Catholic Schoolhouse Tour 2: Week 13
It’s a new calendar year and hopefully a fresh start back at schooling! I hope your holidays were wonderful and that you and your students ease back into school gracefully after a nice Christmas break!
Memory Work Idea
Play a new version of hide-and-seek this week. Whoever is IT doesn’t count to ten though, they recite a memory verse before seeking everyone else! Let whoever is IT decide which memory sentence to recite, and have some printed versions of them in case they need help!
Religion
Our new saint to focus on is Saint Cecilia! Have fun learning about her with the Saint Fun Pack!
- Check out these cute cross-stitch patterns at Do Small Things with Love. There’s one for Saint Cecilia!
Math
- Roman Numerals are used in our Pope’s names when more than one of them has the same name. Use this quick printable to practice your Roman Numerals on using the names of 20th-century popes!
Language Arts
- Your youngest may be just learning what makes a sentence a sentence. For your older students, this is a review. Have your older students (who may already know about sentences) write some sentences and non-sentences for the younger students. Then see if your younger students can tell which are sentences and which aren’t. One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it!
- Have your students (if you have several) work together to make a silly sentence. Line them up and have each person write one word on their turn. If you only have one or two students- take turns writing words- alternating and working together to make sure it’s a complete thought. Sometimes this can get silly if you have a student who likes to insert random verbs and nouns! For example, if you had Bob, Sue, and Dan: Bob might write ‘the’, Sue writes ‘cat,’ now Dan needs to pick a verb maybe ‘ran’- go back to Bob who might write ‘up’ and keep going until someone concludes the sentence.
Latin
- Combine your Latin and your Language Arts this week. See if your Latin-studying students can write a sentence in Latin with each form of possum – To be able, can; to have power. Then translate it for the little ones.
Art
- I found a whole gallery of Tromp L’oiel artwork. I’m not sure how useful it is for teaching, but I thought some were too cool to not share with you. If you know of a building nearby that has some Tromp L’oiel art, then go check it out and have a closer look!
- Practice your Tromp L’oiel art by having your students draw a window in your house and what they see on the other side of it!
Music
- The Recorder. If you were part of a CSH Program this year, your students have had first-hand experience with a recorder! Take your recorders out this week extra and talk about what makes them a woodwind instrument. (They used to be made of wood!)
- Listen to some Early Italian Recorder Music on YouTube as you do your schoolwork this week. Maybe it’ll serve as inspiration to practice those recorders! That link takes you to over an hour of nice recorder music- great for background noise 🙂
History
- This is an excellent time to do Stations of the Cross as part of your homeschooling. Stations go through the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ- number 1 on the History list this week. You can:
- Go to church and pray Stations of the Cross whenever your church hosts it this week
- Go to church whenever nothing is going on and do stations just as a family.
- Pray the Stations of the Cross at home. I’ve seen several ways to do this. Make printable stations, or print these coloring pages and maybe craft some grottos from them (if you do, I want a picture!). I also have some mini-3D grotto printables (the links to all are near the bottom)I made last year during Lent. Kids also love the Stations of the Cross Easter Eggs.
- If you don’t have it, Laudate for Apple, Laudate for Android, is a great app for your mobile device or tablet. You can pray stations on it too.
- Get the Holy Heroes Stations of the Cross on CD. Listen to them in the car or at home!
- Read about Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection in your Bible. Have your older students read all four accounts (Mt 28, Mk 16, Lk 24, Jn 20)and write a compare and contrast essay. In what ways are the gospels similar, and in what ways are they different? Did one focus more on one part than another? For your younger students, you could just pick one to read aloud or read from your Children’s Bible. If I were to pick one from the Real Bible, I’d go with John
- For the Ascension of Jesus, check out these cute food and craft ideas. I love the craft with Jesus ascending into the blue cup covered in clouds.
- Pentecost is considered the birthday of the church, so you could celebrate the Church’s birthday this week with a cake! Or make these amazing cupcakes.
- Here’s a free Pentecost coloring page.
- When teaching about Pentecost, you can dive more into teaching about the Holy Spirit.
- A Holy Spirit Dove Craft and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
- And this mini-book of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
- 1 Corinthians 12 tells about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so you can read that aloud to your students and then discuss how each of you uses those gifts every day.
- This is a really cute idea for teaching about the 12 apostles! However, you’ll have to get rid of Judah because this printable is for 12 disciples and the timeline is for 12 apostles. (Disciple is a follower, apostle is sent) 11 out of 12 of them will work for you though and it’s a cute idea to make them carryable in an egg carton!
- Here’s a free coloring page of Saint Steven.
- Read about Saint Stephen in the Bible or your Children’s Bible if his story is included. It’s in Acts 7:54-60.
- I love this idea of making rock candy for Saint Stephen!
Geography
- The Middle East is an area of profound unrest and has been for centuries. You can take this as an opportunity to teach some of your older students about some of the recent history of this area.
- Here is a good article describing the major points of the Syrian Civil War and refugee situation.
- Here’s an article describing the Israel-Gaza conflict.
- An article about the War on Terror, which began with the bombing of the World Trade Centers and officially ended in 2013, involves much of Iraq.
- I don’t think I would worry about the news and history of the Middle East for younger students, and just focus on the geography of learning country locations on a world map, names, and capital cities.
- You can learn more about the Ural Mountains at Encyclopedia Brittanica’s website.
- Check out and start the next in the geography lapbook series, Middle East Lapbook!
Science
- This week in science we focus on the planets in our solar system! Check out the free printables here for making a lapbook. There’s enough in the file on planets to make a whole lapbook just on planets! Or you could pick just one or two of the printables and start a lap book for the whole space quarter. Just make sure you exclude the Pluto printables- sorry Pluto but you’re not a planet anymore. 🙁
- Teach your preschooler about space with these cute printables and lessons.
- The Magic Schoolbus has a cute book called The Magic School Bus Lost In The Solar System
that fits perfectly into this week!
- And you can watch a Magic Schoolbus show about the Solar System on Netflix. Season 1 Episode 1 Magic Schoolbus gets lost in space!
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