Pilgrim's Progress Lapbook

Pilgrim's Progress has entered into a few conversations recently in our home, and I had an inspiration to use this for our Bible time for a while. We will read the book, some of the corresponding Scriptures, memorize a verse a week, and put together a lapbook as we go.



Spark Notes -- study guide for the book. This is not from a Christian perspective so they misinterpret the main message of the book (in my opinion), but it is a good starting point to gain a literary understanding of Pilgrim's Progress.

Ambleside Online -- has a number of links and suggestions for online copies, the best editions, and audio versions available as well.

Bunyan Ministries -- offers coloring pages that provide a perfect hands on activity for the preschool group

J. I. Packer -- wrote a book on the principles in the booklet. I could not get may hands on it, but anything I have read by him I have enjoyed, so I need to keep my eye out for this one.

A Sunday school curriculum -- This builds around Pilgrim's journey and has some fun ideas for acitivities and such. At first it threw me off because it is called the "CM curriculum." I was of course thinking Charlotte Mason, but no . . . I think they are referring to Children's ministry. :-)

Brief biography of John Bunyan -- This gave us enough of what we needed in terms of background and to complete a minibook about him. Just a short, one page summary.

Map of Pilgrim's journey -- we will use this for the cover of our lapbook, and a great reference throughout the reading.

Jimmie (lapbooker extraordinaire) offered a simple tool that helped me organize the actual material and my whirling thoughts into a workable lapbook.

Other products available for purchase if you want more to pull from, or even an organized curriculum to use:

Answers in Genesis -- a study guide combined with the original text of Pilgrim's Progress. This looks like a great resource if you like the all-in-one deals. It has discussion questions, a unit study design, and lots of extra information.

CurrClick -- not the lapbook I was hoping for, but a 127 page notebooking type resource designed for use with Pilgrim's Progress


The Plan:

12 weeks of reading.

• Reading 3 days each week, one day a week for review and more discussion or questions, and one day for extra lapbook work if needed. Each week we will also choose a game from the Sunday School curriculum as well. We may end up moving faster, but I get frustrated when I set my sights too high and end up taking twice as long.

• Ambleside recommended a text broken into 36 weeks, we will use this guideline for the amount we cover, reading three "weeks" each week.

• For our actual reading, we will most likely use this online text that includes the text of the Scriptures right in the body of the text. I may not read them all out loud, but I like the convenience of having them all right there.

Memory work

We will work on a verse at a time, reciting it a few times each morning until all of the children have it mastered. It was really hard to narrow this list down to the dozen or so verse I think my children can all learn in this amount of time. These are the verses I plan to use: Psalm 38:4, Isaiah 64:6, Titus 1:2, John 12:25, Matthew 7:14, Matthew 7:7, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Ephesians 1:13, Proverbs 6:6, Romans 8:37, Psalm 38:18, Proverbs 23:23, Proverbs 9:10, Revelation 22:14

The lapbook

We will construct a little of this each day (doing two to three mini-books each week), but I don't want it to be a distraction from the text and Scripture discussion either. When we did our parables lapbook at the start of the year it prompted great discussions, so I am excited about another Bible related lapbook.

Cover: The map of the journey. This printed fairly well. Some parts appear to small or unclear to read, but most of it is easy to follow.

Other Graphics (Original pictures from Pilgrim's Progress are in the Public Domain. There are not tons of them out there, but definitely enough to add some authenticity to the lapbooks):

• This site has a few choice pictures with subheadings and fitting quotes
• Another site with a more thorough selection of pictures.

I printed out multiple copies of many of the illustrations and numerous blank lapbook templates for the older kids to use on their own. I will help my kindergartener put hers together, and I will use the coloring pages from Bunyan Ministries for my preschooler to use.


Topics for minibooks:

• Author info
• Characters (I decided not to require my kids to do a mini book on each character, but rather to highlight ones that stand out to them as we go along. They should choose at least one a week, but can do more if they desire) - Pilgrim, Evangelist, Obstinate, Pliable, Help, Worldly Wiseman, Formalist, Hypocrisy, Discretion, Piety, Prudence, Charity, The Interpreter, Apollyon, Shining Ones, Faithful, Talkative, Mr. Byends, Hopeful, Giant Despair, Diffidence, Demas, Temporary
• Locations - (These are just some of the highlights) Destruction, Slough of Despond, Interpreter’s home, Valley of Humiliation, Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity, plain of Ease, Doubting Castle, Delectable Mountains, Enchanted Ground, land of Beulah, and Celestial City.
• Lessons taught
• Memory verses
• Symbolism (for the older kids)
• Themes
• What is an allegory?

I expect them to complete at least 25 mini-books (just over two each week). For the younger ones I will pre-make many of these, but the older kids can have more, but not complete, freedom to include and exclude what they want.


As the weeks go by I will try to post the progress on the lapbooks, and of course the finished product in March or April. I am interested to see how different each child's book is and to really dig into Pilgrim's Progress in this manner.