Preparing Ahead for Classical Conversations - Cycle 1 Week 1

I am trying to plan out the whole year ahead of time - something I have never attempted before.  I'm keeping a pinterest board of lots of activities for Cycle 1, but it just isn't organized enough and I know that I'll end up doing very little of what I've pinned (and even double pinned!) unless I organize myself ahead of time with a chronological list. I'm going to write 24 posts, one for each Cycle 1 week outlining what I plan to do with my 5 and 3 year old (in August) for that week in the Cycle.

In the fall, my hope is just to come back to these blog posts and have everything in one place to link to.

History:
Ten Commandments: one lesson daily from this site to cover each commandment.  Goal: to memorize the hand motions to go with each commandment.  Use the hand motions as tutor in class.

Science:

Taxonomy - I've always used the mnemonic "Kings Play Chess on Funny Glass Stairs" to remember Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Genus, Species.  Karen Tyler actually has a lesson about this (well, about how animals are named with binomial nomenclature) in her Biology album and I plan on presenting that.  I'll be using the second taxonomy powerpoint presentation on this website as my teaching notes.  Bear is ready for some details, but she'll be 5, so the details need to be simple enough to readily understand.  This powerpoint does that.  I won't read it to her - it's just slides of writing, but I will use the information from it to add to Karen's presentation.

Geography:
fertile crescent:
Read this brief informational web page  to the kids.
This song (rap) definitely depicts the fertile crescent's history well, but we'll see whether or not Mommy's ears can put up with it.  I do not prefer rap.  It is a great song though.  It would be better as a review after reading all the corresponding chapters in SOTW 1, but I'll put it here in my plans.

Video:


Art:
work on drawing using Drawing with Children

Grammar:
Prepositions:

These three picture books will be great for J-jo (and a nice change from Going on a Bear Hunt) as we talk about prepositions.

Oh, Look!

and Where Is the Green Sheep?

Joey and Jet: Book 1 of Their Adventures

Follow these books up with the Montessori Preposition presentation and work (except, maybe with a sheep instead of a bear).

 Read the following two books to Bear (and J-jo if he'll sit through them).

 Under, Over, by the Clover: What Is a Preposition?

and Behind the Mask: A Book about Prepositions

Around the House the Fox Chased the Mouse: Adventures in Prepositions 

If You Were a Preposition

I like this poster that would be easy to make for the kids.  I think Bear would probably enjoy making it herself.  We'll see if we have time.

This is a cute download in which the child can place the monkey cut out in the right places as you read the "book".  However, we'll probably just "play around" with real objects as we learn about prepostions.

We will be memorizing this chant with actions(this is the slow version):

Latin:
At this point I have no "lessons" for the Latin memory work.  We will continue to listen to Song School Latin and merely memorize the Latin memory work from CC.


Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood is hosting a Weekly Classical Conversations Link up.  Click on the image below to see who else has shared their Week 1 plans.