Plans: Cycle 1 - Week 14

Africa

History
* Read SOTW2: Songhai. Chapter 29.
* Read this information on Songhai from Mr. Donn (isn't he great?!).
* And read this page, too, about Mali and Songhai.
* Watch this BBC documentary on Ancient Zimbabwe:

(It's almost an hour long, so my girls for sure won't sit through it, but I thought it was interesting!)

Geography
* Continue reviewing with our Map Friends book.
* Review with this week's Geography Flash Cards:

These great little cards are from CCing it one day at a time. Thanks, Crecia!

* Read SOTW1-3: Ancient Africa (continue from previous week)
* This website has some great ideas, including a video about the salt mining caravan to Timbuktu (think you've had a bad day? Watch this video and count your blessings!), and an activity to go along with this West African tale:

* Watch another Ananse story here:

* If you're looking for more African crafts, check this website.

* And we'll hopefully read this book:

Science
* Here's a unit we'll look into when the girls are older. Let's Explore Rocks is listed for ages 8 and up on CurrClick, and it's free right now!

* This unit looks great, too, but it's not free ($6):

If my girls were a little older we'd probably get this. Maybe next time Cycle 1 rolls around we'll give it a go.

* Making candy rocks to help explain the different types looks pretty yummy:

* And here's another yummy explanation of rock types from Geology Kitchen:

(I'm getting hungry!)

* We'll look at some rock cycle pictures:

(this one above is good, minus the 'millions of years' part - Mary likes cartoony things)

* Watch some rock cycle videos on Youtube:

Here's a nice, basic one with examples of each kind of rock.

Here's a good one using crayons.

Here's a cartoony one from Make Me Genius.

Here is another basic one (replace 'Mother Earth' with 'God' and it's much better).

And there are many more videos out there if none of these are the right fit.

* Here is a link to an interactive rock cycle animation site with lots of information.

* Here is a fun activity to help explain metamorphic rocks using a Snickers bar:

* The Adventures of Bear has a great activity (and lunch!) to help explain the types of rocks.

* This looks like fun, too:

* If you have littles, like I do, they might want to go on a rock hunt this week! They probably won't run across any granite, but it's still fun to sort and classify what they do find:

Math
* Continue reviewing with our Math Review book.
* We'll use Suzanne's super-great (free!) printable for our Memory Work Review Board this week:

Suzanne Shares is great CC (and just good ol' 'life' blog) that I really enjoy. If you haven't checked out Suzanne's corner of the world yet, go take a look!

English Grammar
* Continue learning our helping verbs with the Jingle Bells song. See last week's post for video and links.

Fine Arts
* Listen to this audio:

* If your older child is a budding artist, you could do the Ghiberti project from this book:

(You can see his project in the preview when you click on the book in Amazon's site.)

Christian Missionary/Hero

This week we'll be learning about African missionary C.T. Studd.

This post is being submitted to the Weekly Link-Up over at Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood.