CC at Home: Cycle 1, Week 1

 "Both young men, and maidens; old men, and children: Let them praise the name of the Lord: for his name alone is excellent; his glory is above the earth and heaven." ~Psalm 148:12-13

Our first week of Classical Conversations will be a busy one, especially since I will be preparing to tutor my very first class. I'm trying to keep this week simple at home, but we're focusing on CREATION and ANCIENT EGYPT! There is way too much to discover. No simple week for this family!

*I think most CC families study history using the history sentence and not the timeline. After some deliberation, I've decided to use the history sentences as well as the timeline, at least where they correlate nicely.

Each day, I'll spend about thirty minutes with Johnathan reviewing this week's memory work (math, science, timeline, English, Latin, geography, and history sentence.) Then, we'll dig a little deeper!

HISTORY/BIBLE: 

At some point during each day, perhaps before naps, we'll read from The Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer. This week, we will cover chapters 1-6.

Monday: Johnathan (4) and Samuel (3) have already heard the creation story many times, so we'll reread the Genesis account of creation and spend time thanking God for His power over creation and His love for us. We'll make these simple creation numbers to hang in our home as a year-long reminder:

Tuesday: Community day, no "school" at home

Wednesday: Read Genesis 7. Discuss God's power over nature.

• PURPOSEFUL PLAY: Use plastic animals, toy people, and a toy wooden ship to reenact the story of the flood.
• Color the ark.

Thursday: Read Genesis 11. Discuss the importance of being obedient to God and stamping out pride in our lives.

• ACTIVITY: We will speak in different "languages" and try to guess what the others are saying. I will give commands to the boys in a "babble" voice. We'll talk about how it became impossible for the men who were building the tower to understand one another. 
•  We'll construct our own "tower" out of cardboard blocks. 
• Video: Tower of Babel
• Color the tower of Babel.

Friday: Ancient Egypt! I wasn't fascinated by this study when I was in school, but I am excited about delving into this part of history now! To help the boys visualize what we'll be studying, we'll watch this video. My young boys will not sit through the entire video, nor would I want them to. We'll "cruise" through the video to show the very interesting parts. I especially would like them to see the Egyptians hauling bricks to build pyramids.

Read this book:

We will try building a pyramid using our big cardboard bricks. These bricks will be such an asset to our homeschool during Cycle One!

On Friday night, we'll show Daddy what we've been doing! We'll make Mummy Dogs for supper...

 ...and watch Prince of Egypt!
GEOGRAPHY: 

Use CC's Trivium Tables to review the Fertile Crescent. We might look at photos of the area or look up places in Scripture that mention these places.

SCIENCE:

Johnathan and Samuel just aren't ready to delve into the classifications of living things! We'll simply memorize the science facts this week.

LATIN: 

Memorize noun cases.

ENGLISH:

Review prepositions. On Community Day in CC, the students will use the "Preposition Penguin" (just a stuffed penguin we had at home) to act out prepositions, so we'll use him to review. I love this fun book, too!

FINE ARTS: Practice drawing basic shapes (OiLS) using these printables: