Cycle 1, Week 4 Resources

I’m excited about this week’s History Sentence! I’ve always heard about the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World, but can I make a confession? I had NO IDEA what they were until preparing to tutor my Abecedarians! I look forward to studying them more in-depth this week with my sons.

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Resources

• The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World DVD (Half price @ Amazon!) Have you checked your library’s DVD collection? We’ve found some EXCELLENT DVDs on Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia that we’ve watched the past couple of weeks. I was ecstatic to find this DVD at our library! It has detail and explanation about each Wonder, and great visuals of what it is believed that they looked like. We watched it as soon as we got home from CC today! This is an excellent movie!It gives a detailed explanation of the when, where and how behind each Wonder. Beautiful, engaging, informative, captivating! Check it out!
• Seven Wonders of the Ancient World matching game–Click to download the game. I found this from And Here We Go. Of course, she has an abundance of GREAT Cycle 1, Week 4 resources (as always!). Check out her blog!
• Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Coloring Pages
• Seven Wonders of the Ancient World website–This has detailed information about each Wonder. Looks like a rich resource.
• Hand Motions for 7 Wonders of the Ancient World that we used in class:
  • The Great Pyramids: Make a “pyramid” (triangle) with thumb and index fingers from both hands.
  • The Hanging Gardens: We bent over at the waist and made our arms “hang” like the Hanging Gardens.
  • The Temple of Artemis: We made a gigantic roof over our heads with our arms.
  • The Statue of Zeus: We stood at attention like a statue.
  • The Mausoleum: We pretended to be dead since this was a tomb for Mausolus.
  • Pharos Lighthouse: We flashed our hands beside us as if we were the flashing light of the Pharos Lighthouse.
  • The Colossus of Rhodes: We used the ASL sign for “road.” I felt like that was easier for my 4-6 year olds to remember, connect with the word “Rhodes” rather than explain the actual origin of this Wonder.

Latin

You can download here a paper that I reworked from CC Connected. I put the First Declension endings onto one page (to save on printing). I’m using these in a page protector for my boys to trace over the endings while we listen to the CC Song.

Science

Hand motions for Plant Cell parts that we used in class:

• Nucleus: Made a circle with our arms over our head.
• Cytoplasm: Made squiggly liquid motions with our hands.
• Vacuole: We pretended to vacuum.
• Mitochondria: We showed our “MIGHTY” muscles.
• Cell Membrane: We rubbed our arm to remember that our skin holds in the contents of our body as the Cell Membrane contains and gives shape to the cell contents.
• Cell Wall: We made a wall with our 2 hands.
• Chloroplasts: We clapped our hands together like a “blast” since it rhymed with “plast.”
• Golgi Bodies: We stood up straight and tall like a soldier displaying our “body.”

There are gobs and gobs of Plant Cell activities. I liked this one that I found through the CC Weekly Link up at Half a Hundred Acre Wood. It’s a Plant Cell Cake. How cute is this?!?!?

In Week 3, I had my class draw the Animal Cell using the 5 Basic Elements of Shape, which we had learned in Week 1 of Fine Arts. It was a fun activity, and I loved the synthesis of Fine Arts with Science grammar. I even had “Artist: __________” for the child to write his/her name instead of the traditional “Name: _____________” on a worksheet. I made one for the Plant Cell as well.

->You can download the Animal Cell drawing worksheet or Plant Cell drawing worksheet here. <-

Geography

When I teach Geography in class, I try if at all possibleto make a connection with one, some or all of the Geography locations and another subject’s grammar for the week or from a previous week. By remembering the factoid or tidbit of information, the children now have a memory with the location on the map. Its the same concept of pairing an ASL sign or hand motion with a CC Timeline card. These connections help “jog” the children’s memories and recall the Geography locations. 🙂

Week 4 is an easy one! Two of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World, The Temple of Artemis and The Mausoleum, are located in Turkey, or Asia Minor as it was known in the ancient times. Turkey and Asia Minor were 2 of the Geography new grammar for Week 4. And….if you look back, Babylon was a location for Week 2 Geography. Babylon was the home of The Hanging Gardens.

Math

I can’t say enough about these Skip Counting mazes. My 5 year old is still working on number recognition for some of the numbers beyond the 20s. For him, I wrote out the numbers for the 5s and 6s, which allowed the activity for him to be a combination of Skip Counting review and Number Recognition review.

You can also use a 100 Number Chart to review the Skip Counting for the week. Here’s one online. It’s an interactive, online 100 number chart. Your child can select a crayon and “color” the boxes online. You can have your child “color” any of the Skip Counting patterns. Good independent activity for Math review. You can also print a 100 Number chart on that site.  Or, you can order a nice laminated one. A 100 Number Chart is one of my FAVORITE, MUST HAVES for homeschooling.

As always, don’t forget to check up the Cycle 1, Week 4 Link Up on Half a Hundred Acre Wood that I’m participating in this week. There are lots of great resources from other CC Moms there.