Lent and the art of flipping pancakes

Lent and the art of flipping pancakes

Pancake Tuesday is coming up next week (February 28) and as soon as you finish school you’ll be looking forward to racing home so you can get flipping.

Flipping pancakes can be messy work if you’re not experienced at it. You can end up with batter on the ceiling, the floor, your hair and, if you’re really unlucky, your face!

But it doesn’t seem right to celebrate Pancake Tuesday without flipping any pancakes, so after you’ve gobbled down as many pancakes as you can muster, make some more non-edible pancakes that you can flip without creating a mess.

While you’re having fun making pancakes, keep in mind the importance of Lent. So create your own Shrove Tuesday/Lent game for next week.

For the pancakes you will need some paper plates, paints, felt tip pens, or colouring pencils. You can flip the paper plate pancakes with a clean frying pan.

Colour each plate brown or golden yellow. On each pancake, write a question about Lent on one side, and the answer on the other.

Take it in turns to flip the pancakes and answer the questions. The person who flips, gets to answer the question.

Appoint someone to hold the pancakes and to ask the questions. The players then take it in turns.

Knowledge in this game isn’t enough and the challenge here is to answer the question correctly, and to flip the pancake successfully in order to reveal the correct answer.

Each player has three turns at successfully flipping the pancake. If you manage to flip it on your first go and answer correctly, then you get 15 points. On the second go you get 10 points and on the third go you get five points.

If you answer incorrectly then you miss a turn.

If you don’t manage to flip it successfully to reveal the answer, then you pass it to the next person and they try to answer the same question correctly and also flip it successfully.

As a reward, you can always let the winner have a go at flipping a real pancake! Or instead let them have an extra pancake after dinner.

It’s trickier than it sounds but it’s a great way to test your knowledge of Lent, and it’s good practice for flipping real pancakes.

If player one successfully flips the pancake and you answer the question correctly, you become the flipper next.