Papal Lap Book Unit One: St. Peter, The First Pope

Thank you all so very much for your enthusiastic support for my Papal Lap Book!   You all are the best, and I am so touched by all of your kind comments and generosity to my family!   Since I spent so much time on the computer over the weekend I've had a little catching up to do around our home, in addition to trying to keep up with our school week, so I am once again extremely behind with answering emails.  If you are still waiting for a response from me, do know that I usually do receive all the emails that have been sent (on occasion some disappear to my spam folder, but I am making an effort to check it frequently) and read and appreciate each and every one.  However, even though I try, it is often impossible for me to respond to them all.  So thank you again, and to those who have asked questions I will either email you soon, or try and make a point of trying to blog about those topics sometime in the future.  :)

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:

• Lost in Peter's Tomb
• The Man Who Never Died: The Life and Adventures of St. Peter the First Pope

Younger Children:

• St. Peter the Apostle by Father Lovasik
• St. Peter's Story
• Peter Receives the Primacy from The New Catholic Picture Bible

Older Children:

• 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 Chiquita 

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!