Plans: Cycle 1 - Week 8

Although our History sentence this week is still about India, I feel like we can do more with Ancient China (our Geography memory work), so we're movin' on. . .

History

* Add another component to our History Sentence Lapbook. If you've never done a lapbook, but you want to, this is a really easy one to get you started. It requires very little time just once a week (at least, the way we do it).
* Read SOTW3: Ch. 11, 19 (Age of Imperialism)
* Read SOTW4: Ch. 1 (Age of Imperialism)

Geography

* Read some books about China:

(This one is not so much historical, obviously, but it does show the Chinese culture, and my girls LOVE Cinderella! I haven't looked at this book in person yet, but based on the Amazon reviews I'll check the library and pre-read it. We'll see...)

Here is a great blog post reviewing 35 (wow!) children's books about China, some Ancient, some not. If you're looking for more books, give this link a try!

* Do some fun stuff in our Ancient Civilizations History Pocket for Ancient China.
* Read SOTW1: Ch. 32 (China).

* I mentioned in last week's plans that we are going to try to spend some time each week learning about a Christian missionary who served in our memory work. This week we'll learn about Gladys Alyward.

Because we can't always buy all the books we want (oh, how I wish!), here is a FREE (and very abbreviated, which can be good for littles) biography and photo of Gladys Aylward. Here's another one. And here's a more in-depth, but still quick, free bio of this amazing woman of God who adopted and sheltered so many Chinese children and led them to Christ.

Click here to go to The Torchlighter's site, which sells the cartoon DVD of Gladys Aylward's story, as well as other activities, including coloring pages.

* We do plan to do some crafts involving Ancient China, too. Since we're spending this week and Week 9 on Ancient China, things will kind of flow between the two weeks. Be sure to check out that post, too, if you're looking for more ideas (I actually wrote those plans first, so I have more general resources listed there).

Math

* Keep pointing and singing with our Math Review Book.

Science

* Read some books about seeds:

* Watch The Magic School Bus Goes to Seed video:

* Print this out and discuss:

(I found this on Pinterest. If you like it, you can right-click Save Image and then save it to your computer. It's just a jpg image, there was no actual site when I clicked on it on Pinterest.)

Here's a much simpler picture of monocot vs. dicot that we'll probably use.

And here's a really great picture comparing the two!

Here's a pretty good picture of the life cycle of a conifer that we'll look at this week.

* If your child likes sorting, Montessori for Everyone sells monocot vs. dicot sorting cards (pdf) that looks great. We may or may not make the investment this time, but I'm sure we will the next time Cycle 1 rolls around.
* If you'd like to try sprouting seeds, be sure to check out Sprout People's Kid Zone site!

* And I'd LOVE to do this experiment at home:

This idea is from the book Playful Learning by Mariah Bruehl, and she also has a great blog with lots of ideas. The book is amazing; I flip through it on a regular basis.

Well, that's all she wrote! Don't forget to check out my Week 9 plans, too, since it has a few more general resources and crafts about Ancient China (I have no idea why I wrote that post first! Ha!). If you're looking for more ideas for Week 8, be sure to check out the Cycle 1 Weekly Link-Up at Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood. Oh, wait! How could I forget to mention this in my plans?! We will definitely be eating Chinese food this week! Yummmmm! ;)