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What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of Lent
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When I was growing up, I thought of it mainly as the time when you were supposed to give something up for 40 days
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or I associated it with the ever popular fish fries on Friday evenings
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I didn't really understand the meaning or the purpose, and it wasn't until recently that I actually grasped its importance
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and wanted to help my kids understand it too. Today, I'm going to show you a fun resource I found to help you do just that
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Welcome back to my channel. I'm so glad you're here. I'm Sarah. I'm a Christian homeschooling mom of four kids
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and I love sharing our homeschool journey with you on this channel, along with curricula and tools that we use in love
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hopefully encouraging you in your own homeschooling. If you enjoy watching that type of thing, please hit that
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subscribe button. I'd love for you to hang out with me here. So if you watched my
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sunlight unboxing video the other week. You might remember that they also sent me a couple of
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their unit studies to review and one of them was their Lent and Unit Study make room. I think
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Sunlight's Lent Unit Studies are such great resources to use during the Lent season when Easter
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bunnies and chocolate eggs and jelly beans compete for our kids' attention and we might neglect the
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holiness of the season. I'm going to unbox this unit study here and take a look inside and talk a little
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bit about sunlight unit studies and how they work so you can see if it's something you want to add
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to your homeschool lesson plans. First, let's make sure we understand what the lent season is
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and how it helps us prepare for Easter. It's generally agreed upon by historians that
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lenten practices began during the 4th century AD as new Christian converts fasted in preparation for
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baptism on Easter Sunday. The practice became adopted by the church as a whole and continues today
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as people use the Lenten season to focus on spiritual disciplines such as fasting, prayer, and reflection
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The time of Lent is for preparing our hearts to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ
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Celebrating Lent is a tradition and not a biblical mandate. However, it's a great time to be intentional about getting rid of sin in our life, focusing on the Lord
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and just reflecting on how he's working in our lives. Lent does not begin on the same day each year since it follows the liturgical calendar
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which is basically a calendar of key seasons Christians observe as they follow the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus
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It begins on Ash Wednesday which is 40 days excluding Sundays before Easter and the end of Lent is three days before Easter When I was younger I never truly understood why people fasted or gave something up during Lent It seemed as though many
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use the time to get rid of bad habits or give up something good. It's common now to hear of people
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giving up social media, video games, sugar, or meat during Lent. But what I do understand now is that
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there is a true meaning behind these acts and we never want to turn inward or put on a
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Instead, when we give something up during Lent that causes us to sin, we should use it as a time of repentance
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When we are giving something up that we enjoy, we practice denying ourselves for the sake of Christ
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Recognizing the significance behind our acts takes intention. Rather than just following a rule for 40 days, we should have a deeper focus
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God cares about the heart behind our actions. Last year, my family used and really loved Sunlight's Lenton Unit Study Amman's Adventure
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This is a new Lent study that sunlight released, I think, last year, and it's called Make Room
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and I'm excited to be able to try it out. So let's take a look at what's inside
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Okay, so here we go. I'm going to open this up for the first time with you guys
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This came in the big box that I opened that came with our science curriculum, but we've got
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this here, which I believe is going to be the teacher guide. It came with this book right here
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Make Room, A Child's Guide to Lent and Easter. And then we have this box, the supply kit
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So all of these came with the unit study. And I just want to quickly kind of flip through
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and see what this book is like. Again, I haven't looked at it yet
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So that just gives you an idea of what the inside looks like
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And we'll see once we open the teacher guide how we are going to use it. Okay
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So just a quick little look there. All right, let's open up the supply kit. I love that with many of these studies, that materials are included
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and usually it's just simple things that you need to have on hand, and usually you have them in your home
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and they're pretty easy to prepare and set up. So we've got some glue, some googly eyes, and yarn
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It's like some felt, a little plate. I don't know what you call these some paper
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Oh, we've got recipe cards, blank recipe cards. There is an ink pad Another recipe card And then it just looks like some construction paper is in there and some more just paper at the bottom Okay so that everything that is in the supply kit
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Not too much but probably most of what we're going to need to have on hand for some of the supplies
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in the unit study. Stick those all back in there and let's open up the teacher guide
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Okay, so these are whole punched at the top, really easy to stick in a little binder
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Just a quick flip through. So you can see how this is laid out and how simple it is
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If you're familiar with the sunlight unit studies or lesson plans, instructor guides, I have a feeling this is going to be pretty similar
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They've all been pretty similar. Let's just take a look. So first pages, kind of notes for you. We've got an introduction to Lent, some simple ways to celebrate
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It talks about fasting, almsgiving, prayer. and okay we've got a lenten playlist so we have some different music that would be appropriate to play
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during lent and then it talks about the schedule so we've got a seven-week 40-day schedule to provide a
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framework so as with anything adjust it to meet your own needs every week includes readings from
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the make room book along with scripture passages and there is also a craft and activity section
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crafts, music, and baking. That's why we saw the recipe cards. And then you can add those. And again
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adjust it for your own family. We kind of pick and choose what activities we want to do or what we
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have time for as we're going through. And that's what we did with Amman's adventure last year
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Yep, just as I expected looks really familiar. We've got this broken down by day one, day two, day three
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day four, day five. You have a reading section. So what you're going to read from the make room book
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you've got scripture reading every day, the craft and activity, if there's a song, and then a baking
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cooking activity, and that usually will go along with whatever you are reading. Then to go along
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with each week, they will give you extra guidance. So here for day one, they give you a little
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background. For the scripture, they talk about what you might want to discuss. Here's the craft
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the cooking, why you might want to be doing that activity right there. So they give you. They give
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you extra notes day by day to help you along. So every day you're going through you're
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just going to kind of follow along here. It's all scripted and all planned out for you
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That is just a look at the first week and then we get to the second week and it looks very similar Set up pretty much the same way You got QR code in here to help play the song on Spotify if you want to
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an example of the craft and things like that. So all in all, this is just a really great way
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to introduce your kids, teach them about what Lent is, why we're actually celebrating that it's not
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you know, I know, you know, if you go to church and if you talk about this stuff with your kids, they know that
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Easter is the time when Jesus, you know, he died on Good Friday. He was resurrected from the dead and
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they know that stuff. But it's so easy to get caught up in the commercialization with the candy
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the Easter baskets, all of the candy hunts that go on this time of year. And if you participate in that
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then it can be a lot of fun. But I think that we should balance that with staying grounded in God's
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word and understanding why we're actually celebrating this stuff. What is the meaning of this
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And if you just talk about that one day on Easter Sunday or even, you know, just once a week on
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Sunday leading up to it, that's great. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I think there's a lot
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of value in going deeper with your kids and spending time in God's word every day and teaching them
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just more deeply what this time means and how we should be preparing ourselves. And this unit study
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or even the one I mentioned before, Amman's adventure, is a great way to do it. You don't have to
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plan anything out. You don't have to take a lot of time to come up with the activities on your own
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Sunlight offers these unit studies as a great way to help out families make the most of this time
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with your kids. And that's it. That's all the way through the instructor guide. Okay, I hope you
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enjoyed learning about this resource. It is geared for grades two through eight, but honestly
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the whole family will love it, I think. As with other sunlight curriculum materials, I love that
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the lesson plans are done for you. No planning, little to no prep work, and no stress
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Simply open and go and enjoy the time spent learning with your kids and growing your relationship
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with the Lord. I'll leave the link to the unit study in the description below, but also consider
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checking out Amman's adventure as we really enjoyed that one too last year. All right, let me know what
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you think. Drop a comment below if you have any questions, and don't forget to like this video
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if you found it helpful. Thank you so much for watching
