The Purple Mantle Lapbooks

We had so much fun with the Kit Kittredge lapbooks I decided to try another one. This time all of the kids did them and we based them on a novel called The Purple Mantle which we'd been reading together for History. The novel was an excellent portrait of the persecution of the Christians during the reign of Diocletian in Rome. So we used our lapbooks to portray what we learned both historically about that time period and spiritually about the various martyrs and their means of martyrdom.
We started with a map of the Roman Empire as it stood at the time and a biographical book about Diocletian (who actually started out as a slave).
We had a section on Roman dress of the period. The little people are sporting the various fabrics worn - silk for the women, wool for the men and linen for the underwear. Oh yeah, I scored some serious Mom Points for the whole underwear thing. We also had an accordion book showing how to wear a toga and a little matchbook folder about the purple dye used and its origins (snail snot - scored some points for that one too):
Each of the lapbooks had a gallery of martyrs we read about in the book. We made a list for each one of facts they could incorporate and they each chose which facts to put in their own elements. We tried to get an icon of each one and some of them have the Athakist hymn as well. Ben wanted to show off his drawing of (I think this is) Nicomedia in the arena:
The next one is the Flower of Martyrdom. I liked the way the shape of this book lent itself to looking like a flower with petals that could open up:
Inside the flower we put the words the Christians would use to encourage one another - "Stand fast in the faith" - and on each petal is an instrument of martyrdom - wild animals, the rack, crucifixion, fire....Nice, huh?
This one shows what they looked like completely opened up:
I didn't have any source material for this one so I had to hunt down my own. I probably infringed on some copyrighted material so I can't really distribute the elements for anyone else's use but I can let you know my sources for the information. I got the templates for the elements from this free, exceedingly helpful, site. I think they turned out really nice. Most of the kids enjoyed doing them (I had one reluctant participant and the younger ones couldn't handle doing all the elements so theirs' are more sparse). I challenged myself to let them do the cutting and writing and arranging and what-not themselves and not meddle in their affairs (even when it was at times painful to watch). But this made it much more than just a History lesson. It also became OT and language therapy time too!