Lapbooking -- Hands of a Child

Hands of a Child has a ten-year anniversary sale going on right now.   If you check their blog daily you can download a free product, whether a lapbook or notebook.    

Today is Day 3 (of 10) and you can download a project pack called Medieval Knight Games.   

They also have a special free lapbook on Metals available during this time. 

Catechism Notebook: Prayer Pages Part II

This is a continuation of this post.  

Page 3:

Overview:  
Fruits of Prayer, How to Pray (Scripture), Some Questions about Prayer, Who To Ask to Pray for Us

Fruits of Prayer is a layer book and the answers come from the catechism. 

The shutter book that you see above opens out into this.    It has "who to ask to pray for us" in the middle and on the sides, some questions like:  "Do the angels and saints know what is happening on earth (so they can pray for us)" and "Did Our Lord Himself pray, and why?" 

How to Pray from Bible in Pictures
It's the scripture passage about going to pray quietly in your closet.  I folded it up as a sort of accordion and glued it into the cover.

Questions about prayer.  Some of them are from the Prayer Lapbook and some of them are from the catechism.  I thought my student and I could discuss them and I could write down his answers. 

Page 4:  The Lord's Prayer

Catechism on the Lord's Prayer 
 Resources for the Lord's Prayer 

Sorry the overview is sideways!

Lord's Prayer (right towards bottom), and a couple of simple flap books with catechism questions and answers from the printable.  

The cross graphic is from here.    I just cut out the middle part and backed it with cardstock. 

One of the question flaps open to the answer:  "Jesus Christ Himself made the Lord's Prayer". 

The Lord's Prayer shutterfold opens up to the Latin version inside.

If you lift that part you get to the explanation of each line of the Lord's Prayer (from the Penny Catechism and found in the printable above). 

One of the questions opens to the answer and then another question.  I did that by making a 3/4 book.  You fold a paper twice, into quarters, and then cut out one of the quarters so you are left with three.   That gives you potentially five surfaces to write on. 

As always, with notebook pages there are always more areas where further pages could lead to.   My idea with these pages has been to work on them with my child and then work with him to make new pages depending on what direction our discussion leads to.   The pages I am making now are sort of preliminary ones covering the basics of the Faith.

Next, I am working on an overview page of the entire catechism using St Pius X's Preliminary Lesson.  Catholic Catechisms are traditionally divided into three, sometimes four main topics:  The Apostles' Creed (what we believe), Ten Commandments (how we live),  Seven Sacraments (our life of grace through God), Lord's Prayer (what we are to hope and ask for, prayer in general).     So I want to have a page that sums all that up.   

Apostles Creed Notebook Pages

I spent quite a long time trying to put these Apostles' Creed pages together.  I am not sure why it was so hard -- I suppose because there were a lot of loose cards involved.  Finally it all pulled together, though the pages are awkwardly bulky.   Still, it's all holding together and if we do all the elements the child will definitely know his Apostles' Creed. 

Page 1:  

A long pocket (left).   This site has some pocket templates.  I just made my own. 
A quilt or envelope fold.   This site shows how. 
Some gold letter stickers I had. 

Inside the pocket are these "Put the statements in the correct order" pieces from ThatREsourceSite.
I backed them with red cardstock and also put clear contact paper on top to make them more durable.

The envelope/quilt contains a printable of the Apostles Creed which comes from Catholic Faith Education.  Scroll down towards the bottom to find the printable.

On the triangles of the envelope I put little mini-books.    Some have the answers already written, while others have blank spaces to write down answers in future.   On the top it asks: "Who were the apostles?" On the right it asks:  "What does 'creed' mean?"  On the right it asks:  "Is the Apostles' Creed a prayer?"  On the bottom it asks the catechism question from Lesson 1:

6. Where do we find the chief truths taught by Jesus Christ through the Catholic Church?
We find the chief truths taught by Jesus Christ through the Catholic Church in the Apostles' Creed.

Then it asks what the Apostles' Creed is, and answers from the ST Joseph Baltimore Catechism that the Apostles' Creed is a summary of what Jesus taught the apostles.

Page 2:

Top:  A file folder game which I found at Catholic Toolbox.   I stuck it into a file folder which I folded in half lengthwise.  Bulky but it fits. 

Bottom of the page:  This Apostles' Creed Mini Prayer Book from ThatResourceSite. 
I had to put it into two books to keep it from being impossibly thick for the page.
The cover for the second book comes from thatresourcesite prayer learning cards, half-sized.  

A view inside:  

Here is the inside of the file folder with the game.   Kieron got the color printer to work with the computer!  Below are envelopes with the quiz cards, also to be found at the link to the Catholic Toolbox post. 

Here's a look inside the envelopes.  I tried to laminate the cards with clear contact paper.  It took a LONG time but luckily at the same time Aidan was being creative with his Mario Kart printouts, making his own notebook, and he needed some assistance, so we were parallel playing, and I didn't completely waste the time. 

New Year's Notebook Page

It's not too late to celebrate the New Year!

For these two pages I wanted to try to practice some new folds and also make something bright and colorful.     I know it's past New Year's Day (really???), but I plan to go through it with Paddy when we resume homeschooling tomorrow.   That's why the questions aren't filled out yet.  It seems like a fun way to start our next term. 

I used two printables (links below) for the notebooking.  The printables ask you to reflect backwards to 2012 and forward to 2013 and write some of your "favorite things", so it seems like a fun thing to do with a 10 year old that we can look at a year from now.    Who doesn't like to talk about favorites?  Something like this might be fun to do on birthdays too!


Supplies:

Glue, scissors, paper scraps, cardstock etc.

Nadene at Practical Pages Lapbook Templates for ideas.   To find the templates in PDF, scroll down.  All the folds I used were from one of her templates.


Two New Year's printables.

• New Year's Activity (looks really cute in color, but I didn't have color : ()  I used New Year Review page 1.   Page 2 looked cute, too, but it looked like it would use too much ink and just be grey on my black and white printer.  Below, the cut-outs in white/grey are from this printable. 
• Kids New Year's Resolution Printable.  Very Cute, again!    Below, the cut-outs in yellow are from this printable.

Origami Paper.  I used the wildest colors I could pick that still looked somewhat all right together (to make up for the lack of color in the printouts).  

Page 1: About Me

Overview:
Left:   simple triangle fold.  Name, Age, Favorite Color.

Middle:  simple hexagon fold.

Favorite food, favorite activity, favorite book.

Right:  a quilt fold, then it looked too big and square, so I folded the corners in to make it look more like origami.   Favorite song, favorite TV show, best book read, favorite movie.    I'm looking forward to hearing Paddy's answers to these questions!  

Here's the fold closed. 

Page 2:  Highlights of 2012, and Looking Forward to 2013

Overview.  You can see I messed up a little.  I put the "looking forward to 2013" banner too high, which meant I had to squish two folds together.  Oh well.

Left:  a 4-part petal fold.  Favorite Memory, Hardest Thing,  Greatest Lesson Learned, What I Loved Most about 2012.

Middle:  An accordion fold shaped sort of like a pencil or rocket.  I decided it looked like a rocket so I went with the theme and made the little paper plane and the star.   A New Talent I Developed this Year, I Would Describe Myself As,  This Year I Became More...

Bottom:  A Circle Fold.  (for 2013) -- Biggest Goal, Want to Learn, Want to Get Better At. 

Top Right:  A sort of envelope fold I made up (I think).  You take a triangle and fold in the corners.   3 Words to Describe This Year.

Bottom:  I wanted to try a Pop-Up, so I used these instructions from Enchanted Learning, except that my attempt to make quadruple pop-ups failed, so I simple did a uni-pop-up instead.  MUCH easier to manage.   I used a quadrangle tri-fold from Nadene's templates, and simply glued the top two sections together so the hole for the pop-up didn't show on the front.   That probably doesn't make sense, but if you try it, you will see what I mean. 

That was the most complicated part of this page, except the actual layout, and I am proud of it!

I thought I would also link to a couple of cute journal prompt pages, more for Mom than for kid.

• Keep a 5-year Journal -- Daily Prompts.
• 50 Journal Pages (nice layout for scrapbooking etc)

Epiphany Notebook Page

I wanted to make an Epiphany page, but an internet search didn't reveal too much.  

There is this Epiphany lapbook for free -- here at Sola Gratia Mom.  

There is also this  Twelve Days of Christmas and Epiphany Lapbook , but it is for sale.   I ended up getting this Happy Holidays Bundle   which includes the Christmas lapbook-- I have only purchased a few lapbook resources, because I prefer looking for freebies and there is a lot of high-quality free stuff online, but I've bought a few to see which publishers' styles I prefer.


The Epiphany page is simple, containing only two basic elements -- a large shutterfold and a simple squash book.

In this overview page, you can see how I store half-made folds -- I put them in page protectors (sometimes sealed with a paper clip to prevent the little pieces from falling out) by theme, so the page protector above is where I was storing pieces of the 2012 Catholic calendar I am trying to repurpose.

Shutterfolds are almost the easiest mini-book to make -- you make them just like you fold a file folder into a typical lapbook.    As with many lapbooks, I divided a picture in half to make the cover. 
The picture came from the lapbook I bought.
I put another Epiphany picture here that could work.
There is a sweet one in color at Sanctus Simplicitus.  

Close-Up of shutterfold:

Inside the shutterfold:

Left:  a fold that has the Greek word for Epiphany, and the definition inside (it came from the Epiphany lapbook I bought, linked above)

Middle:  A tabbed booklet about the Three Gifts
Bottom Middle -- a graphic I cut out of our church bulletin

Right:  one of those folds you make by folding lengthwise into three like a pamphlet.

Inside view of the pamphlet fold, which contains the text of We Three Kings (Paddy played that for his piano recital).    I used this printable.   It was easy to fold into three. 

Close-Up of Three Gifts tabbed booklet

Inside view of the "Three Gifts" booklet.  I can't find the picture I used on the cover but here are a few coloring pages, some of them nice.    This might be a good one, too.   Oh wait, I found it (scroll down). 

I used these coloring pages (shrunk down) for the gifts inside.
I put pieces of We Three Kings related to the gifts inside, too.  

Close-Up of Epiphany definition

This is an "unfolding book" that is covered with a decoration from a star decoration from my scrapbooking paper stash.  

IT folds out into a cloze worksheet where you fill in the blanks using the Bible.   I am having trouble finding the exact one, but The Catholic Toolbox has collected all kinds of good CCD type worksheets for Epiphany. 

Resources

Information on Epiphany.
More at EWTN

More History Pages

These are pages I made using some printouts I designed before Christmas:

Mohammed (PDF)
Charles Martel (PDF)


Page 1:  Overview of Mohammed

Close-Up of Left side -- this uses a Quilt Template (though I made my own, out of homemade paper, very easy, just take a square sheet, turn it so it is a rhombus or diamond-shape, then fold in the four corners to meet the middle).

My son's narration is the middle part.  I find it easier to have him do narrations if we have a picture to start with, which is how I use the notebook pages I made. 

On each flap I put origami paper cut in triangles, and put some fact about Mohammed's life or importance, using the facts from Heritage History's bio page. 

Page 2:   Mohammed Review, and map showing spread of Islam.

Still using the Mohammed Mini-Workbook linked above.
I used origami paper for decoration.

Right:  Map showing the spread of Islam during the century following Mohammed's death.  

Left:  

The fold on the left is a vocabulary shutter book.  It's basically like this and again, very easy to make; you just fold some paper lengthwise in three, then cut however many divisions you want on the right.

I put review questions in here but am going to have Paddy fill out when we do term review.

A couple of visuals inside the shutter book -- both from the Mohammed notebook pages linked above.

A timeline (presently blank) accordion-folded on the front of the review book. 

Page 3:   Charles Martel (see printable at the top of the post).

Overview of page:

Left:   Charles Martel narration (with some pictures)

It is a modified flap book... you can see it has a flap that goes up and one that goes sideways.
My son's narration.

Right:  Another Quilt fold (I hadn't tried those before so was experimenting).
I used origami paper from my "stash" (luckily I have lots of decorative paper scraps around the house).  

Inside was a simple flap with my son's narration about the "Do-Nothing" kings. 
Flap open:

The flap inside the quilt, closed now.

 On this page is also a timeline and a map, but they were simple enough so I am not going to describe them in detail. 

My vacation time is almost over, so I will probably not be inflicting these on you daily for very much longer.   However, it has been very fun to do them and write about them.     I think this form of notebooking will be a permanent addition to our homeschool because:

1) it is a creative outlet for me (I don't quilt or knit or scrapbook or anything like that, at least not right now).

2) it inspires Aidan to be creative with his own paper stash.

3) It seems like a natural way to review and consolidate things that we are studying in the homeschool -- working on these is a sort of informal "lesson plan" for me since it allows me to focus on what I want the children to learn, or remember that they have learned.

4) it allows me to take material from lots of sources without getting confused.  Priceless, as they say.

A Division Lapbook for Paddy

This was my second try at a lapbook.  I was still learning how to make the folds and arrange things on the page.  This one is about division, for Paddy.

Most of the booklets inside the lapbook are from the Division Lapbook-- for free at HomeschoolShare

The envelope-looking thing on the right middle is a multiplication chart.  I made it using a double four corner fold (sounds harder than it was).  You can fold it outwards if you need help with the math facts. 

This is the cover of the lapbook.  I have tried and tried to find where I got this cut and paste house model.   But no go.  I learned from this to keep track of the links I followed!  Meanwhile, if you know where it's from, please tell me so I can give credit.  It made a really cute lapbook cover. 

Having tried both, I like notebooking the mini-books rather than lapbooking with a file folder, but Math seems like a natural for the File Folder layout.   It would be easier to carry around as a reference or "mini-office".   Grammar and making something for a picture book study also seem good for the file folder layout.    My plan is that my children do more of their own over time and then they can choose which format they prefer.  Right now I am just making a bunch of them because I need to get familiar with the how-tos and also I think they need to be able to touch examples before they will have any desire to create their own.