Stations of the Cross and Kids

As much as I love the devotion of the Stations of The Cross, it can be hard to get away to do them by myself. Not to mention the fact that kids like doing the stations. It can be hard, though to take a 4 year old and a 7 year old that cannot stop talking to pray the stations. They both feel the need to talk about what they think happened. This is not bad, but disruptive to the elderly lady who is there by herself. A few years back I came up with a solution. Pray them at home.

Of course this seems obvious, it is. We however, have added a few little things to keep the the ADD at bay. First of all, we make the preparation last a few days. One day we color the pictures that I have copied from  Lent and Easter in the Domestic Church. The next day, we walk around the house and decide out path for the stations. We then tape up the pictures, and hope hyper 4 year old does not rip them down. The last day of the project, we pray the stations, walking from room to room and through the halls that have the pictures. We sing Stabat Mater, and do short meditations, all the while the kids are talking, usually about what they think was happening on the road to Calvary. We only spend about 30 minutes doing the stations, longer than that and we lose  someone. For us, it has been the perfect solution. We pray the stations, the kids get to experience them, and the elderly lady at church gets the silence that after years of kids, she deserves.