Training Happy Hearts: Get Your FREE PRINTABLE St. John Paul II Notebooking Page and Try an Instant Design Challenge

This week at our homeschool co-op my Problem Solving with the Saints class will be focusing on St. John Paul II.

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Chat, Storytime, and Scrapbooking Page

https://www.amazon.com/Story-Saint-John-Paul-II/dp/0819890138/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=traihapphear-20&linkId=dde1f60f9879d3d26499a321d0a8d40a

We'll open our class by reading about St. John Paul II, hopefully with The Story of Saint John Paul II: A Boy who Became Pope, if I can find where I laid my copy of it.

While I read, the children will take notes or draw pictures on a simple Saint John Paul II scrapbooking/notebooking page that I made and am sharing freely with you today. We'll also pause to chat about St. John Paul II and, perhaps, to take a movement break related to what we read.

As pictured above, notebooking page we will use has a photo of Saint John Paul II and lists his feast day and patronage. It also has a map where students can color in Poland (and Rome). I made this saint-specific page, because the more general notebooking pages that I had used in our first Problem Solving with the Saints class (which focused on St. Theodore Guerin) was well-received, but a bit challenging for the children in my class.

Because my students are young, they found writing out details such as the saint's feast day and patronages difficult, and, truly, just seemed to want to decorate and draw on their scrapbooking pages. Noting this, I decided to try a saint-specific page for our St. Kenneth class with pre-printed details. That went over well, so, now, each week, I am making new saint-specific pages. Should you want the general page, though, please feel free to click through the image below to find a link to it.

The Challenge

Back to the Saint John Paul II class plan now...

After we read, chat, and notebook about St. John Paul II, I will lay out the following supplies per team:

three sheets of newspaper
one roll of masking tape or clear tape
a measuring tape

I will explain that the number of newspaper sheets is symbolic and ask if the students can guess why the number three might be significant. (The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit within the Holy Trinity.)

I will then suggest that the tape, too, is symbolic - if we stick to and honor the tenets of our faith, as St. John Paul II did, we can join Jesus in Heaven one day, too.

Finally, I will offer our challenge specifications:

St. John Paul II loved God and nature and felt that mountains were a special place to meet God. Build a “mountain”(paper tower) using only three sheets of newspaper (to remind us of God – the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost -, who St. John Paul II loved so much). Your mountain must be self-standing and at least 27 inches high (one inch for each year Saint John Paul II was pope).

For further challenge, make your mountain even higher and see if it can stand without falling over for 84 seconds (one second for every year of St. John Paul II's life.)

The measuring tape can only be used to measure; it cannot be included as a part of the mountain.

http://traininghappyhearts.blogspot.com/2011/04/read-aloud-to-real-challenges-my-friend.html

I cannot wait to see what the children come up with. I imagine their mountains will be much like the Towers to Point to Heaven that children made in a prior Read Aloud to Real Challenges Co-op Class that I taught, one of which is pictured above.

Want to Try Other Problem Solving with the Saints Challenges?

Click through the mages below to see two more of our co-op plans and to access free printable challenge sheets.

http://traininghappyhearts.blogspot.com/2016/10/Saint-Kenneth-Design-Challenge.html

http://traininghappyhearts.blogspot.com/2016/10/Saint-Theodore-Guerin-Design-Challenge.html

I will (hopefully!) be sharing the challenge we did for St. Edward here soon, too.

How about Some All Saints Day Party Challenges, Too?

You may also appreciate some of the All Saints Day Party challenges we have enjoyed over the pas few years. Simply click through the post titles or images to find details and free printable challenge sheets.