Apostles Lapbook

I had thought—a long time ago, when I first heard of them—that lapbooks sounded so fun and practical and creative all at once and, as such...I felt quite intimidated by them. (I blame the perfectionist in me.) But recently, Dylan and I had the opportunity to make our very first lapbook during the course of our ongoing habitat studies, and we loved it! It was very simple, but informative, and Dylan and I were both so pleased with our work. Thinking we would definitely like to make another in the near future, I ventured out to OfficeMax over the weekend to resupply our stock of paper products, markers, stickers, file folders...all items that I thought might be of value in future endeavors.

Happily, we made the decision yesterday to make a lapbook about the Apostles! As a family, we had memorized the names of the twelve last summer (during the course of Vacation Bible School, when Father would quiz the children at the opening session each morning to see who could name them all) but over time, we'd begun to forget a few. As it happened, one of the topics of our Bible Study last week was the Apostles, and so we tried again to see if we could name them all. (One of us failed miserably; I won't say which of us.) We thought a nice little lapbook would be a wonderful resource to easily review, and we LOVE the way it turned out!

I found so many wonderful lessons online from which I selected our components, but there was so much more we could have included! This site had many pages from which to choose, and is, in fact, where I found a nice printable story about the Apostles. We taped one half of a blue file folder into the inside of our lapbook, providing us with an extra "page", and it was on the cover of this that we glued our story.

Behind that page, (or flap? I'm sure there's an actual term for it) we taped a pretty scene that Dylan had colored. I added the text in Microsoft Word because I liked the wave-like effect: "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of Men." I had found a cute little song that I thought would aid in memorization, so that's included here, too. We dressed it up with a little sailboat scene, and we liked that big fish so much that I used it as a guide in drawing twelve more smaller versions, each bearing the name of an apostle, to adorn each side flap. (I'm sure I'm not explaining any of this very well. I hope the photos provide a better visual explanation. You can click them for a better view.)

We had so much fun making this lapbook! I can't believe it took us so long to try making one! I love that the creative opportunities they provide are virtually endless, limited only to the imagination, and I can't wait to see what we come up with next!