École Notre Dame Elementary celebrates Shrove Tuesday in preparation for Lent

École Notre Dame Elementary is preparing for the Lenten season.

The elementary students indulged in almost 800 pancakes yesterday for Shrove Tuesday as Lent begins today with Ash Wednesday.

It’s a Christian tradition in the 40 days that lead up to Easter.

“Being a Catholic school it’s a huge part,” said principal Kim Kaiser.

“For the next 40 days, we’ll be doing a social justice project to help some of our families during the Lenten season. We’ll have some prayer, almsgiving, fasting, we’ll cover it all,” she said.

The school doesn’t focus so much on the sacrifice aspect of Lent, but instead the service and kindness aspects of the holiday season.

“The teachers will definitely give something up but for our students, we like to encourage the almsgiving and the kindness and putting yourself out there to help someone else,” said Kaiser.

The school council assisted with the pancake cooking as they do for other events throughout the year.

“We’re a group of parents who meet monthly or every so often to support and enhance the student learning at the school,” said Stephanie Atkinson on the council.

“We do many different things. We participate in Shrove Tuesday, we help out when we do Cabanashuk in March. We will do certain kinds of fundraising to help out the school and just do what we can to make the school better for all of our kids that go here.”

Easter is Sunday, April 12.