Week 1 Update & Notes

Hi Foundations Parents!

Well, we survived week 1!  :)  I hope your students enjoyed class today as much as I did.


A recap of what we covered:

• History: Commandments 1-5 and the timeline cards 1-7.
• Science: Classification of living things
• Latin: noun cases & their meanings
• Math: skip counting 1's & 2's
• English grammar: definition of a preposition
• Geography: Fertile Crescent

For history: I will email out the hand motions for the history sentences for weeks 1-6.  I also encourage you to either purchase the audio CDs or sign up for CC Connected and download the history songs.  Those are a big help with learning the history sentences!

For timeline: I have timeline motions I can give to each of you, once I know you have purchased the timeline cards.  Please bring a card with you next week to show me you purchased the cards and I will send you the hand motions (this restriction is because of copyright issues).  Also, sign up for CC Connected and get the timeline song - it's awesome!

For English grammar: next week we start learning prepositions and we have hand motions and a song to use for practice.  The song can be found on the CC audio CD or on CC Connected.  I will email out the hand motions after class next week.

For geography: if you purchased maps from Ty, consider purchasing some tracing paper and having your students trace the maps like they did in class today.  Remember, we are working towards having our students draw and label the whole world!  There is also a blackline map in the back of the Foundations guide on page 217.  You can make copies of the map and have your students color/label areas on the map.  I believe the blackline map can also be downloaded from CC Connected.

For Latin: we will cover the same information for Latin next week, since this year we are focusing on nouns.  So work with your students to make the connection between noun cases and their meanings.  Chant, use a dry erase board and erase words until they learn it, or make a matching game on a piece of paper.  If you have any other ideas to help learn the Latin noun cases, forward them to all the parents!

For science: remember our image of a king's crown and working our way down.  You can also use the mnemonic, "KING PHYLUM calls his CLASS to ORDER so the FAMILY GENiUS could study SPECIES."  I also found a really neat file on CC Connected that you can print and use for your students to put the classifications in order.  The file name is CC_C1-W1_Class_LivingThings.pdf.

For math: I know this week's skip counting was pretty easy.  Just have the students sing the song and practice their counting.  It will get much harder in a few weeks!  You can also find a 200's chart on CC Connected, and you can get your students to circle/color the numbers as they count by 2's.

For art: have your students practice drawing using their OiLS!  We will use those in our drawing project next week!

For presentation next week: our class is responsible for narrating a piece of literature.  Please have your students select a book this week and practice narrating it.  Their narration needs to be between 1-2 minutes.

I think that's it!  Thanks for being such a great class today!  See you next week!