Saturday, September 12, 2015

Schole' in Practice - SGCA Week 4

Our first four weeks have been amazing.  The kids have learned so much already, and our first Learning Celebration is just around the corner in two weeks!  This week the kids were adding lots of big concepts to their learning toolbox.  New words like onomatopoeia, clinometer, composition and more, were all a part of this week's learning.  Join us in reviewing our Schole' Moments from week four...


Morning Time
We continued to spend our morning time discussing the Virtue of the week, which is Love.  We have explored many aspects of love so far.  This week we focused in on the  aspect of love in action.  We read Leo Tolstoy's Where Love Is, God Is.  This short story beautifully illustrates what Jesus said in Mark 9:41.  The story can be found in William J. Bennett's book The Children's Book of Faith.  I then did a demonstration for the kids to show how love multiplies when we do acts of kindness for others.  I took a piece of paper and wrote God's Love on it.  I showed it to the kids and noted that it had four corners.  I then cut a corner and said I was giving away some of God's love to one of the kids by doing an act of kindness for them and handed them the corner I cut.  I then noted that there were now five corners to my paper -I had multiplied my corners by giving away one of them.   We did this until they had all been cut and multiplied.  We discussed the giving out of love to others is how we multiply God's love in the earth.  To end our time, we did a little movement activity.  We marched around the building using a chant about God, done in military cadence style.
Fine Arts


The kids have been working on some drawing projects to be displayed at our Learning Celebration.  This week they finished their elements of composition to place their drawing of Leo the Lion into.  This project is from the book Drawing with Children.  Their end results were so cool!  Can't wait for parents and friends to see them at the Celebration art display!  
Great Books
This week the kids learned all about some really big and fun words; alliteration, hyperbole and onomatopoeia.  Who doesn't think it's fun to say onomatopoeia, and how much more fun is it when you actually know what it means?  The kids were then given an opportunity to compose some poetry on their own, playing with their newly learned literary devices.  Ms. Miller read them a fun book on onomatopoeia called A Mouthful of Onomatopoeia.   
   
Schole' Lunch
This week we had the blessing of having one of our student's parent perform for the group.  This Dad is self taught and he played wonderfully for the kids, interjecting some well timed truths throughout his playing.  It was such a blessing to have a parent perform, and his daughter was very thrilled to have him there doing it!  Once the kids were through with lunch, they headed outside to continue to work no their Chinese Jump rope and regular jump rope skills together.

Latin
What a blast these kids are having in Latin class.  It's so fun to see them really getting into learning it.  Ms. Anne sure knows how to make it fun.  This week the kids were learning all about words that have to do with helping at home.
Math Games
Our math game this week was I Have, Who Has with money.  Each card had some coins on it that the kids had to add up in order to figure out how much change they each had, so they would know when their monetary amount was called out by a classmate.  The game goes in an order that the teacher has the master to.  The kids helped each other (pairing lower and upper elementary together to assist).  It was a fun game for the kids and challenged them.

Science
Today's picture for the kids to make an observation, prediction and an inference with was a person stepping on a banana peel!  Thales was the famous ancient scientist we discussed today in class.  The kids were introduced to the idea of math in science.  They made a clinometer together and discussed how Thales measured the height of the pyramids using the sun and shadows.  The clinometer was discussed and some context was given to the kids about them in history.  The kids did an experiment to demonstrate Thales misconceived idea that everything was made out of water.  We continued to explore the theme of famous ancient scientists getting some things right and some things wrong.  In class the kids read Children's book of Philosophy about Thales.        

It was a Wonderful Wednesday together!



2 comments:

  1. I'm really enjoying these posts! As a CC family, it's neat to see how a Schole group works differently. I'm interested in learning more. Do you know of any Schole groups for older children and how they operate?

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    1. Hi Valerie - I don't know what area you are in. You can go to www.scholegroups.com and see if there is one near you if you're not in the Raleigh area near me. There are Schole' groups that go through 12th grade - there were a couple larger classical co-ops that converted to Schole' Groups, so they already had the infrastructure in place to offer to that grade level. I am praying about adding a Middle School element next year at SGCA and would love any collaborative mommy's that are interested in discussing that! The Schole' groups are each unique to the Director's vision for their specific community, which is why they are so great. It allows them to meet the needs of their own Community, which I love. CAP's Direction is educational, philosophical and more gentle guiding in nature, not rigid and uniform. It's what I love most about Dr. Perrin's vision for these Schole' Groups.

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