for Forgiveness Sunday.

I used the Lent cartoon cards/stamps that I made for our calendar into stamps for a little passport. The passport is very simple, but it includes the memory verse for the week and extra space to write other things (almsgiving activities maybe?) - so I think it will keep all our Lenten educational stuff in one place.  St. Spyridon's in Loveland, CO has a really beautiful and really inexpensive color passport with icon stamps that you can order here.

The passports are embedded here for you to download or print. Print the pages front and back, and take out the page of stamps before stapling into a book. (The last page is blank because its the back of the stamps.)

Passport preparations begun!
L colored the image and wrote her almsgiving plans for each week.