Catholic Schoolhouse Tour 2: Week 19
Not sure about you, but we have a ‘get dressed before we do school‘ rule around here. But really, who’s going to know if you do school in PJs?
Memory Work Idea
Here’s an active idea- Memory Work Tag! Take your students to a basketball court (or another open area), and establish where the ‘base’ is. You pick a student (or take a volunteer) to be ‘it’ and chase everyone trying to tag others to become ‘it’. Your students being chased can seek refuge in the base (where you can’t be tagged) but must recite a memory verse once in the base. Once they’ve recited it, they have to leave the base! As the teacher, you can stay in the base and hand out slips with the memory work on them, or determine which memory work they have to recite, or even make them recite in a group, however you wish!
Religion
Yay! It’s a new quarter with a new saint to focus on! Click below to download and print your Saint Dominic Fun pack!
- The religion focus this week is on Penance. If you have any kids that have already done their first reconciliation, you can pull out your supplies/workbooks from that event to review.
- Whether you do or don’t have kids who are old enough for reconciliation, you have to check out Practice Confession printables and ideas over at Catholic Icing.
- Lastly I made a simple handwriting practice sheet using the Act of Contrition.
Act of Contrition Handwriting Practice
Math
- Time is this week’s focus, and it’s an easy one to interject throughout the day. You can measure different activities throughout the day, or time certain events, or have races to see who can (clean/write/read/run) the most within a certain time frame.
- When you cook dinner tonight get your students involved! Most recipes have times in them, usually minutes. Have your students convert the minutes into seconds, and then help you time your cooking steps.
Language Arts
- Check out the contractions printable in the Tour 1 Week 19 post.
- Have your students go on a contractions hunt. They can each pick a story, according to their own level, to read and write down all the contractions they find. Then once, they’ve found all the contractions and written them down, have them write down the two words that make up each contraction.
- NOTE: Contractions use apostrophes and possessive nouns also use apostrophes. This can get confusing to some students and is a great time to have a little discussion about the differences of the two. Go back and review Week 3 Language Arts if they have trouble determining the difference. Contractions are two words put together. Possessive nouns are to show ownership.
Art
- Gothic Architecture is known for including large stained glass windows. This week take some time to appreciate the stained glass windows at your own church. You could have your students sit down with a sketch pad and even draw their favorite stained glass window, or have a writing activity about the window. What does it depict, what colors are used, how many colors are used, is it quite large or small, does it show a detailed picture or just give the impression of an image?
Music
- You can still be using the Music Notebooking Page as you learn about the Bugle this week!
- The Bugle was (is?) used in the military to indicate various activities like assembling, attention, reporting to quarter, etc. You can listen to an old recording of 25 different Bugle calls here on youtube. If you have a bugle (or even just a kazoo), make up your own ‘Bugle’ calls this week for attention, lunch time, brush your teeth time, bedtime etc.
- Bugles are also used in some Boy Scout troops. If your boys are in the boy scouts and they have a bugle, take an extra minute to examine it this week when you meet.
- Eat some Bugles for snack time this week- I used to love these things.
History
- Pope Saint Gregory the Great has many reasons he was great. Read your history card about him, and any additional resources you have, and then have your students make a list of everything that made him ‘Great.’
- Here is a free coloring page from Catholic Playground of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, which could be useful for the littlest ones for when you’re reading to them about this great saint.
- Saint Gregory the Great is whom Gregorian Chant is named after. Listen to some beautiful Gregorian Chant as you do your quiet study/individual reading time. Here is an hour of lovely Gregorian Chant on youtube.
- Practice your Latin Plainsong, or plainchant, which started as Gregorian Chant. Some parishes use the Latin plainchant in mass, and some don’t. Even if your parish doesn’t use plainchant, you probably have or will visit one that does, and it won’t be foreign to your students.
- For your younger students, you may want to just stick to your history cards when covering Mohammed and Islam. I tend to preface a teaching about a new religion with a brief discussion about how people believe many different things in the world. We can’t deny to our children that other faiths exist, but you can choose how much you teach, and at what age to allow them to learn more details. This faith is a little trickier to teach about than say the Roman and Greek Gods. No one believes in the Roman and Greek Gods anymore, however Muslim is a religious belief system still prevalent today.
- For your students old enough, check out DK Eyewitness Books: Islam
from your library. It is a great concise resource for learning about Islam, from the Hegira of Mohammed to today’s Muslim countries and beliefs.
- Venerable Bede is a Doctor of the Church. What does that mean? You can read about it here and see other Doctors of the Church.
- Review the BC/AD time system, and tell your students that it was Saint Bede the Venerable who used it in his time instead of reigns of kings.
- You can find the entire book that Venerable Bede wrote, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, online here. I will go ahead and tell you, I have not read this whole thing. But from what I have read, it is an excellent source for teaching about England during this time period, Saint Gregory the Great and Catholicism during this time period. Here are a couple ways to use this book:
- Read it yourself (on your tablet or print it if you can) so you can understand Saint Gregory the Great and the Venerable Bede’s lives better. Then summarize it for your students when teaching about Gregory the Great.
- You could assign a different chapter to each student in your class/program have them summarize it for the rest of the class. (Some good reading comprehension and presentation practice!)
- Just read aloud Chapter 1 from Book 2 (which starts on Page 56). It is when Venerable Bede writes about Pope Gregory after his death. It’s a great summary of Pope Gregory the Great’s life, from Venerable Bede’s point of view.
- Charlemagne was a really influential person in his time. He was a great leader who also believed in education, requiring schools in every monastery and parish. A great book to learn about him and the history he was involved in is Son of Charlemagne (Living History Library)
. This book tells about Charlemagne from his son’s perspective in a historical fiction type of way. It depicts Charlemagne as a real family man, who also holds on to his values of education and doing what was right by God. It’s a good one to add to your library.
Geography
- If you haven’t started, go ahead and print and start assembling your Asia Lapbook!
- Try some new and interesting foods from Southern Central Asia. Indian restaurants are becoming more and more common, and many of them have buffets. If you’ve never tried Indian food, the buffet is the way to go, you can taste a lot of different Indian food for one price, plus they typically put their most commonly ordered items on the buffet. Check their hours though to see when they have the buffet open.
- Asian foods are sometimes difficult to replicate at home if you are not accustomed to cooking them. They often have a lot of different spices and ingredients that can be difficult to find in the US. But if you are an adventurous family, I say go for it! Here are a couple easy Indian recipes to try:
- Indian Style beef kababs
- Curry in a Hurry
- Vegetarian Korma (maybe leave out the jalapenos)
- Or check out any of the many recipes at www.simpleindianrecipes.com
- If you don’t like cooking, I know some grocery stores carry frozen samosas, little dumpling things filled with potatoes and peas. These are Indian in origin too, and make a great snack!
- If you have Amazon prime, check out this 30 minute video documentary on Nepal and the Himalayas: On Tour… BENEATH THE HIMALAYAS Car Ride Through Nepal
It shows some great views of the region and culture.
Science
- Check out The Magic School Bus: Gets A Bright Idea, The: A Book About Light
from your library, or watch the Magic Schoolbus season 3 episode 5 (it’s on Netflix). - Experiment with light this week at home. Talk about all the source of light in your house- do you have florescent bulbs, incandescent bulbs, windows to let in sunlight, LED lights, flashlights,nightlights, or Christmas lights? Then discuss what darkness is, the absence of light! Set up a desk lamp in a dark room and have a shadow puppet show on the wall! Go outside and look at your shadows on the ground.
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