Plans: Cycle 1 - Week 5

Cowards die many times before their deaths; 

The valiant never taste of death but once. 

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, 

It seems to me most strange that men should fear; 

Seeing that death, a necessary end, 

Will come when it will come.

William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar", Act 2 scene 2

Doesn't that just give you chill-bumps?! Ahhh, the Bard! I LOVE Shakespeare, and I LOVE Ancient Rome! I might have mentioned before that I'm a former high school English teacher (Honestly, I always hate admitting that. Now you're going to look for grammatical errors and laugh when you find them - because, yeah, you'll find 'em!). In the Spring, I taught Shakespeare. The freshmen read "Romeo & Juliet," while the sophomores read "Julius Caesar." Such great memories! Aaaanyway, now that I'm teaching at home, I'm hoping that my love for this stuff will rub off on my daughters; it certainly hasn't rubbed off on my husband! (By the way, the hubs is my complete and total opposite. He's told me that he would've hated to have been in my class in high school! He's one of those just-let-me-sit-here-quietly-and-do-my-work-by-myself sort of guys. Well, you know what they say about opposites...)

CC's history sentences for Weeks 5 and 6 are both about Ancient Rome, with Week 6 focusing on the fall of Rome. With my four-year-old, I think I'm going to just spend two weeks on Rome, instead of zero-ing in on its fall for a week. I don't know; we'll see how it goes...

Bible
The entire time Jesus was on earth, He lived under the Roman empire. Here is a great site about the New Testament Roman emperors.
* Read Luke 2 and talk about Caesar Augustus (Julius Caesar's grand-nephew) and Jesus' birth.
* Listen to SOTW1: Chapter 37 (birth of Jesus).
* Read Matthew 2 and talk about Roman's system of government, how Herod was the king of the region. This passage will be good, too, because it tells about Joseph taking his family to Egypt, and Egypt is our geography for this week!

(These plans for Bible study are obviously not in chronological order. I'm hoping this will still be okay and not confusing for the girls. We usually read Family-Time Bible everyday in the correct order, so I think we'll still be good.)

Geography
* Read Matthew 2 (see above)
* Read Titus, Chapter 1 (Crete)
* Read some good books about Egypt:

* Listen to SOTW1: Chapter 2 about the Nile River.

* Make an Egyptian headdress:

* For Crete, we'll listen to SOTW1: Chapter 18 (Life in Early Crete). I know that Mary will love this because it tells the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, one of her favorites! Below is one of our favorite versions of the story. We've acted this one out many times, and for some reason I'm always the dreaded Minotaur and get my head cut off at the end!

History
* To go along with our history sentence this week, we'll listen to SOTW1: Chapter 29 (The Punic Wars). As you can tell, we use those audios quite a bit!
* Have some fun with our Ancient Civilizations History Pockets:

Mary has already looked through it with me, and she can't wait to make the puppets!

* Listen to this audio download:

Okay, so I will restrain myself from teaching my little girls Shakespeare's play (for now!), but I just cannot pass up the opportunity to listen to it during the week! It's very, very good, and this recording has lots of additional background on Ancient Rome. Anything read by Jim Weiss is always a winner for us!

We'll also listen to the corresponding chapters in SOTW (Chapters 27, 28, 34-36) while we do some coloring:

* Make laurel wreaths and togas (great ideas from Creekside Learning):

* And read some of our favorite Rome books:

This book above is a good read-aloud one.

Science
* Watch the Classifying Animals online video from Brain Pop Jr.:

This is almost six minutes long and covers invertibrates in general (this week's memory work) and the major groups of vertebrates (next week's memory work). We'll watch this both weeks.

* Read some books on invertebrates:

* Review invertebrates with some flashcards:

I just uploaded this file to C3 as Major Groups of Invertebrates Flashcards1.pdf by melodystroud. I also updated it - not reflected in the above picture - so the groups are listed in the order of the memory work. Although I made these as flashcards, I think I'm just going to print out both pages, laminate them back-to-back on one sheet, and then sing and point. By the way, my favorite song for this week is the one on C3 by NoGreaterJoy5. I've downloaded almost ALL of this user's songs for Geography, Science, and Math; they're all wonderful! If you aren't on C3 or just want an easier way to get them, click on the picture above to download the pdf.

* Work on our Animal Classification lapbook:

Our English, Latin, Math, and Language Arts studies will stay the same (see my Cycle 1 and Cycle 2 planning posts for more details on those). If you've got some younger Foundations students and are looking for ideas for previous weeks, please check out my Cycle 3 and Cycle 4 planning posts.

Still looking for more ideas for Cycle 1 - Week 5? Head on over to Brandy's Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood weekly link-up to see what other CC families have planned!