I wanted to find a fun way to teach my kids about rosary. I also wanted to have some visuals to teach them about all the different mysteries of the rosary, so we came up with these paper bag books. We love to work on crafty stuff, and you can find all of my crafty rosary resources for kids here.
These were a lot of fun to make and I think they came out really cute! To make your own paper bag book, you just take paper lunch bags, fold them in half, and staple them up the side. We used 4 bags for ours, faced all the open bag ends to one side, and folded them in half. I think it would also be cute to punch holes and tie the sides up with ribbon, but I couldn’t find our hole puncher.
Your motivation to make the book out of paper bags rather than regular paper is to create little pockets in the pages so that you can add pull tabs like this:
We used 4 paper bags stacked together and folded in half so that we would have 4 pocket pages- one for each different set of the mysteries of the rosary. You just cut some square paper in the right size to fit inside the page, and then staple a piece of ribbon on for pulling it out.
We actually got stickers of all the mysteries of the rosary at Dollar Tree! (They were with the Easter stuff. They’re not labeled, so you have to know what you’re looking at). If you don’t have these stickers, you could just print images online for each mystery. (Under Her Starry Mantle has 20 good size depictions of each mystery of the rosary from the great masters! Find them here!)
Lydia chose all different colored scrapbooking paper to make her mysteries of the rosary pages, and different colors of ribbon for each page. So cute!
Post continues after this brief information about the Catholic Icing Monthly Membership
Monthly Liturgical Membership
Perfect for families! Each month you gain access to printable activity pages, crafts, home altar pieces, and more.
Never has living the liturgical year been so easy and affordable!
I tried to match my papers to the feeling of each set of mysteries. So I chose a paper that seemed joyful, sorrowful, luminous, and glorious. Be sure to stagger your ribbons so they stick out at different places on the side of your book.
We wrote in the mysteries of the rosary on the pages where to pull tabs went. Here’s one of Lydia’s pages:
At the front of the book we wrote our “Rosary Prayers”. Here are the pictures from my book in order so you can just see what we put on each page. It would be a lot easier to print out the prayers and mysteries so you could just cut and glue them into your pages, but we wrote them out because my printer is broken.
Each page from front to back:
(on the back)
I just absolutely love this rosary craft! If you’ll see on the pages with the prayers, we cut out paper that looks like the beads that match our beginner rosaries. You could also pair these books with my easy rosary craft.
I just love how bright and cheery the colors of Lydia’s rosary book are!
I am obsessed with this new idea of making paper bag books, so I’m sure you’ll see some more here soon! I’m obsessed with our paper bag puppets, too. Apparently, I have a thing for paper bags. 😉
If you’re wondering why there are about one million pictures of these books, it’s because on Friday I lost my camera and yesterday I was able to get a new one, so I’m having fun with my new “toy”. 🙂 I did lose a lot of pictures when I lost my camera, which is why there are no pictures of this craft “in progress”, and is also why I haven’t posted since last Thursday. I have several things left to re-photograph still! I’m hoping to find the time this week!
Absolutely love this! I've been looking for those stickers at DT for a while now– think I may just have to break down and make some printables 🙂 Thanks for sharing!
very very cute. I love this idea!!
Cute idea. It's too bad my Dollar Tree never has any of the goodies everyone else seems to find. They must be hiding them somewhere!
I got these stickers just last week, and now I know just what to do with them! I also picked up a set that are the Stations of the Cross. Thanks for this great idea!
So lovely!
This will be my craft item for May to do with my children at the church but I'm not sure I'll get to do this in 1:30h, maybe a little bit each Sunday. Thanks for sharing! I`m in love for your blog!!!
wow!! so creative!! I love it!!
Thank you so very much for sharing this idea!! I LOVE your blog!! Blessings to you and your sweet family! :O)
Great ! I love it. I was able to find those stickers last year at DT! My kids would like something like this! Thank you.
Great craft!!
Lacey dear you are a genius. Love it.
This would be great for First Communion and First Confession preparation!! I love it!
Thank you!
I love this craft!…Does the closed end of the bag just fold into the book (or at the back?)
I'd love to use these cool Mysteries of the Rosary pictures I have on some of those paper bag pages, but I like how you included the prayers and the names of the Mysteries.
When you said Dollar Tree I thought, "I wonder if they have them here?" And they did! And I found the Stations of the Cross, too! My mom was so excited when I told her about this project, she wants to come and make one with us. She's 70 years old and she thought it looked like a lovely idea. You made my Monday much better! Thanks….
Sharon
Lacy~How in the world did you think of this??? Fabulosa idea! Being a Dollar Tree addict, I haven't seen those stickers! I'm on a mission now. LOL Thanks a million and all God's blessings to you:-)
You are awesome!! LOVE IT!!!
Blessing and thank you for sharing…
Michelle
I am always looking for crafts to do with my 4th grade students. Not being real crafty myself, I will often find a craft that is a little too easy for the kids…but not me!! Anyway, can you put an age group on the crafts for simpletons such as me?
Thanks for your GREAT, GREAT ideas and time!! Blessings!
Great idea! Perfect craft to reinforce learning the rosary for my 7 yo who is receiving First Communion this year.
BTW, have you made a St. Joseph's puppet yet? (Would be great to see what you come up with for this month of St. Joseph!)
This is such an awesome craft! Thanks! (=
I Love this rosary book. I think it's cute. Well, you inspired me to make rosary book like this one!
This is so great!! Thank you so much for this craft idea. We were just studying the rosary so it'll be perfect. I love it!! I've been wondering how to teach my son the mysteries, this is perfect. Thanks again 🙂 God bless!
Hey Lacy! ust wanted to let you know that I think your new camera takes some awesome pictures! I love this idea and may try it with my boys this summer. Also, I am planning a little fun for our REP kids for Divine Mercy Sunday inspired by a lot of stuff on your blog. Hopefully I will be able to make up and post and there will be tons of links to you! Have fun and keep the ideas coming!!
This is a fantastic project, I cannot wait to do it with my daughter.
Cannot express to you how much I LOVE Catholic Icing. It's very inspiring!!! :0)
You've come up with such a smart idea. As we all know most kids nowadays don't have time with memorizing all the mysteries and with what you've made at least they'll now be more interested.
Buy WoW Accounts
I am getting ready to do this craft with my daughter; we just found the stickers at DT today. She's just starting to read, but already asks questions about her Daddy's rosary. Since he is frequently away for work, this will be perfect for helping answer some of her questions as I am the non-Catholic in the family.
My son's first grade class made these as an end-of-the-year treat after I sent this great blog to his teacher. Thanks for the inspiration… 24 happy little 7 year olds proudly took their prayers home today!
What a neat idea and so simple! I can’t wait to make one with my daughter. Thank you so much for posting this.
Great idea.. will try it with my group
Ah, mas vocês são muito criativos! Parabéns!
Thanks so much for posting this! I’ve been looking for a way to teach my fourth grade religious ed students the rosary and it’s not easy to find cool ways! We will begin working on this next week!
Thank you very much for this wonderful idea! God bless you!
Fantastic idea! We did this today and it turned out great! Thank you for sharing
Complimenti! Bellissima idea! Proverò a realizzarla anche io. Grazie
these are adorable, I am going have my girls make these & my added brainstorm, which I’m gonna try to implement, is to put 10 beads on the front with a string from top to bottom, to help with the counting!! we always have tons of beads around here!! lol
Awesome and very interesting
This is a cute idea for the kids!
Awesome idea!
You have some really wonderful ideas! Thank you for sharing. I enjoy getting your newsletter