40 Day Kids' Devotions

I was surfing blogs a while ago and came across this great devotional time for our family.  It is called a "Journey Through the Holy Days" and here is the link to see the details:
 http://thehomespunheart.blogspot.com/2011/03/journey-through-holy-days.html

I improvise a lot of it and don't quite do the little activities it mentions for each day, but I started using it as our devotional time before bed.  I've been looking for something like this that we could do over the stretch from the Ash Wednesday until Easter Sunday so I was excited when I found this because it's perfect for that.  I also want it to be a challenge for me to follow because we have been so irregular with our kids' devotional times.  I'd love to say we're all on top of it and never miss it, but sadly that's not true.  Our evenings during the week go by so quick and a big part of it is that 3 nights out of 5 we have church and school activities and don't get home until right before bed.  It is even hard for me to make a decent dinner on those nights, unless it's in the crockpot or leftovers or something I've had in the freezer. But that is just an excuse and I know it.  Our kids won't miss the extra 15 minutes of sleep it takes to do a short devotional.  It is a bit hard to do this one with our youngest Kason because if the story doesn't have pictures and the text includes longer passages from the Bible he's out of there.  I try to bring him into our conversation about what we just read and I think he enjoys that more than anything.  At least now he knows who John the Babtist is as we talked so much about him. :)  Mostly I pick up an illustrated childrens Bible and we start out with a couple short stories from that for Kason.  Sometimes I can find the ones that directly relate to our passage, like the one about John the baptist and Kason and Anika love seeing a picture of people we read about. 

Here is an easy craft I made and each day after the devotions we put a "flower" on the tree to see what we just learned about Jesus.  Kids get really excited when it's their turn to put a flower on the tree.  It is such a neat thing that I think I may have to do this tradition with our children every year.  More than that though I am hoping our family devotion time will become a habit after this 40 day journey.

I might have to take some flowers off before we're done because I don't think we
can fit 40 on here, or else I make another tree.

I just realized that our 40 day count down to Easter Sunday is actually a count down to the day I leave for Slovakia with Anika.  It has nothing to do with Easter but we're both getting really excited.  I try hard not to talk much about it in front of Kade and Kason because Kason thinks he's coming with then and Kade gets pretty sad.  Next time I get to go I hope to take all of them with, but it won't be until they're all in school.  That is another reason why I feel like this 40 day journey is good especially for Kade because I hope it brings his focus on Jesus and what he did before he died on the cross instead of thinking sad because he knows that when it's Easter I'll be leaving to Slovakia.