Week 16

Greetings Students and Family,

 

 

 

 

Before I forget, I want to remind you that next week is Valentine's Day week and we are planning to take the last fifteen minutes of review time to exchange Valentines with our class mates.  It would also be fun for each student to bring in a Valentine mailbox or container to take their Valentines home in.  Have fun with this!  If any parent wants to make Valentine goodies for the class, that would be welcome.  I will probably make some mini cupcakes or cookies. 

 

Sammy, Brooke, and Anna-- we miss you and hope to see everyone next week!

 

On to the New Grammar!

 

History Sentence:

 

How World War II began.  I hung seven sentence strips on the wall, each with a different segment from the sentence/song.  We repeated the sentence seven times, each time removing one segment of the sentence so that students had to remember the missing piece.

 

Note:  It is easy for students to confuse the two year dates in the song.  Five and nine sound very similar.  I heard a lot of "World War II began in 1949 (should be 1939)..."  and "dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1935 (should be in 1945)..." etc.  Most children were familiar with the melody but make sure they are singing the years correctly! 

 

Timeline:

 

Age of Industry through Louisiana Purchase and Lewis and Clark Expedition.  We sang the timeline song and used the hand motions from CC Connected.

 

Note:  The portion of the timeline song from Age of Exploration and Age of Industry can be easy to interchange and I saw many if not all of our students doing this during review time.  Just a heads up for all to spend extra time on this part of the timeline song!

 

 

Geography: 

 

The Balkans.  We learned the Balkan countries in a circular order from Greece through Bulgaria by singing this song. 

 

I am sorry for the terrible singing-- I have a bit of a cold.  :)

 

Former Yugoslavia is a tricky country to learn on the map because it is inclusive of so many modern day countries and the modern day country outlines ARE shown on the map we use for CC.  (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, and Montenegro.)  Make sure students are including all of these tiny outlined countries when showing where former Yugoslavia was.  In class we took note of how Yugoslavia extends from Italy and the Adriatic Sea to Bulgaria and mostly keeps within the boundary of the Danube river except for one little "bump" where modern day Serbia is. 

 

Also, be sure to include the flat island of Crete as part of Greece and note that the panhandle of Greece extends to the Istanbul part of Turkey. 

 

 

English:

 

Definition of a verb.  The students paired up with buddies and acted out the definition of a verb by assuming a karate/ninja stance for "asserts an action."  Next, we calmly put our hands in front of us as if to pray to show a "state of being".  Then, we linked elbows with our partner to show "links two words together."  Then, one partner fell to the floor and the other partner helped him or her up to demonstrate "helps another verb."

 

 Science:

 

Newton's first law of motion.

 

I placed a long strip of painter's tape on the floor to represent a straight line and took turns rolling a softball on the straight line to each of the children (who acted as an outside force, stopping the ball) while we recited Newton's first law of motion again and again.  

 



 

 

 

 

 

Math:

 

The area of a rectangle.

 

Again I used painter's tape to label the width and length of our rectangular class table.  Students then marched around the rectangle chanting, "The area of a rectangle equals length times width."

 

 

 

Latin:

 

 

Imperfect Tense.

 

 

Repeated from last week with hand motions.

 

 

 Fine Arts:

 

Claude Monet.  Monet was considered the father of impressionism.  We learned he also had a bit of a temper and would burn paintings when he didn't like the way they turned out or he would throw them in the water.  He loved his home on the River Seine, with its beautiful gardens, and would not move even when he could hear the gunfire of WWI close to his home.

 

 

 

Students tried their hand at impressionism painting by dabbing and blobbing to create the impression of a flower or the impression of a tree rather than using brush strokes to add detail like petals and leaves.  I wish I had brought my camera downstairs to get a picture because I thought everyone did beautiful recreation of Monet's "Bridge over Pond of Water Lilies". 

 

 

 

Science Experiment:

 

 

Both experiments this week had to do with how shape affects speed.  In our first experiment-- rolling a marble, jar lid, and roll of tape down an incline-- we learned that the marble was fastest because its weight was closer to its center of gravity. 

 

In the next experiment, by dropping two discs of paper-- one flat, and one rolled into a cone shape-- that even though the weights were the same, the cone shaped paper dropped to the floor faster because its surface area was smaller, therefore it did not come in contact with as many air molecules as the flat disc. 

 

We related this to the upcoming winter Olympics and how designers use this science to create the fastest suits, helmets, bobsleds, etc. 

 

 

 



 

Week 17 Presentations:

 

Choose a country or ocean we will learn in cycle 2.  On day 1-2 at home, complete research to learn facts about your topic.  Decide what points you want to share with your class and commit to learning your points well this week. 

 

I was edified by the scripture everyone chose to share this week and was especially impressed by Daniel's and Ella Rose's creative use of props.  Most of you are consistently doing a wonderful job keeping the presentations within the desired time frame.  Good job!

 

 

 

 

These are some pictures from back when we did the stomp rockets but they were so awesome I had to share!