Catholic Schoolhouse Tour 3: Week 18

Henry Ford is in the timeline this week, so it’s totally appropriate to include one of my favorite quotes by him:

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Religion

Keep going in your Saint Bernadette Fun pack.

Saint Bernadette Fun Pack

• If you have older students, check out the cross-stitch patterns at Do small things with love.  Saint Bernadette is included in the pack.
• Shower of Roses has a lot of good ideas for celebrating Our Lady of Lourdes, plus links to other good ones.
• Burn some incense this week when you teach the memory work about prayer.  Incense in the church is used a symbol of the prayers of the faithful being rising up to heaven.

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Math:

• Here’s a website with some free probability worksheets.
• Play with probability this week.  Grab a bag or box, and several balls of different colors (or any item that you have different colors of- pom-poms, popsicle sticks, legos anything that is the same size but different colors).   Put different combinations of colored items in the bag or box.  (For example- 6 blue pom-poms and 2 yellow pom-poms). Then ask which color you would probably pull out.  For your older students have them actually calculate the probability.  For your younger students, just ask questions like which color will you probably pull out?  Switch up the combinations and have fun!

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Language Arts:

• Print the Homonym cards in the Tour 1 Week 18 post and play the game ideas with them.
• Go for a hunt in your newspaper for words that are homonyms.  Write the word that you find, and then all the homonyms for that word.

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Music

•  This website had some great info, links, and videos to learn about Tchaikovsky this last week we study him.  If there were any fun links or ideas you didn’t get a chance to do in the last few posts squeeze them in this week.

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Art

• Degas painted lots of ballerinas.  Check out this cute ballerina craft.  Maybe you could even tie Degas to Tchaikovsky by talking about ballerinas and the Nutcracker.

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Latin

• Here are this week’s Classical Roots Flash Cards.

Classical Roots Flash Cards for Week 18

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History

• Our featured artist, Degas, is an impressionist.  Study a few other famous impressionist painters and then compare them to artists you have studied in the past.  What makes their art different?
• Read more about the Boer Wars this week at the BBC website.
• The Rabies vaccine is on the timeline this week, and make this the perfect time to have a Rabies Safety discussion.  Have you ever sat down and warned your students about the dangers of wild animals/pets you don’t know/other animals?  My kids know not to pet any animal that doesn’t have its “mommy” with it. You can use this week to establish your own family rules about ‘stranger animals,’ and discuss the symptoms of rabies in animals.  Check out the CDC’s website for information about the virus, symptoms in animals to watch out for, and what to do if you’ve been exposed.
• Louis Pasteur developed vaccination in 1881, and then the rabies vaccine in 1885.  His work has led to innumerable lives saved through vaccination.  He was one of the first scientists to explore, study and then share his work about the tiny world of microbes.  Have a writing exercise or discussion: How would you explain for the first time, the existence of tiny organisms that make food go bad and people sick? How do you think people would react?
• We have a book, Pasteur’s Fight against the Microbes, which is a picture book explaining some of Pasteur’s development of pasteurization. I like the storybook style of the writing and the pictures which keep the little ones more interested. It doesn’t talk specifically about rabies, more so about his path to developing pasteurization, but it’s a good read!

• You can learn about the history of cars at DKfindout.com, click on the different cars, to learn a little about each one.  If your students love vehicles, check out DK Eyewitness Car from your library to learn about the history cars from the first horseless carriages to modern super fast cars!
• Henry Ford was the first to create the moving assembly line.  While we can’t exactly replicate a ‘moving’ assembly line, you can practice the concept this week with lunch making.  Make sandwiches on one day, each student making their own sandwich, sharing the tools and ingredients, and time them.  Then make sandwiches another day, but give each student one specific job.  Instead of the sandwich moving down the line, you could have your students move down the line for the moving assembly part (unless you happen to have a sandwich conveyor belt in your kitchen).  For example student A’s job is to lay out the bread, student B places a slice of meat on each sandwich, student c places a slice of cheese etc, moving down the row of sandwiches as they go.  Which process was faster?  Each making a whole sandwich individually, or working together assembly line style to make all the sandwiches?  (You don’t have to do this with sandwiches, any multi-part meal will work!)
• You could also check out Who Was Henry Ford, either in your library or add it to your personal library.  It tells the story of Henry Ford with pictures for interest.

• If you need something for your tiniest students this week, check out these free Model T coloring pages!
• The Eiffel Tower might be one of the most recognized landmarks in the world.  You could build a snack to look like the Eiffel Tower, using pretzels and peanut butter, or graham crackers, or even wafer cookies.  I’ve also seen Eiffel Towers built using toothpicks and marshmallows.  Print a picture of the Eiffel Tower, collect your yummy supplies and have fun!
• Here is a cute printable coloring page of the Eiffel Tower.  And Here is a printable 3-D Eiffel Tower to assemble- pretty cool!
• Watch this ~6min youtube video about the Eiffel Tower, with many views of the tower.

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Geography

•  Keep going in the Africa Lapbook!
• Try your hand at some West African cooking this week.  I found a whole website devoted to West African cooking, appropriately named www.westafricacooks.com. This page describing lunches and dinners might help you narrow down your choices.

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Science

• Check out this youtube video of making a balloon rocket car using items you might have around the house to demonstrate Newton’s 3rd law.  (It’s convenient that he reviews simple machines- wheel and axel- in this video!)
• Talk about all the ways you can observe Newton’s 3d law in nature.  Some ideas might be a bird flying- wing goes down, bird goes up, or a mountain lion jumping- legs push down, cat goes up, or even your own students running- legs push backwards, student goes forwards!

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Did you miss Tour 3 Week 17? Check it out here.