Week 6: 10/18/10 - 10/22/10

History: Chapter 33, **Concentration on Romans looking to the Greeks, Building their city, Roman roads, aquedects and amphitheaters.

Zeus/Jupiter: The king,

Hades/Pluto: The King of the underworld,

Persephone/Proserpine: the daughter of the goddess of the harvest

Demeter/Ceres: The goddess of the harvest

The Romans took the Greek gods as their own but gave them Roman names. What are Romans well-known for building? Roads, aqueducts, baths (other answers: bridges, arches, amphitheaters)How did Romans travel from one end of the Italian peninsula to the other? They built roads. The Appian Way was a famous Roman road. The Romans built aqueducts to bring  fresh water into the cities. Gladiators were men trained to fight with each other and with wild animals. According to the Greeks and Romans winter comes because Proserpine (Persephone) has to spend six months of every year in the underworld. True. The Romans were the first to use concrete. True.

 

Crafty history ideas for this week:

• make pop-up Roman god cards - Persephone and Hades
• make a gladiator fight

Science: Kingdom Archaebacteria

Activity: Make Archaebacteria page for Lap book. Ideas for page:

• include a picture of a microscope since these cannot be seen with the naked eye.
• Thermophiles: use a flap that looks like a flame, Halophiles: use a flap that looks like a salt box or alternatively glue granules of salt to flat for a sensory tool, Methanogens: perhaps a volcano pull flap
• Have Mara cut out different shapes from construction paper to represent the rod, round or spiral shaped types of bacteria... see if you can think of a way to "examine" them through the drawn microscope for lap book.

Latin/Grammar: Make sure Mara is comfortable with lesson five, move to lesson 6 this week.  Make sure to do daily chants. I think this will be extremely important as Lesson 7 will be moving into reading and comprehension of Latin sentences. Review what has been learned about verbs so far, then talk about the past, present, future tenses of using verbs. Relate this information to Latin, though we are strictly working in the present at this time.

Reading:

• Finish Dr. Doolittle's Puddleby Adventures - Mara to read a a couple pages during each reading session.
• The story of Demeter and Persephone
• The Holy Twins: Benedict and Scholastica
• The Island Story (from last week)
• Parables from Nature (from last week)
• Tanglewood Tales: The Pomegranate Seeds
• Start new book: Black Hearts in Battersea

Mathematics: Continue with chapter 6. Related facts through 10.

Consider making the addition squares with colored construction paper... or beads on pipe cleaners.

**Made fact family bracelets with beads and pipe cleaners. This week Mara will have write out the fact family that each bracelet represents.

Journal Page ideas:

• finish ancient city collage: consider doing this inside of journal; make sure to include aqueducts
• using stickers, small bits of construction paper, or home-made square stamp: make a mosaic
• Latin verb present tense endings: -ō, -s, -t, -mus, -tis, -nt. Conjugate the verb "vocāre" and write the four principal parts of the verb: vocō, vocāre, vocāvī, vocātum. Illustrate the verb.
• Bible verse copywork
• Persephone

Just for fun:

Buy pomegranates at the open market on Monday.

Go to Assisi on Thursday.

Monday Notes:
After taking our time in getting out of the house, we made it to the market and home again before noon. Mara was quick to discover the pomegranates after I thought I had done a thorough scan in finding none, so Mara picked out a few pomegranates and we replenished our popular stock of clementines and local wine. On our way home we stopped at the famous Giolitti for a quick repose. Steven, Mara and I enjoyed fresh squeezed orange juice, espresso, cornetti and an enormous cookie. You can smell the treats from this place blocks away!

Once home (and after lunch) we started on Latin first. After a review from what we went over last week, I felt like we were quickly back on track and Mara was able to identify the subject pronoun for Latin verbs that she has not yet been given the meaning. She worked on her Latin verb journal page and did a chant for 'voco' and 'exploro' for memorization. Science - Read Chapter on Archaebacteria. Finish Archaebacteria page in Kingdoms lapbook. Mathematics - Fact Families  obracelets. Read History Chapter. Reading: Finish Dr. Doolittle.

Tuesday Notes:

Go to Santa Susanna Lending Library to return last week's books and check out a few new: Topics for exploration are Julius Caesar, Roman engineering, Stories of Greek or Roman Gods and Goddesses, pilgrimages, anything else of interest. Today in mathematics I want to make sure that Mara finishes up the remaining colored bracelets for her fact families with sums of 10. I think she has 4 or 5 more left. If we have time, she can continue her work in her workbook. For History we can review the Q/A from yesterday's reading, then either move to the gladiator activity or the Persephone/Hades project. For a journal page today, she can work on learning a new bible verse. Do a Latin verb chant today and read Nature's parables. For extra reading either begin The Phoenix and the Carpet or read out of new borrowed books.

Wednesday Notes:
This morning we left the house early for a trip to the Quirinal Gardens, a lovely green space great for rambunctious children to roam and romp freely and it almost feels as though you've escaped the city. In the afternoon hours we worked on Latin, a journal page, History and Mara worked on Persephone. We read chapter 3 of Black hearts in Battersea and Mara read several fairy tales aloud.