Week 20 - What We're Really Doing

But first,

a kiss from Anna:

Anna had picture day at her school yesterday. She's practicing her smile before Daddy drops her off. (You can tell it certainly wasn't picture day at home - ha!)

So, I really enjoy planning lots of stuff for each week of CC, but I thought I'd show you what it is we are actually doing for Week 20 this week.

For History, Mary put in order the history cards from Grismar:

file name: History Cards Week 20 b.pdf

user name: grismar

I also just printed off her cards for Week 21, which are awesome, as well. (I really like Grismar's style; we use lots of her stuff at home and in our CC community!)

After I was sure Mary knew the History sentence, we danced around the living room and sang the song a few times with the CC CD. (Creating some good Mexican Revolution memories, for sure. ;)  )

For Science, I read the Science Snippet from C3, and Mary put together the layers of the atmosphere:

 

This is Grismar's brilliant idea, and Mary loved it! Click here to read more about it on Grismar's new blog! All the materials cost me about $2, and it took under 10 minutes to cut the felt. Easy, cheesy!

After that, we danced around the living room to NoGreaterJoy5's Science song for this week from C3:

file name: AJT Cy1 Science W20 Atmosphere Song 2012.mp3

user name: NoGreaterJoy5

(yeah, we try to dance a lot; it makes learning more fun around here, for both of us!)

Then, when Mary could tell me the Science memory work, I let her make her own atmosphere with aquarium rocks:

We got this idea from Sola Gratia Mom. Click here to see her post about the Layers of the Atmosphere craft. Pretty awesome!

(Okay, quick story. See the little make-up puff in Mary's hand? Yeah, well, after she poured in the rocks - the fun part - she just had to go give her babies a make-over. What?! This is insane to me, because, y'all, I don't even wear make-up! She did some kind of impressive acrobatic trick to reach the make-up box in the top of her closet - which is used only for ballet recitals - and came back with this puff. And is that even what it's called? A puff? How can a mother and daughter be so alike, yet soooo different?! Good times...)

Then we had a snack and watched Felix Baumgartner's amazing free fall from the stratosphere. Mary really enjoyed that.

For Fine Arts, we've been listening to this music:

It tells the story of Handel's Water Music; we find it pretty entertaining and educational at the same time.

Also, I was asked to teach the first two weeks of Orchestra at our community. While doing some research, I found this little chant, which I put to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star:

I made some visuals to use while I was in front of the group, and Mary's been using them at home to help her remember the five time periods of Classical music:

I mix them up, and then she sings the little song and puts them in order.

We also purchased the Musical Instrument Toob from Hobby Lobby ($5 with the 40% off coupon!), and she sorts them into the four families of the orchestra. Surprisingly, there were no percussion instruments included, so we had to make some. I keep these in a little bag near our calendar, and she does it as part of Calendar Time.

And that's it so far for our Week 20!

Honestly, we won't do anything else for CC this week, except review the memory work by listening to the CD in the car. Mary likes to listen to Review (as we call the CD), because it helps her get ready for The Challenge on Funday Monday, which is still a big deal to her (woot!). 

I was thinking this morning, y'know, Mary is four-years-old. She's going to do all of this again when she's seven, and then again when she's ten (because the cycles repeat in Classical Conversations - one of reasons why I love, love, love CC). I'm not going to push it right now. If she shows a special interest in a subject, we go with it, and focus on that for the week. If not, no worries.

Before I go, I want to show you a couple great pictures from this week at our CC campus:

Can you guess what they're cheering for?

The Science experiment! How great! We talked about the layers of the atmosphere and pressure this week in class. Mary's tutor lit a piece of cardboard and stuck it down inside a glass jar with a very narrow neck. Then she placed a hard-boiled egg on top, and we watched the egg get sucked down into the bottle. Oh, the kids went wild! Awesome!

And then for presentations, Mary read a story that she wrote. Yes, her very first story! She dictated it to me earlier in the week, and I typed exactly what she said:

Here's Mary at home with her story. So sweet!

Well, that's it. That's what we've really been doing for CC this week. Not too much, but enough for us. :)

Happy Pi Day (3/14!), by the way!