Prayer Books

(1 Kings 19)

This week I combined two pins from pinterest to create mini prayer books: The Single Paper Book by James Darrow and the Gratitude Journal from Lulu the Baker. Our lesson was on Elijah and how he prayed to God to let him die so Jezebel would not kill him. We talked about how God does not always answer our prayers. He knows what is best for us and sometimes it is difficult for us to see His plan.

Since Thanksgiving is on the horizon, I thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about the importance of thanking God in our prayers every day for the blessings he has given us. Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in our troubles, or the things we want, and forget to say thank you. These journals can be a way to refocus our prayers.

The students embraced this craft and quickly threw in their own ideas. One child wrote the names of the important people in her life in her book so she could remember to pray for them every day. She titled it, "People I love". 

We were so involved in making our books that time ran out and I did not get a picture of most of them. It was an unusually large class this time ( :D Yea!) and most kids wanted to make more than one, so we were quite busy. 

Materials needed (per book):

1 sheet of plain white paper 8 1/2" x 11"
1 sheet of decorative paper cut to 8 1/2" x 5 1/2"
1 plain sticker
Scissors
Markers/Pens

Instructions:

Pages:



1. Fold paper in half vertically. Open.

2. Fold paper in half horizontally. Open.

3. Fold each outside edge to the middle. Open.

4. Fold in half horizontally again. With the folded edge on the bottom, cut from the folded edge, on the vertical fold line, only to the next horizontal line.

5. Stand paper up so it looks like a tent. The cut should be smiling up at you (vertically).

6. Pull the fold lines along either side of the slit to open the mouth. (This photo shows the paper rotated from the above pic.)

7. The pages should come together. Crease the fold lines to make the pages form smoothly. This pic is looking down on top of the open pages.

 Cover:
8. Open the book pages. Place the decorative paper face down with the open book on top. Using the book as a guide, fold the top and bottom of the cover paper so the book fits snuggly inside.

9. Remove the book leaving the top and bottom folds down. Place the book on top of the folded paper. Once again using the book as a guide, fold the left and right sides so the book fits snuggly inside.

10. Remove the book again. Now insert the first and last pages of the book inside the left and right folds as shown.

11. Between the cover and the pages should look like this.

12. Fold the book in half to crease the cover. Place a sticker on the front and decorate.

NOTE:  All images, text and printables contained herein are copyright protected. This material is for your personal use only. I encourage you to print or pin from this site whenever you would like as long as it is credited and linked back to EasyBreezySundaySchool.blogspot.com. Failure to link back and credit my site constitutes a copyright violation.  Thanks so much!