Catholic Schoolhouse Tour 2: Week 8

Catholic Schoolhouse Tour 2: Week 8
Image detail for -School of Awesomeosity: A little Homeschool Humor

Something funny to get you started… 🙂 Thanks and may God bless your schooling!


Memory Work Idea

Play a version of the game cold and hot, memory work style! Write the memory work on a card.  Send your ‘seeker’ out of the room, keep the rest of the students in the room while you hide the card somewhere.  Let your ‘seeker’ come back and start searching.  As the seeker searches, the rest of the students recite the memory work.  As the seeker gets closer, everyone recites louder.  As your seeker gets farther away from the card, everyone recites more quietly.  If the seeker is really far away everyone whispers.


Religion

Complete the activities in the Saint Fun Pack for Week 8!

Daniel Fun Pack

  • Religion this week takes a closer look at the vestments our priests wear.  I’ve made a handwriting and coloring page over at my site that you can use this week.
  • Also you should check out this cool paper doll priest from the 1940s.  I think maybe a few of the vestments here are no longer required, but it’ll still be neat to learn their names and how they’re used.  Maybe one day when I have time, I’ll make a more modern version?
  • If you go to daily mass this week, see if you can get a moment of your priest’s time afterward.  Have your parish’s priest show your students up close what some of the vestments look like.  Also, you may be able to take a ‘tour’ of the sacristy and see all the different styles and colors of the Stoles and Chasubles.  This is a great week to review the liturgical colors of each season of the Catholic Church’s calendar, since the stoles and chasubles are worn to match.  Catholic Icing has a great printable wheel (which is circular- like math this week) that you can color in for each liturgical color.

Math

  • Circles! I made you a super simple worksheet (it only took me 5 min to make, but that’s 5min of your time saved!)  to practice drawing diameters on circles. Enjoy!

Diameter Worksheet

  • Here’s another free worksheet I found, although you may want to save this one for next week when you cover radius’ also.
  • Draw some circles on your pavement this week in sidewalk chalk.  Then add diameters to the circles.

Language Arts

  • Check out the game I suggested for practicing articles in the Tour 1 Week 8 post.  I still think it’s a pretty neat idea.  You could even modify it by placing ‘a’ and ‘an’ on baskets and then putting objects in each basket according to which article they would use.  For example, in the ‘a’ basket you might have a teddy bear, a doll, a dinosaur and in the ‘an’ basket you might have an apple, an alligator, an elephant etc. Cover the rule with ‘a’ and ‘an’ before you get started, otherwise you might have some confused students!
  • Go for an article hunt in your news paper articles.  Use a different highlighter for each article (such as blue for ‘a’, pink for ‘an’ and yellow for ‘the’).  Which article is used the most?

Latin

  • Did you know terra appears in several Latin versions of prayers we say during Mass?  See if you can find and circle them in this printable.  Then write the prayers in English.

Latin Prayers of the Mass- find Terra


Art

  • The designs on Greek vases varied a lot.  They often had different patterns, drawings, people, activities- anything from their life or anything they found beautiful. Here’s a cute and free worksheet I found for your students to practice their Grecian patterns and decorate their own Amphora vase.

Music

  •  Someone has already complied a youtube playlist of beautiful harp music (3hrs long!) .  Play it in the background as you do your other schoolwork this week.
  • Show some pictures of harps (you can easily google harp images), and discuss how harps are plucked.  They’re a lot like a lyre, the difference is that on a lyre the string passes over a bridge (like a violin or guitar) whereas on the harp the strings are attached directly to the body of the instrument.  If you have a lot of time to devote to the harp this week, you may want to check out this BBC documentary on the harp.  (It’s free on youtube, and is about an hour long.)

History

  • See if your students can find Rome on your own world map this week. There, now they found Rome too!
  • If you have a wall map, play a silly version of pin the tail on the Donkey.  Show everyone where Rome is, then grab some stickers or anything with a suction cup end (do kids still play with those Nerf Guns?). Take turns blindfolding your students, spinning them around and seeing if they can find Rome. Whoever is closest wins!  Then discuss what Founding really means when we talk about a place or a city. Why is Rome important to us? (The Vatican, the Pope, lots of our church history etc)
  • Jeremiah is a whole book in the Bible, and a long one at 52 chapters long.  You could just use your Children’s Bible for teaching about Jeremiah to save some time this week. (Jeremiah is 52 chapters in the bible, but only 3 pages in our Children’s Bible)
  • Jeremiah 1:4-12 may be a good section of the Bible to read to your children.  It is where God calls Jeremiah, despite Jeremiah’s doubts that he can do what God asks. It is also where we see that God knows us even before we’re even born.
  • From the book of Jeremiah we get the lesson about how God is the potter and we are the clay.  If you have some clay (or play-doh) this would be a great week to make pots or anything you want. As they are molding the clay read Jeremiah 18:1-11.  Then have a discussion.  You can ask “what would you do, if your clay pot doesn’t turn out how you want?” (smush the clay and try again) “have you ever done something to mess up in life not just in your clay?” (yes, if they’re being honest) “How are we like the clay?” (God can still use us and we can try again to become what He wants us to become. It’s never too late for the potter to make the pot and use it how He wishes).
playdoh teaching jeremiah
  • King Nebuchadnezzar ties right in with the saint this week, Daniel.  Daniel earned favor in Nebuchadnezzer’s court by interpreting a dream no one else could understand. Read Daniel Chapter 2, then have your students illustrate King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.  Talk about how dreams are really individual- do you any of your students think they could tell another person’s dreams?  Only God knew King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, and he granted that wisdom to Daniel.
  • Within the story of King Nebuchadnezzar is the story about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.  Did you know there’s a Veggie Tales movie about them!? It’s hilarious and every time we watch it, the bunny song gets stuck in my head.

Veggietales: Rack Shack & Benny

  • Aesop’s Fables are some of my favorite stories. Here is a website with all of the fables on it.  You can’t possibly read them all to your kids this week, so I would suggest looking through them and picking a story that would mean the most to your family this week.  Are your students struggling with greed? Read the Dog and his ShadowAppearances? Read Wolf in sheep’s clothing. Jealousy? Read the Fox and the Grapes. If a specific story really speaks to your family right now, they’re short enough you could even type it up and display it some where as a reminder. Another idea is to print a lot of these out and set them under your clear table cloth– a different story at each place setting.  As your students are waiting for their meal, or waiting for others to finish eating, they can be reading the story.  Switch places at every meal, so they can read a different story.
  • If you are looking for a great and timeless addition to your book collection, consider getting Aesop’s Fables for Children There is even a set on Amazon that has a CD with all the stories read, in case you need something to keep some kids busy learning, while you’re spending one on one time with another student.
  • After your students have heard a few of Aesop’s Fables, have them write their own Fable.  First decide what the moral of the story will be.  Then write a short story (usually with animals) to show the moral.  Then have them illustrate it!

Geography

  • Rick Steves has a show about the Alps in France and Switzerland (such a beautiful place!) and another one about Vienna. They are each 25 min videos. Rick does a good job of taking you on tours of far away places, while inserting bits of culture and history.
  • Of course you know I’ll suggest you learn geography with food!  Switzerland is known for their chocolate.  You can find Toblerone in most grocery stores these days, if you want some Swiss chocolate. (Oh how I LOVE this stuff) Don’t forget to look closely at the package- what is that mountain on it?  Why, it’s the Matterhorn, one of the highest mountains in the Alps. And do you see an animal hidden in the picture of the Matterhorn? It’s a bear, the symbol for the capital of Switzerland, Bern. I bet you didn’t know you could learn so much from some chocolate!
  • Look, Foodnetwork has a whole collection of Austrian Recipes.
  • Don’t feel much like making strudels from scratch? Try this super easy cheater recipe I use:
    • Ingredients: Crescent Rolls in a can, canned peaches, brown sugar and cinnamon.
    • Unroll the crescent rolls on a cookie sheet and separate the triangles.
    • Place one or two slices of peach in the center of each triangle, and fold up the corners to seal it in.
    • Sprinkle some/press some brown sugar and cinnamon on top.
    • Bake at 375 until the crescent rolls are light brown.
    • Enjoy!

Science

  • Check out www.chem4kids.com. It has a lot of great chemistry info, written for the elementary aged student to understand.
  • Use Legos to build molecules.  Denote your Hydrogens as the small two ‘stud’ pieces.  Oxygen are the 8 studded pieces.  Build some molecules! Here is a link to a teacher’s guide on using Legos to teach about molecules. You can just skip to the part about Legos, unless you love chemistry and want to do the whole lesson plan (which is several hours of chemistry fun).
  • If you are planning to homeschool for the long haul (like through higschool) go ahead and invest in one of these chemistry kits to build molecules.  Sometimes you can find them in College Bookstores (used for cheaper), garage sales or you can always get them on Amazon. You may be wondering, ‘Why would I buy those if I have legos?”  Well, legos are great for your younger students who are just learning that atoms come together to form molecules. If you have grammar age students and want to keep it simple- just use the legos.  For your older students who you can start teaching valence electrons, bond angles and those types of things, these molecule kits are much better.  The atoms in the kit can only bond with the correct number of other atoms (or at least they’re limited- I’m sure there are ways of making wacky molecules) and at nearly the right angles.  When you get into highschool chemistry where carbon rings can be chairs or boats, these kits are super useful for visualizing the molecule.


Did you miss week 7? Check it out.

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