Catholic Schoolhouse Tour 1: Week 5

Catholic Schoolhouse Tour 1: Week 5

Week 5 is here!  I hope you’re doing well and this blog is helping fill in the gaps with entertaining and fun ideas! Thank you for coming back for more!


Religion

Pull out your Junipero Serra Fun Pack and complete the activities for Week 5!

Download the Father Junipero Serra Fun Pack


Math

  • Skip count by 10s this week by learning the value of dimes!
  • Take a look at some of the California Missions and practice your skip counting by 10s and 11s using this free printable puzzles page.  Print on cardstock, cut on the lines, and mix up the puzzles (laminate them if you want them to last!).  Your students will need their skip-counting skills to reconstruct the missions!

Skip counting Mission Puzzles


Language Arts

  • A great idea that one of our CSH programs is using is to play Verb Charades!  Have your students write down verbs on notecards or slips of paper.  Place them in a bowl or hat, and take turns drawing a slip and acting out the verb.
  • Exercise your student’s brains by asking them to list all the verbs they have done today! (Some ideas, might be: brushed teeth, dressed, tied shoes, ate breakfast, etc.) Then make a list of all the verbs they hope to do during the rest of the day. (Maybe play outside, color a picture, eat ice cream, etc.)
  • Now write all the verbs your pet dog/cat/fish can do.  I bet (and hope!) some are different from what your students do.

Music

  • I really like this quote by J. S. Bach:   “The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.” Ask your students what this means to them.  How do they feel about music?  What is the purpose of music in your own home? Do you use music to glorify God?  (This could be a way to have a discussion with some of your older students who may be getting into the more secular music of today, most of which is not so glorifying, if you know what I mean).
  • Your students can practice their handwriting and learn this quote with this printable:

J.S. Bach quote-Printable


 History

  • Watch Liberty’s Kids The Shot Heard Round the World.  If you’ve never seen them, Liberty’s Kids is a historical fiction series for kids.  They are entertaining and informative.  Season 1 starts with the Boston Tea Party and continues through much of the American History timeline we study in CSH Tour 1.  Many of them are on Youtube (free!), but if you would like to add them to your collection (maybe to watch on road trips), the whole collection of 40 episodes is on Amazon.  I love having both educational AND fun videos for my kids to watch!
    6/4/2017 update: Now they have an education edition (which is oddly less expensive than the original on Amazon right now), which has free access to all the videos online, as well as worksheets to go with each episode!

    YouTube – Liberty’s Kids: The Shot Heard Round the World

  • Amazon- Liberty’s Kids: the Complete Series

  • Have a tea party about The Boston Tea Party this week.  Pretend you and your students are the colonists. You can even dress up like them, if your kids love playing dress-up.  Dressing up may be as simple as wearing a long dress and bonnet  (paper bonnet instructions) for the girls, and a vest and hat (paper tricorn hat instructions video) for the boys.  Discuss the taxes England is imposing on you and why.  You may use this as an opportunity to explain what taxes are for your younger students.  As a colonist, how do you feel about the taxes?  What would you do about them?  If you were to plan a ‘tea party’ how would you do it?  Be sure to conclude your tea party by discussing the actual events of the Boston Tea Party.
Even your youngest ‘student’ can enjoy a fun hat and a tea party!
We made our bonnets from wrapping paper.

(Bonnets are traditionally white, but she wanted the wrapping paper print on the outside)

  • Read the Declaration of Independence and look at a picture of the real document online: Declaration of Independence Archive
    The signatures are often of interest:
    • Whose signature is the biggest? Sometimes we use his name to ask for someone’s signature! “Put your John Hancock right here!”
    • Who is the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence?
  • “The Cornerstones of Freedom” series has several books that work great for this week: The Boston Tea Party, Declaration of Independence, The Story of Valley Forge, and probably more that I don’t have and haven’t yet read. I know they are geared toward kids, but they’re written well enough that I’m entertained by them.  I would recommend them for your older students, 3rd grade and up.  I picked up several of them at a garage sale, so look around at your local thrift stores, or you can borrow them from the library.  If you’re not up for bargain hunting you can always purchase them on Amazon.

(Using these links to purchase these books helps Catholic Schoolhouse continue its mission)


Geography

  •  Combine Geography and snack time this week. Print a map of North America (printable link below) and add mountains using fun snacks (chocolate chips, bugles, M&Ms, gumdrops, candy corn, etc.). Use the labeled map for your young students, and challenge your older students to name/label their maps before snacking. Once your edible mountains are complete, sing the song and eat them!

Catholic Schoolhouse Map – N.A. Mountains Printable


  Science

  • Did you know- there are an estimated 1 million different species of insects in the world?  What a huge group of creatures to study for just one week!  Choose a different insect for each day of the week to draw and study.  If your students are collecting insects to go with the science book, pick some of the insects you’ve collected to study. You can use this printable to help with your science notebooking.

Insect Report Printable

  • There are a lot of great documentaries on insects. One we watched recently and enjoyed was about Ants.  If you have Amazon Prime it’s free to watch: Ants! Nature’s Secret Power- Amazon
  • Don’t have Amazon Prime?  Do you have Netflix? There are four seasons of The Magic Schoolbus on Netflix! There are several episodes that feature insects.  (I don’t recommend watching them all at once- you have a whole week on insects!)
    • Season 1, Episode 12 “The Magic Schoolbus Gets Ants in its Pants”
    • Season 2, Episode 3 “The Magic Schoolbus Butterfly and the Bog Beast”
    • Season 3, Episode 4 “The Magic Schoolbus in a Beehive”
  • If you or your kids have collected some insects, this is a great website to use to identify them! I wish I had known about it sooner.

https://www.insectidentification.org/

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Did you miss week 4? Check it out here!

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