Week 16

Did we really just finish up week 16 already?? Wow, time does fly! We had a great day today at CC, and here is a summary of what we did:

Latin: We just went over imperfect tense with the song.

English: This is a strange story, and it does change the words somewhat, but it really helped my kids learn it this past week---but we put an emphasis on the words and not the story.

To what extent will the advert aardvark make a "not (knot)" while she is trying to "so (sew), too (two) very rather" red dresses that are "quite" cute and "somewhat" small?
We also heard Mrs. Jennifer sing the song her family does for this----feel free to do what works best for your family.

Math: I threw pies in their faces (well, not exactly LOL). I have a pie with the pi symbol on it and around the edge it says 3.14. Then for the sentence we sang to the tune "The Wheels On The Bus"...

The area of a circle is
pi r squared
pi r squared
pi r squared
The area of a circle is
pi r squared
for all circles.
We are actually going to build another verse next week for this song too.

History: My we had some fun acting this out today. I must say that Luke made the cutest darn Hitler ever! We acted it out and sang the song.

Geography: We used a story about a greasy car. The car started off in Greece (hence the car is greasy). From there "all" cars have "mania" and go to Albania. Then the car looked at them and yelled "YOU GO!" and they had to go to Yugoslavia. From there the car decided to go "roam" around Romania. And lastly the car went to his favorite "area" in Bulgaria.

Time Line: We went over the timeline and the hand motions.

Science: I had hand gestures to correspond. We used the sign language "o" to be our object. For rest we put our hands to our head like we were laying down to nap. An object in motion, we just moved our o hand. then we made a straight line and pretended to run for "constant speed" and then using our other hand we came into contact with our o hand as the outside force.

Also I showed them pictures of a soccer ball at rest and we discussed how it wouldn't move on it's own. Then someone kicking the ball and how the ball would keep flying through the air in a straight line until it either hits the net (and outside force acting upon it) or another player got it, etc.

Science Lab: We reiterated Newton's First Law of Motion with some activities. The first (and a favorite) was to get a cup and put a note card on top and a penny on top of that. By flicking the card off we were able to witness how an object at rest "the penny" would remain at rest (by staying in the same place), but the object in the motion (the card) did all the moving---except the penny fell into the cup. Each child brought their penny home and I am sure they will be anxious to show off their new trick :)

We also tried to hit an X on the floor with a ball as we ran past it as fast as we could and had to calculate when to drop the ball to land on that x. This sounds easier than it is.

Fine Arts: We talked about Monet while we painted with water colors and tried to use short brush strokes as Monet was famous for with his impressionistic style of painting. Beautiful art work was created once again!!

A Mom asked me to discuss some of the things we may use at home extra to reiterate the lessons and I will try to add those to these posting too in case they may be helpful for you all. The library of course is a huge reference for us. I look ahead and try to reserve at the library books on the subjects we will be studying. If there are movies that go along with our history in particular too we will try to watch one. This week we watched The Diary of Ann Frank. My children were not thrilled about watching it because I did forewarn them that she died, but we made them watch it anyway, because like it or not it is true life and what happened. It made an impression on my children and brought WW2 to life in a different dimension for them.

Otherwise, I keep on our frig the CC for the week (on C3, if you joined, you can print out the whole week on two sheets---which takes up less space). I will ask them about it when making breakfast, we will sing the songs, tell stories or whatever we came up with for each subject. When making dinner, lunch, etc. I spend much of my day in the kitchen it seems so it made sense for me to put it there. We listen to the CD all the time in the car. The resource CD is great too and I always read the history highlights to them (or my oldest will read it to us). I have to get better at reading behind the time line cards. We usually pick one or two that spark the most interest and read those. We look things up online as well. I am a visual learner, as is my oldest, so I try to have pictures to spark memory. That may be overkill for some, but it works well for us.

I hope that helped some. Keep in mind too that CC is on a 3 year loop, so they will have this same material again in 3 years and you can always build upon it then---this is the foundation we are laying. These children never cease to amaze me though with how much they can retain and how they really do "get it". For instance, while watching the Diary of Ann Frank, my children understood that when they were talking about how Hitler had his sights on Poland that the war was going to begin when he invaded. They were also able to follow the years as they were displayed at the bottom and knew how much longer the war was to take place. Also, in that movie there is a scene of Ann in school learning about the area of a circle and both my kids immediately broke out into our song for that.

Feel free to post comments if you have found something that is a great supplement or something that works great for you all as it may very well be a great help to someone else!

Have a wonderful week and I look forward to seeing you all next week!
Blessings,
Stacey