Catholic Schoolhouse Tour 3: Week 6
Ever feel like you need to call in sick? Too bad there’s no substitute for you; but on the bright side, you can be happy knowing that you are irreplaceable!
Religion
Keep going in your Saint Francis Xavier Fun Pack!
- Add the next commandment to your garland!
10 Commandments Garland 5th Commandment
- Depending on the age of your students you can have a discussion about this commandment. Today’s entertainment shows a lot of violence and killing. But we know this is wrong. It’s important to remember that killing is never ok, and it’s never cool. For your little students, you can explain how some shows are ‘real’ like documentaries, but most are ‘pretend.’ Almost all shows, movies, etc that show death or killing are the pretend kind, and it’s important to understand the difference.
- Our Lady of the Rosary’s feast day on October 7th has this week’s History as its source! Say a rosary as a family. You could make a chocolate chip rosary snack (scroll to the end), print My Mini Rosary Books, make a single-decade rosary craft, or just color a rosary coloring page if you’re students are too little for any of that. We recently started saying Rosaries while on a walk, and I have to say it’s awesome. The kid’s scooter/bike and the adults walk, and everyone prays. There are probably a million other ways to incorporate the Rosary into your family time; what is your favorite Rosary activity for kids? (tell me in the comments!)
Math
- Learn skip counting by 12’s this week! Two of my favorite foods come in 12’s: eggs and donuts! When you’re at the grocery store this week, have your students practice their skip counting on the egg aisle.
- If your church is one that gets donuts for their parishioners after mass, let your student volunteer to help set up this week. Tell them to make sure they practice their skip counting by 12s!
- Try baking lots of cookies! Many parishes have a prison ministry. While it may be difficult for you or your students to practice the corporal work of mercy by visiting prisoners, you could participate in the ministry by baking cookies for the priests to bring to the prison. Get together with your friends or other CSH families and bake cookies- pack them by the dozen. When you’re finished have each student skip count the plastic zip bags to see how many you all made!
Language Arts
- This week students learn there are three types of verbs: helping, action, and linking. Helping verbs are verbs that help the main verb in the sentence by extending their meaning. Linking verbs link a subject to the part of the predicate that describes it. (Hint: If you can replace the verb with “is” and the sentence still makes sense, it is probably a linking verb!) Action verbs are the easiest to find, as they describe an action that the subject is doing.
- Rainbow Verbs– Grab 3 highlighters (use primary colors: yellow, pink/red, and blue) and highlight verbs in a newspaper (magazine, church bulletin, coloring book with words, etc) according to the type of verb they are. For example, helping verbs- yellow, linking verbs- pink, and action verbs- blue. Some verbs can be both linking and helping verbs– for those highlight with both colored highlighters- you’ll mix colors and create orange!
- If you have having trouble yourself with linking verbs and helping verbs look at this document from Sierra College I found:
- Use verbs this week when you talk about animals in science. See how many different verbs you can come up with for each of the three things animals do to cope with change. For example in adapting they might grow thicker fur, shed their skin, pant more to cool off, etc. In migrating they may fly south, travel in herds, etc.
- I still think figuring out types of verbs is tricky. Plus some verbs can be linking and helping (but maybe not at the same time). I think this is a pretty good slide show describing the differences and similarities in the types of verbs.
Music
- It’s the last week of the Baroque Period and George Frederic Handel. Play “Messiah” a few more times this week to really cement this piece in your student’s brains!
- I found all the sheet music for free, and sound clips (although I already shared the whole thing on youtube a week or two ago, you can play them individually here). If you really want, download and print some of the movements and have your students sing along (or if they’re a talented musician at an instrument they can try to play along).
Art
- Albrecht Durer had a very distinctive signature for his artwork, an A over a D. Have your students think about creating their own signature this week. It can include their whole name, or just initials like Durer, or a combination of an initial and name. Some artist didn’t even have their name in their signature, just a special symbol that was theirs.
Latin
- More Classical Root Flash Cards for this week! Remember, print these two-sided, flip along the long side of the paper, and laminate to make them last!
History
- For reading aloud or quiet reading time this week, you’ll want a copy of Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. The plays are told story-style in a way that younger students can understand (vs Shakespeare’s original wording).
- Shakespeare is in the history timeline this week, and there are plenty of fun things to do when learning about him. Here is a great 3-minute video about him to watch this week.
- Gian Lorenzo Bernini was famous for many beautiful sculptures. We learn this week that he was involved in the architecture of Saint Peter’s Basilica. Take a virtual tour of this amazing place here. Use your mouse to look around in all directions.
- Check out this 7-minute mini-documentary about the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. It’s really very interesting, and you get many views of this amazing piece of art!
- Have your students try their own hand at sculpting. (Clay for older students, play dough for littles, or you can go ‘all out’ and head to a clay sculpting studio). Make sure they know that Bernini was very talented and had a lot of practice to make his beautiful works of art, and not to feel discouraged if their sculptures are not of similar detail. Encourage them to think about how to involve the viewer in their art, per the Baroque style of Bernini. (Think eye contact from the sculpture, or outstretched arms, or anything that makes the viewer feel like they are part of the picture).
- If you are ok with your students using computers, let them explore this neat little Spanish Armada Activity. It explains what happened, and quizzes you along the way.
- The Spanish Armada used a crescent shape configuration, with the strong slower ships in the middle and the smaller, faster on the edges. Involve the crescent shape in snack time this week with some crescent-shaped food! You could make it as easy as eating a banana or roll up some chocolate chips or jam in Pillsbury Crescent rolls. The crescent shape helped the Spanish Armada semi-surround the English ships and give them an advantage!
- Play Battleship this week if you have it! If you have some good sports in the family (and not sore losers), add a little Spanish armada complexity to it. Whoever is playing the Spanish must roll two dice at the end of each turn. If they roll doubles, then the wind blew one of their ships onto rocks, and it’s sunk!
Geography
- Learn about some of Australia’s wildlife with this interactive Australia Zoo ‘game.’
- If you have clay or play-dough out already (like making Bernini-inspired sculptures), then go ahead and make an Ayer’s Rock sculpture! Add some greenery around the base, that’s where there are several watering holes and different plant life!
In Tour 1, I shared a printable brochure for your students to fill out. See if they can fill it out for their favorite Oceania Feature (or just for Australia) this week. (Print it two-sided and flip along the long side of the paper)
Science
- Brainstorm some ways you and your students adapt when faced with change. You can talk about simple changes such as the seasons (we wear thick coats in the winter, eat more sometimes since we burn more energy staying warm, we sweat more in the summer when it’s hot) or more complicated changes. Maybe you just had a baby, and now your other children have to adapt to you giving them a little less attention for a while. Maybe you had a relative move in and you had to adapt your schedule to accommodate their needs too. No matter your situation, we people adapt to a variety of changes in our lives all the time!
- Have a creative activity this week– have your students choose a biome and then design their own animal to go in it. First, have them illustrate the biome/habitat on some white paper. Then on a separate paper draw an animal (the more made-up the more fun!) and be sure to include fun or wacky ‘adaptions’ for surviving their biome. Alternatively, they could choose an animal from a different region and design an adaptation that would help it survive in a different biome.
- Here’s a free worksheet about animal adaptations.
Did you miss Tour 3 Week 5? Check it out.
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