Sunday, May 25, 2014

Ideas for Classically Catholic Memory: Gamma Year: Week 18

Classically Catholic Memory: Gamma Year: Week 18
I'm blogging my way through our four year curriculum program so I don't forget everything that worked for us! Please feel free to use what works for your family and share in the comments anything you would add. For more on Classically Catholic Memory go here.

Religion
At Worksheet Works I created a copywork worksheet of this week's Bible verse for the kids to copy.

Latin
We are learning the Anima Christi by listening to a few different versions on youtube.

History

Lesson 1:
Our topic this week is the War of 1812. Bean read Flames in the City and we learned the Star-Spangled Banner with Peter Spier's illustrated book.



Lesson 2:
More importantly we completed an American Girl unit on Caroline, whose stories revolve around the War of 1812! The lesson plans can be found in this post.



Science
It's week 18 and when I saw the supply list from the CCM Teacher Text I wanted to take a nap. So rather than gather the 253 items needed (I may be exaggerating here, I'm not sure however because I didn't want to take the time to count them), I opted to buy a pre-packaged kit.

In conclusion, here are the supplies I needed for our one and only science lesson this week... it's week 18, did I mention that?


Simple Machines (Rookie) and Simple Machines (True Book) were borrowed from the library, and subsequently read. Simple Machines (Learning Resources) was bought on Amazon. Would someone please help these people come up with subtitles? Simple Machines: They aren't Complex. Simple Machine: It's Easy. Simple Machines: Machines that are Simple. Really anything to break up the monotony would be nice.

The box says it for children aged 10+, but my 5 and 7 year old had little trouble putting the machines together, they are after all, simple.


Over the next several days the kids came up with their own concoctions of machines. Any product that keeps my kids attention over several days is a winner, so I say spring for this one.

Finally they watched a Bill Nye episode titled... wait for it... Simple Machines.

Math 

Lesson 1
It's time for our last formula friends, the volume of a rectangular prism. I pulled out some 1 cm cubes and built a few so we could practice the formula and gather a visual understanding of the concept.


Lesson 2
Then we took it to the computer to play Minecraft Volume. I gave Bean a calculator and she was so thoroughly enjoying herself that she calculated 30 problems before I had to tell her to stop doing so much math because she was approaching a dangerous amount of educational screen time.

(Once she came to me very concerned about the fact that she had watched an entire movie and played some school computer games in the same day. She told me that doctors recommend that kids only have 30 minutes of screen time each day. I didn't want to have that conversation again. It's a good thing she's here to parent herself.)

Timeline

Lesson 1
Final timeline activity!

Timeline Word Scramble.


Thank you Worksheet Works for being so awesome and having a word scramble maker available to my friends and me. Go on, try it, it's easy.

Lesson 2
Oh lovely timeline book, you have been neglected for three weeks now. Perhaps next year we will finally add in your last 24 entries.

Geography
Now that we have memorized all of the countries in North America, we are focusing on memorizing our continent's major geographical features. I'm letting our Journey Across America continue to be the supplemental fun on this one, as I point out these features when we study the states they reside in.

Great Words I
We finished memorizing "Pocahontas" by Rosemary Carr Benet this week.

I don't know of any picture books of the actual poem, but as you memorize it you could do several things to learn about Pocahontas. Check out the books Pocahontas a Life in Two Worlds or Pocahontas and head this Pinterest board for snack and craft ideas.


PHEW, I did it! One year down and three to go!

Be saints, it's worth it!
Lisa