Catholic Schoolhouse Tour 3: Week 22

Catholic Schoolhouse Tour 3: Week 22

Use this quote by Gandhi to spur some conversation over the dinner table this week!


Religion

This week we start studying a new saint, Mother Teresa of Calcutta.  It’s exciting to call her a saint!  She was only canonized in 2016!  Here’s your saint fun pack to get started on this week:

Saint Teresa of Calcutta Fun Pack

  • Read about Mother Teresa here
  • Real Life at Home has a 31-page printable activity packet about Mother Teresa.  It costs $2.75 to download, but that’s really not bad for 31 pages.  this packet would be great to use throughout the next 3 weeks!
  • This week’s memory work is for the Joyful mysteries.  Make sure you pray the rosary and use the Joyful Mysteries.  Let your students each take turns explaining the mystery and leading a decade.

Math:

  • It’s recommended that we drink eight 8oz glasses of water each day!  (Five 8oz glasses of water for kids 5-8, Seven 8oz glasses for 9-12 years old) Do you drink this much water?  If you have enough pitchers, fill one for each student using their recommended amount of water. Measure it using measuring cups and label them with the amounts in ounces, cups, and pints.
  • Look through your pantry or fridge for bottled drinks.  Write down how many oz, cups, or pints they each are.  What beverage do you have the most of? Which do you have the least of?

Language Arts:

  • Check out the Tour I Week 22, and Tour II Week 22 posts for some ideas on learning simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia and alliteration this week.
  • Most of us read aloud to our students every week.  When you are reading aloud this week, pay careful attention to what you’re reading.  When you come across a simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia or alliteration point it out to your students!
  • If you assign quiet reading time to your students, give them the added task of finding some of this week’s memory work used in their books!

Music

  •  Fill out a music notebooking page about Richard Strauss’s Theme from 2001 A Space Odyssey.

Music Notebooking Page


Art

  • This week we move on to Pablo Picasso whose cubism-style art is something totally different from anything we’ve seen so far.  Take a minute to examine some of his art (here’s a youtube video of some of them), and discuss with your students what they think about them.  Do they like cubism? Hate it? What do you notice about the people, shapes, colors etc?  What stands out the most?

Latin

  • Here are this week’s flashcards ready for you to print!

Classical Roots Week 22 Flashcards


History

  • Use the quote from the beginning of this post, or your history card to spur a discussion this week.  What change in the world would your students like to see?  How can they be a part of it?  What is your family doing now to help change the world?  (Don’t forget, even small things can change the world.  Mother Teresa said “Go home and love your family” to promote peace- and that’s a change the world needs!)
  • Either get a copy or borrow from your library this book, Who Was Gandhi?  The books in these “Who was” series are great for your upper elementary kids. Read it aloud this week, or assign it for quiet reading time.

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  • The Hindenburg Disaster in the timeline this week gives you a chance to discuss flammability this week.  Talk about what things burn, and what things don’t burn.  See how many flammable items your students can identify. Probably they will name things like paper, wood, and houses.  Remind them that gasses can be flammable too.  If you have natural gas for your stove or fireplace, you can show them how gas is what’s burning there.  Then discuss how Hydrogen is another flammable gas, and that it was used in the Hindenburg.
  • Here’s a video of the actual footage of the Hindenburg Disaster, about 5min long.  I would not say it’s graphic in any way, but you can hear women screaming in the background as it burns up.  Maybe preview it before showing it to your kids just to be sure you’re ok with it.
  • Make your own “Airship” this week using a helium balloon.  Of course, it won’t burn up (thankfully), but perhaps you can make a little passenger section for lego men.
  • World War II can take up as much or as little time this week as you wish.  Briefly go over it with your younger students, and highlight some key vocabulary like Axis, Allies, D-Day, Atom bomb, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.  But don’t feel like you have to go into detail about the military moves and politics.  Your older students or those who are interested have plenty to learn about in this one history topic.   They can read about it in an Encyclopedia (if you have some of those laying around), at the library, or online.  This website seems to be aimed at grammar-age students and has tons of information, for your computer-savvy students.
  • I always like looking through the DK Eyewitness books for historical events like WWII.  The pictures with little detail paragraphs make it come alive.  You can read as much or as little of these since there’s really no ‘story,’ just lots of individual paragraphs of information.  Personally, reading through some of this book is enough for my homeschooling on WWII for younger students.

(This is an affiliate link.  CSH gets a small commission from any purchases you make using this link.  The cost is the same for you. Thanks!)

  • Find Israel on your world map and globe.  You can have a discussion about how this area is where a lot of Bible stories take place.  If your students are mature enough, you can discuss the wars that have been plaguing the region ever since Israel was established as a country in 1948.
  • Make a simple popsicle stick Star of David.  It’s on the Israel flag, and has been a Jewish symbol for ages! You can read a little about the Star of David here.
  • Find China on your world map and globe.
  • Gandhi, Israel, China, and WWII are all examples of people fighting for their freedom in one aspect or another.  Have a discussion this week about how blessed we are to be in America, and to have the freedoms we have.  List as many freedoms as you can, and then pray in thanksgiving to Our Father that we don’t live in a place where those freedoms are suppressed.  Have a ‘litany’ of thanks, thanking God for each thing you can think of!
  • Several of the history timeline topics are heavy/complex for younger students.  Don’t fret if you don’t spend a ton of time on any of them.  Read the history cards, and answer questions they may have, but don’t stress about going into details of war or communism with young students.  Memorizing the order of events will do them a great favor when they hit upper-level history.  Focusing on the memory work and the timeline order this week by themselves is plenty.

Geography

  • Keep going in the Africa Lapbook!
  • Test your African country knowledge with this online quiz
  • I just found this great online resource for teaching about Africa.  It looks like it has tons of information and activity ideas.  Wish I had found it earlier! (I’m going to go back and add it to Week 13 for those who have just started on Africa).  Here is the section on Central Africa, which is the topic for this week’s geography. There are links to several activities afterward, which include reading, mapping, etc.  Probably great stuff for your older students.

Science

  • Magic Schoolbus (which is still streaming on Netflix) Season 1 Episode 3 is called Inside Ralphie, and is all about microbes!  See the class go inside Ralphie to see how microbes affect the human body and our response to invading germs.
  • Check out this online comic book about microbes! It’s pretty entertaining and interesting.
  • That same website has a good overview of microbes in the body, and if you look down the left side of the page there are several other links to read about specific viruses, bacteria, probiotics, etc.
  • Scholastic has a great blog post to show students how easily germs spread using glitter.  I think this could be great to show your students when your program meets.  Even if you don’t meet in a chapter, you can use glitter to show your students how easily germs spread (as long as you don’t mind cleaning it up).  Stick your hand into some glitter, then walk around the house touching door knobs, cabinets, fridge door handles, etc.. everywhere you find glitter is a place you could spread germs by not washing your hands!

Did you miss Week 21? Check it out here!

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