"Wow, I didn't know it would look like that! It is my favorite kind to catch!"  -Allen   

Some of our butterflies have been hatching...

"Wow I really like it, and I really want to keep it and what does it eat?  Does it eat butterflies?"  -John  Now we will have some research to see if it is a butterfly or a moth.

More about your state... A couple of weeks ago we had visited the grandparents, and saw an old rock quarry where some of the rock was obtained to build the Capitol.  It is way back in their developement "Aquia Harbor".  It was shipped upstream all the way to DC, from Stafford, VA.

Just thought this was a great picture from Alaska, where one of my siblings lives with her 8 kids.  Since we are studying the states maybe it applies. 

We are made to know, love and serve God in this world and the next.....

St Rose Philippine Duchesne  known as "The woman who prays always",  Pray for us!

Our class is improving all around and moving forward with steam now.  We enjoyed some poems the children memorized for presentations this week.  Projection of voice and slow effective pauses, will be our focus for the next presentations.  Perhaps allowing them to "be the teacher" would be an interesting twist on your homeschool this week!

I hope you all have a Blessed All-Saints day off! 

Art & Science, week 7 with Catholic Schoolhouse Curriculum

ART ~ How to Draw a Duck: These next three weeks we will be exploring artwork by John James Audubon. To begin this three-week focus, we learned how to draw a duck. I demonstrated how to draw a duck with some basic shapes that the children know, then I let them try with their pencils. Once they had drawn with pencils for a while, I gave them colored pencils to work with as well. The children seemed to enjoy this activity a great deal, proudly drawing in the duck's environment as Audubon does in his artwork.
*A CSH Art Curriculum Activity.

SCIENCE ~ Cloud Formation. During this second quarter, we will be exploring weather. This week students made a weather observation station by gluing a weather observation chart to one of our recycled insect boards. Families are to record local weather for six weeks with the instruments they have at home (thermometer, rain gauge, barometer, etc.). We also did an experiment to discover what three ingredients go into cloud formation! You can go to this website for more activities and ideas to try at home: Counting on Clouds.


See you next week!
Alecia Rolling

A Great Resource for Science!

Many of you parents have asked about a good source from which to buy science supplies, so here it is: Home Science Tools. Per Catholic Schoolhouse's recommendation, I ordered our owl pellets and magnifying glasses from this company, and you all know how good the supplies were! You do not need to order in bulk. This company is designed for the homeschooler and offers reasonably priced materials in small quantities. They also sell science curricula at fair prices, often even cheaper than Amazon.

To the right is a Science Kit for the Real Science 4 Kids curriculum. You can also find science kits for Apologia and other popular homeschool science programs!

Alecia Rolling

My kids and I also found this Thomas Cole picture that we liked, and read a bit about him on the internet.  This was very enlightening, even for me, as I had never before heard of him.  I do reccomend this activity if you have some that are old enouph to appreciate art. 

Our homeschool has been slow this week as we always have times of slacking off a bit.  The kids have been creating a maze in the basement and using all the toys and furniture to do so.  I find it fascinating to see what they can accomplish when they work together.  I love that we are all learning to work together as parents too as we create a maze of learning activities for our children. 

Art & Science Displays: Weeks 4-6

Here are pictures of the displays we had in art and science for weeks 4-6. In art we were looking at Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School for inspiration, and in science we finished zoology by looking at birds, insects, and crustaceans. I do try to provide plenty for students to look at, but it is the case that there is not much time for students to hang around and explore the displays. They are more in the children's periphery, but hopefully this is enough to inspire!



















*This displays were provided by Mrs. Rolling.

Art & Science, week 6 with Catholic Schoolhouse Curriculum

Art: Cut-Paper Landscape

This week we ended our time with the Hudson River School with a landscape study. The students cut out shapes from scrap paper to form a landscape. Then, they used oil pastels to add trees and anything else they felt inspired to add.
For the confederates' class, I pre-cut the paper, so they could focus on gluing and painting. This was more of a time constraint issue than anything else. Consider giving your children paper and scissors this week to see what they create!
For those interested, I bought our oil pastels and pencil sharpeners from Cheap Joe's Art Stuff, a trusted art supplier from my art school days!
*A CSH Art Curriculum Suggestion.
Science: Crustacean Dissection
In science this week, we finished zoology and our first quarter. We looked at roly-polies (pill bugs) under magnifying glasses, and we discussed how pill bugs differ from insects. This was a relaxed week in science. For those of you who have missed science some this quarter, consider looking at Home Science Tools for supplies and more ideas! A CSH Science Curriculum Activity.
See you next week!

Alecia Rolling

Art & Science, week 5 at Catholic Schoolhouse

Art: A Peaceful Tree. This week students learned how to draw a tree, a project very fitting for the autumnal season as trees are very prominent in the landscape this month. I used the instructions from the Catholic Schoolhouse Art curriculum, Year One. The students enjoyed talking about peaceful, sad, and angry trees and how to make their trees express moods. As a practice in cutting, the students had to cut a circle around their tree before matting it. The circle was pre-drawn for them. This was most challenging for our Kindergarterners, but the extra scissors practice will pay off in future art classes. Sent Home With: Artwork in Portfolio.

Science: Caterpillar Life Cycle & Insects Magnified. This week in science I had to be a little creative. Since we are still waiting on a shipment of oil pastels, I had to find a project for the butterfly life cycle that would involve hole-punched, black construction paper and hemp strings (materials I had prepared for last week's art class but could not use). I found the right project online here: Backyard Butterflies. You can visit this website for more activities if your children are interested!

Unfortunately, we ran out of time to look at our insects under magnifying lenses. I was very impressed with the students' bug boards! Many children worked hard, finding exotic insects and displaying them beautifully with labels. Thank you parents for helping your children learn about insects and encouraging their excitement.

Sent Home With: Butterfly Life-Cycle Books.

See you next week!

Alecia Rolling

Art and Science Displays, weeks 1-3

In the art and science curricula by Catholic Schoolhouse, it is recommended that each tutor create displays for her classroom. We are encouraged to make it reminiscent of a museum display. Of course, each Catholic Schoolhouse group's budget varies, so each group is left to develop ideas of its own. Below are pictures of some of what I put together for art and science weeks 1-3. In general, I try to have books lying on the table that are about the topics we are studying, so parents can come up and read parts of the books aloud with the children.

At first, I thought this a great amount of work that would not be fully appreciated by the children, but this was an erroneous thought, indeed! The children surprise me each week with little facts they have gleaned from the displays. If you have the time and money in your group, it is certainly worth it.

*Displays provided by Mrs. Rolling. 

Week 4 - Yankees

We spoke about charity this week and how to practice this amongst class members.  We spoke about St. Elizabeth Anne Seton and how she modeled our psalm of the week,  and we spoke about perfect charity which is the Cross and we thought about how we can imitate Christ on the cross.  

We so strongly need charity in the coming weeks in order to help draw out some of our more internal students, who are somewhat inhibited by others joking and lauphter.  I did not ever consider this myself until it was brought to my attention by a parent.  I am learning the finer points of charity from our parent helpers.  Thank you! 

We also read about the Boston Tea Party and had a game of taxes that were unfairly taken by the students.  This was alot of fun! 

We are starting to diagram our parts of speech as this is a great visual aid for these less concrete concepts. 
We will continue to do this as we continue to learn parts of speech and how to use them. 

Another visual aid we are using is our hundreds chart.  I hope to print up more of these for home use so the children can see the patterns created by the skip counted numbers. 

I am very proud of our presentations these last two weeks as they were well prepared with notes and both creative and researched.  Good Job presenters! 

Art and Science, week 4 with Catholic Schoolhouse Curriculum

Art: Line Study Inspired by Celtic Knots. Yes, we are studying Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School artists, but we are also working on the concept of "line". A great way to look at line, especially after looking at Native American art, is to look at Celtic art, which is full of zigzag, curvy, horizontal, and vertical lines and patterns. I introduced the art class to lines by having them look at Celtic knots, then we looked at Thomas Cole to see what kinds of lines he used and for what purposes. Finally, the children were introduced to drawing pencils of 5 various densities to do a line study of their own. Some students tried to do a Celtic knot, while others worked on landscapes and rocket ships. Sent Home With: Artwork and a portfolio to bring back each week.
*Art Activity developed by Mrs. Rolling.

Science: Owl Pellet Dissection Recommended by CSH. This was a great success! The children were excited to be zoologists, studying what owls eat. It became quite the detective hunt as children slowly tweezed away at their owl pellets for bones. Of all 9 pellets in the classroom, 8 pellets contained the remains of some kind of rodent, and 1 pellet contained the remains of a bird. The class concluded that owls must prefer to eat rodents over birds. A few of the groups even started to piece together rodent skeletons! Sent Home With: A Caterpillar Collecting Jar. Don't forget to bring the insect display boards to class next week!

See you next week!

~Alecia Rolling