Catholic Schoolhouse Tour 1: Week 1 – Ideas to Enhance your Curriculum!
Ready to start a new school year?! At CSH we are excited to be jumping into Tour 1 with you. Here are a few extra ideas to help engage your students in the topics listed in your Tour 1 Tourguide.
Religion
For the first three weeks of Tour 1, we are studying Saint Kateri Tekakwitha. Print this Saint Fun Pack and have your students fill it out over the next three weeks.
Math
- Learn skip counting by 2 this week- Find items around the house that come in pairs and practice skip counting them! Some ideas: Shoes, socks, snack cakes, gloves, earrings, ski’s, chopsticks… etc Or try going to a public place like a mall or park and skip count by 2, to count passing peoples’ legs.
Music
- If you are looking for a fun book about Johan Sebastian Bach, check out The Boy from Thuringia by Opal Wheeler. It goes over Bach’s life in a simple yet interesting way for children to read, and even includes samples of actual sheet music. The beginner pieces were actually written for Bach’s own wife, Ana Magdalena, to use when teaching their own children music!
(Purchasing this book using this link to Amazon helps Catholic Schoolhouse continue it’s mission)
History
- This week students will learn about early America. There are a ton of fun ways to learn about Native Americans. Here are a couple for you to consider:
- Enhance their understanding of Native Americans by printing a blank North America and South America map and have your students mark the areas where the different Native American tribes lived.
- Check out this cool website about creating your own Native American art and try choosing one (or a few!) to complete at home.
- This mom’s blog includes 23 days of Native American Study. Day 5 has a cool Cardboard Pueblo house project! Check out and complete as many of these as you have time and resources for!
- To help teach Columbus Discovering America, have a brainstorming and creative writing exercise. Write at the top of the page “If I discovered America I…” Allow students to use what they’ve learned about Christopher Columbus to decide what they would do first.
- I love the Saints and Heroes collection. How many of you grew up watching them? They have one called Columbus; the Adventures to the Edge of the World, that fits in perfectly with this week! If you don’t have any Saints and Heroes Movies, you should consider getting them they have great animations of the saints lives.
- This website has a lot of links to free notebooking, lapbooking, and worksheets about Columbus! I haven’t looked at all of them, but it looks like there is something for everyone here.
- I know homeschool moms are always looking for good book recommendations. I love these Picture the Past books, and their Life on a Southern Plantation doesn’t disappoint. It goes perfectly with Week 1, while learning about Plantation Economy. Look for it in your local library or get it on Amazon.
(Purchasing this book using this link to Amazon helps Catholic Schoolhouse continue it’s mission)
Here is the description from Amazon: “The Picture the Past series looks at the many kinds of communities in America’s past. Each book describes what made each community different and what children and adults did each day. Life on a Southern Plantation; In this book, discover what life was like on a Southern plantation before the Civil War. See how slaves were forced to work. Learn how plantation children and slaves dressed. Visit the owner’s big house and a slave cabin. Then use a recipe to make a plantation dessert–sweet potato pie.”
Geography
- Here is a printable map with labels for use at home or when you meet with your group. Sing the song while you label the continents and oceans!
Tour 1, Week 1 World Map with Labels- Printable
- Make your own globe using a watermelon and a permanent marker. Draw in and label the continents, label the oceans. Then chop it up and have it for snack time!
Science
- Check out our CSH Animal Lapbook Blog post!
- Mammal sorting- If your kids have any of those plastic animal toys (I know mine do!) use them for mammal education! Have your students sort them into “Mammals” and “Not Mammals” based on the defining characteristics of mammals. Have students recite the memory sentence to know what to look for!
- This week we learn about our 5 senses. We are all mammals, so learning about our own 5 senses is a fun way to learn more about mammals, and how we interact and learn about our world. Take your child on a 5 senses scavenger hunt! Create a list with various items on it for your students to find. Each time they ‘find’ an item have them mark which sense or senses they used to find it.
Here’s an Example list:
Add your own items to make it interesting! Go for a walk around the neighborhood, or change the list to go with a specific place, like the mall or zoo. Get creative and challenge your students to use senses other than their eyes first.
We are excited to start the new year with Tour 1!
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