Create Your Own Catholic Lent Lapbook

Preview: Help your students to have an organized, focused, and intentional Lent by creating your own Catholic Lent Lapbook. Using the Bible, students will learn about the events of Holy Week. They will also focus on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving for kids. Stations of the Cross mini cards will be helpful as they pray this devotion. Read more and see this beautiful resource up close. 

Have you ever wanted a more focused and intentional Lent? That is my hope every year - sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. 

Not only do I want this for me, but I want it for my students. I wanted them to learn about Lent, some of the things we do in the Catholic Church during Lent, and the events of Holy Week that are so important to what we believe. I also wanted them spending time with their Bibles and encountering Jesus in what they read/heard.

In order to make this a reality for my first graders, I created a Catholic Lent Lapbook that does just this. Students will journey through Lent using this organized tool in class and at home with their parents during their at home lessons. It will make an awesome resource for them to refer back to regularly during Lent. As we approach Holy Week, they will learn more about the events of that week by studying Matthew. 

While I was creating this, I knew I wanted it to work for more than just first graders. Older students could benefit from these same activities only on a deeper level. Because of this, I created multiple versions of some of the activities so students can work at their ability level and have the same outcome.

Keep reading to find out exactly how to create your own Catholic Lent Lapbook.

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Prepping Lent Lapbooks

Supplies Needed:

The following supplies would be helpful for creating these beautiful lapbooks.

File Folders (I used purple)
Scissors
Glue or glue stick
Crayons
Hole Punch (optional)
Book Ring (optional)
Stapler
Lent Lapbook Printables
The Catholic Children's Bible by St. Mary Press

A few notes about prepping lapbooks:

• Depending on the age of your students and the amount of time you have to assemble the Lent Lapbooks, you could cut out the pieces for them ahead of time. 
• If they are going to color anything that will be glued down, I recommend coloring before gluing.
• Glue sticks will work for this and probably be the least messy option, but sometimes as glue sticks dry, the pieces can fall off and need to be re-reglued. Pick whatever works best for your students.

Assembling Lent Lapbooks

*Scroll to the bottom of this post to see a video of a lapbook being assembled*

You can assemble these Lapbooks from beginning to end so students have a completed book to use during Lent. You could also add pieces throughout Lent as you learn about them and work on them. Then by the end of Lent, they will have a complete book. Completely up to you and how you want to introduce it. For young students, you may want to break up the assembly into multiple days so it doesn't become overwhelming.

First, take your file folder and open it up. Fold the left side to the center and crease. Fold the right side to the center and crease. You should now have 4 columns. We are going to treat the middle two columns as one section.

Next decide what cover you want to use (2 options included) and glue that to the front left flap and glue the name and year section to the right flap.

Your cover is now complete. Make sure students write their name on these so that they don't get mixed up or lost.

Choose the countdown to Easter page that you want to use. Cut it out and glue it to the top of the center section.

There are two options available. One has 40 Days of Lent which is the term we often hear. This would not include Sundays. The other option has 46 days so students could color a box for each day between Ash Wednesday and Easter.

Next, cut apart the Ash Wednesday and Lenten Promise pages and stack them by height. Staple these at the top so that they make a stacked flip book.

Have students read about Ash Wednesday. Then have a discussion about prayer, fasting and almsgiving. If your students are younger, maybe create a list on the board or anchor chart with different ideas for each category.

Have students decide what they would like to do for each of these three categories this year for Lent. Write them on the appropriate sheet.

Glue this under the Lent countdown page.

For the next step, students will make an envelope to keep their Stations of the Cross Cards in. Lay this flat with the words face down and crease on all of the dotted lines. Fold in the two side pieces and put glue on them. Fold up the part with the words and press down where the glue is. Fold the flap down but do not glue it so students can get into the envelope regularly.

Wait until this envelope is completely dry before gluing the back on to the file folder. Also, you might want to use some tape to reinforce the sides since students will be sliding cards out of this. Glue sticks on two sides might not be enough to hold it together.

Color and cut apart the Stations of the Cross cards. Put them in number order and then staple the top corner or hole punch the top corner and clip them together with a small metal book ring. 

Next up, you will need to decide what version of the mini books you want to use for your students. The read, write, draw is designed for younger students.

Read - students will read (or be read to) from the book of Matthew
Write - students will refer back to what they just read and fill in the blanks.
This text came directly from The Catholic Children's Bible from St. Mary Press. You can use other translations, just know that the wording may be off slightly.
Draw - students will draw a picture of what they read in that passage.

This format is the same for Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter.

For the more advanced version, students will be reading the same scripture passages, but they will have more writing to do (in a small space so this is better for older students.)

Bible - Read the passage from Matthew

Retell - write what happened in that passage and then draw what happened on the back

Connection - write a response to the question and draw a picture on the back. These will be questions connecting the event to modern day, placing the child in the story, reflecting on the events in the passage, etc.

For both version of the mini book, you will staple them on the left side and glue the back page to the file folder so students can still open the books and reference them.

This is a completed version of the more challenging option. Use whatever version works best for your students. You could even mix and match them for your class so that each student is working at their own level but on the same text.

Here is the more simplified version. This will be the version I use with my first graders. Many struggle to write multiple sentences at this point so doing written retellings in a small space would be too frustrating for them, but I wanted to include both versions so a variety of ages could enjoy these lapbooks.

Purchasing a Catholic Lent Lapbook

Are you ready for you and your students to have a Lent that is

• more organized?
• more focused?
• more scripture based?

Then the Catholic Lent Lapbook is for you!

Buy the digital download on my store to get the printable templates and step by step directions (with pictures included.)

Buy Catholic Lent Lapbook HERE

Check out this video of me assembling a Catholic Lent Lapbook. It is sped up so you can see the whole thing in under a minute.