Well, we were out of town and then sickness struck and the fog is just lifting. So, please forgive my lack of posting Week 5 and 6. Here are plans for Week 7.
HISTORY
As I write the history sentence each week, I write the nouns in a particular color. After we sing the sentence through a few times, I erase the first noun and we make up a hand motion to take its place. We then sing, 'mmm mmm' instead of the noun and do the hand motion as we sing the entire sentence. We continue in this way until we've replaced all nouns with hand motions and the sound, 'Mmmm mmmm.' By the sixth or seventh time, we are singing almost all 'mmm's' and it is quite funny. It's quite funny and it works!
SCIENCE
The excretory system is a funny one to recount. We used hand motions and different voices to display these.
First, we made a train sound for the 'chh, chhh, chhh, chh' 'Urinary Tract.'
Then we breathed in deeply and out for 'Lungs.'
We rubbed our arms and pretended to be sweating for 'Skin.'
We pretended to smell something stinky as we said, 'Intestines.'
We did this slow and then faster and faster and faster.
ENGLISH
We will be using the same hand motions for these irregular verb forms throughout the semester. I hope to put up a video to help you. If you'll recall, we defined each of these parts: infinitive, present participle, with particular hand motions and songs. Now, we are just filling in the particular verbs. So, we'll use the same hand motions we used in the definitions and now place the verb part to match. Sounds confusing but I'll try to link to a video to clear it up.
TIMELINE
We are drawing the timeline again. We use the cross for anything relevant to Christianity. You can make a timeline grid by printing a grid that is 7 columns across and 6 rows down. By the end of the year, there will be four pages for the timeline. Below is one of my students' drawings for this week.
LATIN
We just used hand motions and voices to define these words, first memorizing the Latin words. Then we added the English definitions. These are much more concrete terms than pronouns and conjunctions and are much easier to memorize.
Vita-sign language for life
Lux-hands make shape of a sun
Homo, hominum-hands out to show shape of human body
Nomen-American sign language for name
GEOGRAPHY
We looked at the shape of these states and noticed the squareness of some of the states this week. Drawing the states separately first helped us recognize them in their context on the map.
MATH
We used this number chart to color in the 13's. The song goes to Yankee Doodle tune so I told the children to remember the 13 colonies and the fact that Yankee Doodle was in London and probably riding over to the 13 colonies. Perhaps this is a good way to recall the tune. The children began to see the pattern of down one line and over 3 as they drew out the 13's.
TIN WHISTLE
We focused on playing only with our left hand on the top three notes. This helps the student realize they can balance the whistle with only one hand and also simplifies learning the notes. Start with just balancing the whistle between the left thumb (under the whistle) and the left pointer finger (on top of the whistle) and blow lightly for a C#. Practice holding for 4 beats (a whole note in 4/4 time), then playing twice, 2 beats each (2 half notes in 4/4 time), and then playing four times with 1 beat each (4 quarter notes in 4/4 time). Eventually we added one hole closed (B), two holes closed (A) and three holes closed (G).
We ended with learning the song, 'Hot Cross Buns.'
I'll list the notes here with the number of beats behind each note. This is a great song to begin with as it only uses one hand and helps the student feel a sense of musical accomplishment. Here's a link to the song for tin whistle
B (1) A (1) G (2)
B (1) A (1) G (2)
G(1/2) G(1/2) G(1/2) G(1/2)
A (1/2) A (1/2) A (1/2) A (1/2)
B (1) A (1) G (2)
Thank you for grace with my lack of posts. I hope your week 7 goes well.
