Cycle 1 Week 2

We had another great day on Friday!  The girls are starting to slowly find their voices and not be so shy.  They did a great job when I reviewed the previous week's material!  I can tell you guys have worked hard with the girls.  Great job moms!  I know it is hard on a daily basis to teach on top of everything else life calls us to.  Your girls are already showing the rewards of your hard work.

Geography
We did our Blob drawings.  The girls are working hard to trace these perfectly.  Within the next few weeks I may transition more to having them trace them onto another sheet of paper.  We then located each destination on our laminated maps using skittles.  Next, I read the girls a story using all the names and they were able to eat the skittles as they located each one.  Below is the story:

     You are floating down the RED SEA on a PERSIAN carpet.  Suddenly Prince CASPIAN appears to help you fight the BLACK knights of BABYLON.


Timeline
We are standardizing our timeline hand motions across the co-op.  These are no different than what I have been teaching the girls already.  Some classes, however, had been using some slightly different ones.  Here is a link off of YouTube that shows what I am teaching the girls.  This is just the weekly posting but all 24 weeks are available from the same person.  She even explains why each hand motion was chosen.  She also does the hand motions to the song.  I am not teaching them the motions to song but I do play the song during review time.  The idea for this is to expose them to all the possible ways of learning the work even if I don't teach it to them during the new memory work section. 

Latin
Latin was the same as last week.

English
I changed my approach to the prepositions.  I found a video of the CC chant from the audio CD.  The girls practiced the first week's motions with me and had fun with it.  We shall see how it continues.  I did have to slow this down so I could capture everything.

Math
The girls have been doing well with singing the songs for all the skip counting.  I had planned to do follow the leader with them as we sang the songs for skip counting 3's and 4's.  The girls had other plans :).  Instead of "Follow the Leader" we played "Jump the Brook" just like last week. 

Science
I had pictures of examples from each Kingdom.  We sang the answer to "God Bless America".  The Five kingdoms of Living Things are: Animalia, Plantae and Fungi.  Protista. Monera. Are the five kingdoms of living things.  We also colored a worksheet I found on the 5 Kingdoms.

History
We did the continuation of last week with commandments 6-10.  The hand motions will be posted later.  We did put both weeks together so that the girls would here it as one continuous string and not as two separate parts.

Art
This week we studied Mirror Images.  I cut out several shapes of objects that could make up a princess drawing (castle, clouds, grass, trees, crown, etc.)  I then cut these in half and had the girls trace around the outside of a piece and then flip it over to the mirror image and then trace that as well...two halves then made a whole.  My idea behind this was to give the girls and activity on their skill level as artists that also incorporated their interests as well.  Here are some of the shapes we used (The top picture is what they looked like when I gave them to the girls and the bottom picture is before i cut them in half):

Science
We did two experiments this week.  One talking about how spiders judge the size of intruders and the other discussing why fish can float belly up.  The girls did great with forming a hypothesis and working through the process of each experiment.  I had lab sheets for us to work on together but unfortunately left them at home.  In future weeks I am going to be working more with them on understanding the scientific process and looking at simplified lab sheets to be filled out as a group.  This Friday's experiment will be outside and we will be paired up with an older group.

So blessed to have the opportunity to serve your girlies!