Week 21

Hooray! We are getting close to the end.  It has been an interesting day in CC.  Elle, we miss you a lot. Hope your rehearsal went really well.

Wasn't that funny that we met Mr. Brahms and he was very nice to give you candies... haha! If you want to learn more about Brahms, below are some suggested sites. I will also put in a book we are reading about Brahms at the end of this post.

http://makingmusicfun.net/htm/f_mmf_music_library/hey-kids-meet-johannes-brahms.htm
http://mjq.net/brahms/

Presentation was so much fun, too. It is interesting that we have different composers that we liked.  Isn't it amazing how God created us with different likes and dislikes, and in the process complement each other.  Thank you so much for preparing for Presentation every week.  Next week's presentation should be very interesting... Tell us why your Mom or Dad is special.

Straw Bridges, Yehey!!!  Good work everyone for creating your bridges and trying if it works.  If you want to learn more, I've posted some sites last week where you can read more and you can also go to youtube and search for straw bridges. I was so proud of you trying to work together as one team - one boy, one girl (I guess we have to this more often).  We took a lot of time on this that we were not able to do our Review game (oh well... maybe, we can do a longer review next week).

New Grammar
History: Song - CC CD
I sort of introduced Margaret Thatcher and how she believes the economic woes of Britain was because of socialism and big government; and Ronald Reagan's popularity in the conservative movement.  We repeated the more difficult words a lot of time since the song is a little bit too fast.  They seem to get it.  I have some hand motion that I wanted to teach but was unable to.  See below if you want to use it at home.

·         British…Thatcher	M-hand transitions to a T-hand.
·         President R. Reagan	Two r-hands
·         Worked together	Clasp fingers together with left hand on top and right on bottom
·         Cold War	Shiver then Palm-in curved 5-hands move from side to side.
·         Lessen big govnmt	G-hand, palm-out, twists around at the temple to face palm-in.
·         Strengthen	Make muscles with both arms
·         Conservative movement	Left hand palm-up, right C-hand slides up left palm, past the fingertips in a sweeping motion.

Timeline: Song - CC CD
We sang through the timeline and did the motion taught during the opening ceremony.

Latin: Song - CC CD
We reviewed pluperfect tense.  The hint for this is Pluto (pluperfect) like to play his drum (eram).  I know this is a stretch but if this help, I'll take it.

Science: Song - NoGreaterJoy
I drew three thermometer on the board and told them how temperature is measured (we went over boiling point, freezing point and absolute zero point.  I told them, when we talk about absolute temperature, it is Kelvin we are talking.  I will send the illustration via email. Hand motion are as follows:
   impossible - letter "y" right hand tap on the open palm up left hand twice
   reach - open palm up both hands with right hand going above the left hand
   absolute zero - letter "o" right hand
   temperature - thumb and pointer finger of the right hand form an "o" and goes up the pointer finger of the left hand

English: Song - NoGreaterJoy
I made an illustration on the board, which I will send via email, on the definition of the conjunction. I just gave examples of words, phrases and clauses and told them, your parents will work on the difference between phrase and clause at home. If it helps anybody, when Dawn asked me what is the difference between a phrase and a clause on our way to CC, I told her a phrase is something that has a noun and a verb but the noun is not doing the verb (no subject or predicate). E.g. listening to music and singing the song. A clause also has a noun and a verb and now the noun is doing the verb (subject and predicate). E.g. Dawn memorizes the word while she sings the song. And told her that sometimes, a clause can be a sentence in itself.  I am not even sure if she got it or not but I believe giving her the example made it a little clearer.  I am not even sure if I explained it correctly (just so you know, I have struggles with teaching her grammar, so correct me if I am wrong).

Math: Song - NoGreaterJoy
I am amazed as to why we started with Associative Law and not Commutative Law (last year, I was surprised), but anyway, I told them that the law apply only to Addition and Multiplication and not Subtraction and Division. We substituted a, b, and c with numbers and computed for the answer.  So I guess they got the idea.  It was just a long equation to memorize.  To help them retain it better, I have individual cut outs of (a+b)+c=, and I asked them to put the equation together.  You might want to do it at home for practice.

Geography: point, say and trace
We went over the first five countries of Central America (we will continue with the last three next week).  We used the enlarged box on the left side of the world map.

Sorry, we did not have time for Review... we were so engrossed with our straw bridges. We will do the review next week.

Let me know if you have any questions about class, I will be glad to answer them for you.  If for some reason I cannot provide an answer immediately, I will try to find the answer and get back to you soon.

Here are some of my book recommendations:
The Cold War by R. Conrad Stein
Fantastic! Wow! And Unreal! A Book about Interjections and Conjunctions by Ruth Heller (This will also be my recommendation when we get to Interjection in Week 24)
Thermodynamics (see last week's post)
Johannes Brahms and the Twilight of Romanticism by Donna Getzinger and Daniel Felsenfeld
The Young Brahms by Sybil Deucher(Dawn loves this book. This book is very very old but is available in the Delco System Library)

     

Announcement for class (please read)
1. Please start listening to the Presidents song as we only have one week to work on all the 44 Presidents.
2. The kids have been very tired and sort of bored in class this past Monday. I'm not sure why, but I had to keep asking them to get up and do the motions with me for them to stay awake (maybe because it is almost the end).  Remember, we want to finish strong.
3. Please tell the kids to take care of their tickets because I will not be able to replace them. If they want to leave it at home, it might be better since the weekly raffle is only for the tickets they got that day.
4. I've decided we are doing an auction for the last day of class. We might need extra time for this event (I haven't decided if we will just not do presentation or review that day, will let you know once I have a better idea about science project schedule for that day).  I am very excited because I've purchased a lot of the prizes already.  Fun...fun...fun!

Okay, that is all for now.  See you on Monday!

Miss Zabrina