Kindergarden - First Grade, Week 7

Religion - we read, recited, and discussed the catechism questions for Lesson 6 in Our Holy Faith, which tied in nicely with our CCM Religion since they are all about the concept of sin.

English - our Picture Study was of a lion family, and the kids had lots of excited input to share about what they saw in the painting. We discussed differences observed between some male and female animals. We then read the Aesop's Fable, "The Lion and the Mouse" and did a copywork exercise, copying the moral of the story -"Sometimes the weak are able to help the strong" - from large "sentence strips" in the middle of each table onto handwriting paper.  Children who are able to form letters on their own did an admirable job with this exercise. For some, we wrote the phrase in light pencil for them to trace the letters.

Poetry - we reviewed "The Wind" and began learning "The Frog".

History - We began with a review of what we've been learning these past few weeks: Joseph and the Israelites in Egypt, Moses and the Crossing of the Red Sea, and then talked about the Israelites wandering in the dessert, receiving the Ten Commandments and finally reaching the Promised Land.  We read a section from Old Testatment Days: An Activity Guide on the Sabbath and talked about how the Israelites observed the Sabbath in many of the same ways that we now observe Sunday.  We then read the story of "The Fall of Jericho" from the Children's Bible.   

Project: we made paper trumpets (these were also used to alert the Israelites to the start and end of the Sabbath) and acted out the story, processing around the VA Hills church building (i.e. the "walls" of the city) and waiting for Joshua, our leader, to tell us when to shout and blast our trumpets, at which the walls fell down. Coloring page depicts this event, but it was sent home for "homework".

Geography - We were running out of time at this point, but we briefly looked at the CCM map for Week 7 and found the Dead Sea, near which would be the city of Jericho.

oral presentation - we saw a spider's nest; great segue to our discovery outside.............

Science - I had planned to do the project described below in class, but obviously was trying to fit in too much in one day!  We did a demonstration of supermarket classification to show how scientists classify insects, animals, etc. The project was to do an "insect collage". Inside the front pocket of your child's folder you'll find a folded piece of sketching paper, and a few sheets of colored images of insects. The idea being to cut and paste the images they choose to one side of the sheet of paper and label it "insects", and then draw or find pictures of arachnids (spiders, scorpions, ticks) for the other half of the paper. An additional idea would be to write or draw the different characteristics of these two classes in the phylum arthropoda, which we have been studying these past several weeks.

Insect hunting! - we didn't expect to find much - given the cold weather -but the students did find a few crickets and .....a black widow spider ! - already dead, gratefully as it was presented to me on a leaf (by my own daughter :)  This finding presented a great opportunity for everyone to observe it carefully and therefore be able to avoid it in the future.

Happy Birthday to our two students celebrating birthdays this week!  (and thanks to mom P.Q. for the cupcakes)