Catholic Schoolhouse Tour 3: Week 15

Catholic Schoolhouse Tour 3: Week 15

This Tchaikovsky meme makes me laugh.  Have your kids made music from unlikely objects?

classical music humor | Rebel Tchaikovsky:

Religion

Keep going in your Saint Therese Fun Pack!

Saint Therese Fun Pack

  • Have a discussion about what virtue is this week. Can your students name some virtues?  How do they help us avoid evil?  Read from a Children’s book of virtue this week, and pick a virtue that your students might need to work on extra.

Math:

  • Do the same activity as last week- write a bunch of numbers on slips of paper and put them in a hat, bowl or bucket.  Draw several out and find the mode!  Throw them back in and repeat until your students really know what a mode is!

Language Arts:

  • Pick two different color highlighters and a newspaper.  Highlight the subjects of sentences with one color and the predicates with another color.  Or you could use some scissors and cut apart sentences between the subject and predicate, then mix them up and make some silly sentences.

Music


Art


Latin

  • Here are some Classical Roots Flash cards for you! If you use an encyclopedia or other science book, see how many of these root words you can find in the section on geology!

Classical Roots Week 15 Flash Cards


History

  • For Mexican independence, color a Mexico flag or use one of the other printables from this page.
  • For Mexican Independence, eat Mexican food this week! Listen to some Mariachi music while you eat.
  • Morse code was essential for long distance communication in this era.  Have a discussion about it- can your students imagine a world without cell phones, internet, etc and only having a small ear piece to listen to pulses?
  • This video is  interesting, and it actually teaches you how to listen to Morse code.  After watching, see if you can tap out a message to someone either on a table or a piano.
  • Check out this post where you can make a Morse Code necklace. Write your name or a secret message for someone you love.
  • The Victorian Age is known for the elaborate dress of the wealthy during this time.  Have a Victorian Tea party- let your girls wear their fanciest dress-up dresses with all their play jewelry. Your boys can wear whatever fancy dress-up clothes they may have (maybe borrow one of Dad’s lesser loved ties or a hat?), and you can cut out some mustaches and mutton-chops out of construction paper.
  • Charles Dickens is a well loved and well known author.  Many of his stories have been abridged into children’s stories.  Usborne has an Illustrated Stories from Dickens that I like (maybe you have a friend who is an Usborne consultant? If so, order from your friend instead of Amazon).  The Usborne book is probably great for your younger students (like K-2nd grade), as a read aloud with fun pictures.  For your older elementary students, I really wish the Great Illustrated Classics were still in print.  I grew up reading these and they are great abridged versions of classic books.  Your library *might* have them, or you can find them on ebay, in garage sales, thrift stores etc.
  • The Irish Potato famine is a good opportunity to teach your students just how privileged they are to eat the quality and quantity (and variety) of food that they have.  Discuss how the Irish peasants mostly ate potatoes, so much so, that when their potato crops failed, they starved.  If your students went without all the potatoes in their diet, would they starve? Probably not.
  • Have a little fun with potatoes this week.  See if you can prepare potatoes for dinner everyday.  Potatoes are so versatile- I bet you’ll have no problem making something different with them every day. (Think baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, twice baked potatoes, potato salad, french fries, potato soup, hash browns, potato chips…there’s even potato candy! Ah, how I love potatoes!)
800px-mcdonalds-french-fries-plate
  • Check out the nutrition information about potatoes.  Is there any wonder why they were the perfect crop for the Irish peasants with limited garden space? Print out the nutrition information for 1 potato and compare it to other items in your pantry or fridge.  Can you students find anything else that provides as many essential nutrients and as many calories?
  • If you are on track (and don’t worry if you aren’t), then you are probably reading this in early spring.  If so, go plant some potatoes in your yard!  Alternatively, you could watch how potatoes are grown.
  • Ok, last suggestion for potatoes, I promise.  If you have some little students, listen to this old sesame street potato song.  Maybe get your older students to jump rope to it.

Geography

  • Keep going in your Africa Lapbook, adding African waters this week.
  • Find all the African waters on your world map this week.
  • You could google search for images of each water form and print them out. See if you students can name them just by their picture.  Then play a version of pin the tail on the donkey with your feature pictures by putting some tape on the back and letting your students stick them to your wall map in the correct places.

Science

  • Simple machines are so fun and there are tons of ideas on the internet to learn about them.  You could go on a scavenger hung around the house to find each of the six simple machines.  Who can find the most examples of them?
  • Have your students design their own Rube-Goldberg machine. Here’s a video of a kid who made his own simple one that pours milk. There are lots of good ones on YouTube, just search “Rube-Goldberg machine to find them.
  • Here’s an easy game to quiz their simple machine knowledge. (It is really short) But THIS one is really fun, educational and cool.

Did you miss Tour 3 Week 14? Check it out.

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