Anyways, back to the Lap Book! That brief study-guide/outline I shared in my last post (to go along with the Lap Book) was created very late Sunday night (or rather early Monday morning) and was thrown together rather quickly since I wanted to finish up the post to share with you all. I broke it into 5 "Units" (my original document read days, due to lack of sleep) based on the order in which I thought I would have my children complete the mini-books.

Since last Friday, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, we have been working on our first unit: St. Peter, The First Pope. The boys were gone most of Friday, but the girls had started working on their St. Peter's Basilica Pop-up Books that day, and we read St. Peter's Story. We continued this theme over the past few days.

To answer some questions I've been receiving I thought it might be helpful to some of you to share how my children have been completing this Unit Study and the progress we have been making. Plus I would like to document it here anyways. I am hoping to blog a little about what we accomplish during each of the units.
(Remember, there is no "right" way to do this... Unit studies can be as simple or elaborate as you choose to make them, and just because something works well for my family, doesn't mean it will for yours! Sometimes we put together a Lap Book in an afternoon, other times we spend weeks. My guess is we will spend the next two weeks completing this unit study and Lap Book, adding in additional reading, crafts and activities.)
Unit One :: St. Peter, The First Pope
Read:
Family Read Aloud:
Younger Children:
- St. Peter the Apostle by Father Lovasik
- St. Peter's Story
- Peter Receives the Primacy from The New Catholic Picture Bible
- The First Christians: The Acts of Apostles for Children
- The Primacy of Peter from My Catholic Faith (link to online version)
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 551-553 (my document)
Other Reading:
- St. Peter page A Holy Card Prayer Book
- I think I'm going to send the little kids on a scavenger hunt to see how many of our Saint Books in which they can find Saint Peter! ;)
Explore:
- "Delivery of the Keys" Fresco by Pietro Perugino in 1482 - Sistine Chapel, Rome, Italy
- Virtual Tour of St. Peter's Basilica (Vatican Website - Loved this!)
- St. Peter's Basilica Interactive Website
- Of course my children had to find it on Google Earth too! :)
Copywork:
- Copy Matthew 16: 18-19 on to "The Primacy of Peter. (I added a traceable version for younger children, including my little ones.)

NOTE: I have created a second collection on Scribd where I will upload any additional documents I create to go along with our Papal Unit Study. I just added this traceable quote for younger children.


Begin Creating Lap Book Mini-Books:
- Write a Paragraph about St. Peter, for Some Special Popes, based on one of the reading assignments. (I'm creating a fill-in the blank for Chiquita and a reduced sized coloring picture for the two youngest. Twinkle Toes wrote a paragraph based on a picture book, Rascal used the reading selection from My Catholic Faith, and I assigned Captain three paragraphs from the CCC (You can download my document here.).
- Create St. Peter's Basilica Pop-Up Book and add cover picture.
- Write a Paragraph about St. Peter's Basilica.
A Beautiful Day at St. Peter's Basilica by Captain

Lightning Strikes St. Peter's by Rascal (He cracks me up! I figured one of my boys would try and figure a way to create a pop-out lightning strike...)
After the Storm by Twinkle Toes
by Snuggles
PURPLE! by Rose (I would have guessed pink...)
Additional Activities:
- We made St. Peter's Keys...
- Enjoyed "The Barque of Peter" Banana Boats with a Fishers of Men Snack for lunch one afternoon...
- Played St. Peter Fishers of Men and checked to see who could still master the Key Puzzle Brain Teaser our 2012 "O Key" Antiphon gift...
- Colored St. Peter and the Keys during some of our read aloud time...
- And added St. Peter, The First Pope to the History Through the Ages Record of Time. (FYI: Yes, this is a rather expensive timeline, but it is awesome! Each of our school age children have their own treasured copy that they will continue to add to throughout their education. It will be such a fun keepsake for them. I've posted more about these here and here.)
by Twinkle Toes
By Chiquita and Captain
A few of the children still have a little writing to finish up, but tomorrow, we will begin our second unit on Our Holy Fathers - Past and Present, as we say goodbye to our dear Pope Benedict XVI on his last day... We will miss you dear Holy Father, so very much! We will continue to pray for you, and we are so very thankful for that last gift you recently sent our way!
i love the lessons that include the entire family. very inspiring. i will have to settle to live vicariously through you for the time being. thank you for that blessing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for much for posting your "lapbooking" endeavors - it sure does help to see how you are all creating it!!!
ReplyDeleteWatching Papa in the helicopter on his way to Castle Gondalfo now... Going to MISS Papa Benedetto!!!!!! I hope we are blessed with another humble and holy Papa as his successor!!
Once again, thank you for your posts. Somewhere in one of them you had the adopt a cardinal site. We went there as a family. If you have a minute, go over to my blog and read the post about it. You'll probably get a kick out of it.
ReplyDeleteMy children and I really and truly appreciate all the time and effort you put into this blog and the wonderful ideas you give us. May God continue to bless you and your beautiful family.
I really like those timeline books too! We've decided that they will be something each child will be given when they reach 5th grade. I am so pleased with their quality and how they have the pages laid out.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your peek into how you're putting together the lapbook in your home! We're going to start ours on Monday and I am going to spend some time planning and printing this afternoon/evening.
Jessica, do you sleep train your children? I know this is a very off-hand question, but I just don't understand how you accomplish so much in one day and one week! Does baby sleep through the night? Or is the schedule so set that it maximizes time and talent? Either way, it's all very beautiful and I pray for many blessings upon you all, as you have so blessed our home! Just looking for some pointers, though!
ReplyDeleteI'm not exactly sure what you mean by sleep train, but I don't think so... My "baby" (who is now nearly 15 months) still wakes up wanting to nurse during the night (about half the time now, so he is getting better), and my schedule is not set whatsoever. I feel like I am able to get the most accomplished when we are able to be flexible, though I do try and use schedules as a guide/goal. But I do love love love my checklists! (and the big kids love their's too!)
DeleteHow did you make the tracing copywork? I use Startwrite on my computer to make copywork tracing, but I don't know that I could get it into another template... but how handy that would be if I could!
ReplyDeleteI have a font on my computer! Love it!! :)
DeleteI have all the black and white pages printed and I am almost done sending the color pages to Staples to print... and it all looks wonderful! I am so excited. :-) I posted a little about how I'm breaking down the first unit on my blog, if anyone is interested. http://flareoflight.blogspot.com/2013/02/sede-vacante-and-papal-lapbook-plan.html
ReplyDeleteimpressive.
ReplyDeleteLove the Papal lap books! Once again, I wish I was a student in your homeschool class! What a delightful way to learn! Your young ones are so blessed to have you as a mom!
ReplyDeleteThis is amazing!! Thank you so much for all you did!! You don{t need to reply to me, I just wanted to let you know I appreciate your time and creativity! We are doing your beautiful lapbook !!
ReplyDeleteI shared this post here:http://familiacatolica-org.blogspot.com/2013/03/imprimibles-en-ingles-y-actividades.html
Thank you Jessica! Thought you might like to see what we managed this week:)
ReplyDeletehttp://sevenlittleaustralians.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/papal-notebook-thou-art-peter.html
actually we converted your lapbook into a notebook, as that works well for us. Thank you and God Bless!!{{}}
We are enjoying this activity SO MUCH, Jessica! Thank you for the guided updates you've been providing...and, once again, thank you---from the bottom of my heart----for so GENEROUSLY sharing your time & talents with us! Words simply cannot express the gratitude I feel in my heart! God Bless you AND your beautiful family!
ReplyDeleteYou are very welcome! I am so glad that everyone seems to be enjoying it!! :)
DeleteI love the St. Peter lesson ideas! I cannot seem to find the pop-up Basilica though. Is this available to download from your site? Thank you so much for your inspiring ideas and generous spirit! God Bless!
ReplyDeleteI somehow missed responding to this comment... You can find the link to the pop-up Basilica in this post or here on Scribd.
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