This post is a brief layout of my Classical Conversations Cycle 2 Week 15 Tutor Plans for the Masters age class. If you are new to the blog please note that I will beat around the bush on what the actual verbatim memory questions and/or phrases are as to not mess with copy right issues. Last week is here. I’ve started posting my plans because I feel that sometimes it’s just nice to see what other tutors are doing without having to dig through forums or cc connected. I love CC and I hope that you will find this useful. I go with a very “stick in the sand method” (quoted from CC) so these are very basic. They should get you off to a good start for thinking about ways to get the new content out there. I limit using the resources found on CCconnected or with the music provided by CC because I want the parent to be able to introduce that at home.
Our Classical Conversations Community Day is on Mondays.
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These are done first thing. We have gotten in a good flow and everyone get’s up to talk now – all 8 of them. I am so proud of them!! This week was on a famous person or missionary. We had a variety of topics including one student who talked about her older brothers who are missionaries.
Have I mentioned that I LOVE science! That is one reason I love Classical Conversations so much. Plus, God is never taken out of the equation with CC’s science.
Below are some examples of Kinetic and Potential energy. Technically both pictures below can portray both types of energy but I chose to separate them. Kinetic energy is that which is acquired from motion – an object that is in motion has “kinetic energy.” The falling of the roller coaster is demonstrating kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is also demonstrated by the flying of an arrow.
Potential energy in a nutshell is “stored energy” waiting to go…or at least that’s my quick interpretation of it. So the archer holding his bow drawn, aiming at an item, is potential energy. Or the roller coaster sitting at the top of the arch before it falls is potential energy.
This week’s sentence was about World War 1 countries. I had more fun with this week than last. I chose to use the backside of my dry erase board which I have converted into a world map. It is a Laminated Map so I can use my dry erase markers right on it. I printed flags for the countries involved plus a couple extra pictures to fit with the memory sentence. One thing to pay attention to is that the flags were different during World War 1 than they are today. Namely, the Central Powers countries.
We erased words in the memory sentence as we slowly placed the flags over the WWI areas on the map.
The Middle East has so many smaller countries that I decided to use a mnemonic to get us through it. First of all, one of the countries is “Persia” or Iran. So I found a cute little picture of a Persian cat and went with it. Our mnemonic is “The Cat Stopped In Kitty Place (Instantly).” If you follow the CC Foundations Guide, you will know exactly what countries I’m referring to. 🙂 I had the kids point out where the countries were on this large map as we went a long. We typically sit in a half circle on the ground while doing this. We did not do blob drawing this week.
I found this one much easier this week than earlier weeks. This is the exact same stuff we are learning in Essentials. This week was about sentence purposes. I had the words written in different colors. I asks for volunteers to make up a sentence that went with each purpose. I slowly erased everything until we had nothing but white.
For this week, I again handed every child a ruler. I had them show me the millimeter….then tell me how many are in a centimeter. Then I lined up a few rulers (+ 10 more cm) and demonstrated a “meter.” Then we talked about how many meters were in a kilometer. We then chanted the content a few times.
We then talked about how to figure this one out if you “didn’t have it memorized.” Notice any patterns in the picture above? The first number has 1 zero, the 2nd has 2 zeros, and the 3rd has 3 zeros. After the “=” there is always a 1. Also, for your own reference…milli- means 1/1000. So there are 1,000 of those in a meter. Think millennium for 1,000 years. Centi- means 1/100 or 100 centimeters in a meter. Think 100 cents in a dollar or 100 years in a century. Kilo- means 1,000. So 1000 meters.
We continued drawing but used the white board. I was so sad during set up. I discovered I am missing card 99 (Japan’s Isolation)…I am certain it never came with my original order. So sad. I’m going to have to contact the company in my spare time.
All of my kids already knew their latin for the week so we bypassed this with just some quick repeats of the memory content. I made sure every student had it before we moved on.
We used experiments out of Janice Vancleave’s Science Experiments book. We got to make music out of glass bottles. This was very similar to our wine glass experiment. It was like our own homemade xylophone. This experiment talked about frequency and pitch. The book text talked about how frequency (the speed an object has as it moves back and forth) creates pitch. Higher frequency = higher pitch. We discovered that the bottles with more water had a lower pitch.
What the book didn’t talk about is how this relates to our wine glass experiment. Nor did it mention why the pitch changes. Our wine glass experiment from a couple week s ago was an example of a certain type of frequency caused by the vibration we made when we rubbed our finger on the top of the glass. As for this experiment above, we talked about why the pitch was lower in the fuller bottle. We came to the conclusion that it was lower because the frequency was lower. A lower frequency means less movement I assume. The higher amount of water “weighed down” the glass so it didn’t vibrate as easily – hence a lower frequency and pitch. This is a fun experiment for the kids. Expect excitement and spilled water. 🙂
Art – Famous Artists:
This week’s focus was on Thomas Gainsborough who was a very well-known portrait and landscape artist during his time in the 1700’s. His landscapes were from real life but had a fantasy-ish edge to them.
We used one of the activities out of the Discovering Great Artists book suggested in the CC foundations guide but I altered it slighty. We painted our landscapes for about 15 minutes. While it was drying we did our science project and then we went back to our art. Instead of drawing a portrait on a separate sheet of paper, I had the kids cut out magazine people.
The kids were enjoying themselves so much, and because I am normally rushing their art, I let them keep going. We ran out of time for the review game. I asked them some history and science questions while they were doing their art.
I hope you have a great week! Did you do something different during your CC day?