Plans: Cycle 1 - Week 6

Week 6 - Ancient Rome, Part 2! Although the history sentence for this week is specifically about the fall of Rome (good stuff on the link above, btw), we'll probably just continue with most of what we did last week (see Cycle 1 - Week 5 post).

Bible

We're going to focus on Paul and his journey to Rome this week:

* Read Acts 19:21 (Paul says he must go to Rome).

* Read Acts 25-26 (Paul appeals to Caesar and Paul's testimony before King Agrippa). Here is a pdf coloring page of this event. (Did you know that 'Caesar' was Emperor Nero? I never realized that! I have learned SO much homeschooling already, and we're still only in the planning stage for CC! This is all so cool!)

* and Acts 27-28 (his shipwreck, getting bitten by a poisonous snake and being mistaken for a god, healing people on the island, and then his house-arrest in Rome). Here is a Sunday School lesson on Paul's shipwreck with some good ideas. Here is a pdf coloring page of the ship. Here is a coloring page of the shipwreck. And here is a coloring page of Paul's ministry in Rome (we like to color!).

Here is another interesting preschool lesson plan pdf with some neat activities (making a paper chain and pretending to be Paul in chains, etc.).

And here is an easy-to-grasp run-down of the story of Paul.

Geography

* Paul talks about going to Spain in Romans 15:24, 28.

* Paul also talks about a "ship of Alexandria" in Acts 27:6 and 28:11 (this ties into our Bible work above, so that's great!)

* Keep coloring our maps and listening to our Geography Songs audios.

History

* Listen to SOTW1: Chapters 41-42 (Fall of Rome), and listen to any of the other Rome chapters that we didn't get around to last week.

* Read some more Rome books:

I haven't read these yet, but we love this series. The reviews for the one above say that it has a lot of information about Roman culture in addition to Mount Vesuvius blowing its top in 79 AD and burying two Roman cities.

It looks kind of gory, as the title says, but my sweet little girl pretends to cut off my head when we play Theseus and the Minotaur, so I don't think this will bother her. ;) (This kind of freaked me out at first, but maybe God is going to use her in the medical field or in some other area where she'll need to not mind icky things like blood and guts. At least I feel better about it when I tell myself that!)  Click here for the FREE web version of the book.

We'll also keep reading our books from last week.

Science

* Watch this online video about classifying animals again (used this last week, too):

* Play some classification file folder games:

These are from File Folder Fun and are a super-cute and fun way to review the major groups of vertebrates. Click here and here to see my other quick posts on file folder games (we love 'em!).

* Do these super-cool worksheets on identifying the groups of vertebrates:

(I plan on laminating each one and letting Mary use a dry-erase marker on them)

* Play this online classification game (so cute!):

You drag the different characterics to the correct bin. It's short and sweet and you get a little surprise at the end!

* Do a little visual illustration of a backbone while working on our fine motor skills:

aka string some beads! ;)

* Do some more work on our Animal Classification lapbook (continued from last week):

* And read some books:

The Science of Living Things series (some of the books pictured above) are supposed to be pretty good (I haven't picked these up yet, but I'm planning on it.). However, like everything science-related, I'm going to check for and skim over anything about evolution. I do not believe the earth is millions of years old, and I won't teach that to my girls. The book about birds in this series supposedly talks about evolution and shows a reptile morphing into a bird (according to its Amazon review). In my opinion, there is no perfect book except the Bible. I don't mind taping pages together (I had to do that to one of my Egypt books. Apparently the Egyptian dancers weren't too shy, if you know what I mean.), and skipping over certain paragraphs. The mention of evolution doesn't completely rule-out a book for us, but it may for your family (everyone's different and called by God to different things - you can read my freedom post here), so I just wanted to let you know. :)

All of our English, Latin, Math, and Language Arts work will stay the same. To see what those are, check out my Week 1 and Week 2 planning posts. If you're looking for ideas for previous weeks, check out my Week 3, Week 4, and Week 5 posts. To see what other CC families have planned for Week 6, take a look at the Weekly Link-Up over at Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood. Happy planning, friend!