Kindergarten - 1st Grade Week Three

Here's a recap of our co-op day:

Religion - We discussed the Blessed Trinity and tried to begin to understand part of this 3-in-1 mystery with a quick demonstration - one flame lighting three candles, and a little cutting, folding & gluing project involving a three-dimensional paper equilateral triangle which hopefully made it home with your child today.  This project was not an easy one, and overall the children did very well following directions in putting it together. The one triangle has three sides (not including the one on which it sits, its base), and the children drew a symbol to represent each person of the Trinity (maybe sun/moon, cross, dove) on each of the three sides.  We also discussed how our family can be compared to God's family. In His family there are three persons; how many persons in your one family? We drew a simple family tree to demonstrate.

English - Picture Study,  Lesson 23 in PLL

Poetry - worked on learning the second stanza to "The Swing" while swinging our arms through the air in rhythm with the poem.

History - we discovered that having a "story time" and asking the children to sit on the floor and listen to the Old Testament story and then do a corresponding coloring page afterwards works better for our class. They can be more attentive to the story without the distraction of coloring and the frequent requests for a different colored pencil or a sharpener :) during the story.  The coloring page then serves as a visual reinforcement of the story afterwards. We read and discussed the story of Abraham and the Sacrifice of Isaac - a heavy one for this young age, but I gather many of them understood the basic underline of the story, obedience no matter how difficult.

Note about History Pockets: many copies of History Pocket materials were placed in your child's binder this week. Some of them will be found in the "History section" of their notebook if it has tabs separating the subjects.  We were running out of time, so some of the sheets were placed in the front pocket of the binder. There are several activities/projects for them to do at home which parallel the Old Testament reading/time period we are doing in class. In the binder is also a 3-hole-punched manila folder in which to keep any projects that are not easily hole-punched for keeping in the binder can be placed. (i.e. the character puppets to color, cut out and - I'm guessing here - paste to popsicle sticks)  Thanks to the one(s) who is preparing all these great materials for our students!

Geography - we reviewed the continents and oceans in front of the large world map hanging in the "atrium" with a fun song from the Geography Songs CD (done by Larry & Kathy Troxel).  We then sat with our CCM maps and looked at the country of Russia (CCM memory work Week 3), counting the number of rivers and lakes we could find.

Science - We are in insect heaven!  We spent the first several minutes of science time excitingly observing all the different bugs everyone had brought in today - from large praying mantis to blond wooly bear caterpillar.  Our study this week was the earthworm (from the phylum Annelida in CCM memory work Week 3).  We read about them in the Nature Reader (Book Three for those who would like to continue reading during the week), studied the ringed bodies of some live ones freshly caught (umm, rather bought) this morning, and sketched one for the "nature notebook"/Science section of our binders.  We also saw the progress our ants have made in their gel farm environment.

Looking forward to the Archeological Dig next week!

Kathryn