Week 24 - Schole' in Practice

Our schole' moments this week were steeped in beautiful weather and some wonderful and funny moments learning together.  We are wrapping up our year over this next few weeks!  Join us as we recall our 24th week together…

Morning Time

We got a little "tied up" during our morning time today!  We continued with our discussion of the virtue studiousness, and this week I added an object lesson for the kids regarding the development of bad habits with school.  Using masking tape, I wrapped a single row of tape around my "volunteer".  That was compared to one bad choice regarding school work ethic.  I then had the student "break through" easily and compared that to when your parent corrects you for that bad choice, hoping to help you not develop a bad habit in doing your school work.  I then wrapped the tape multiple times around our lovely volunteer and as I wrapped, I mentioned one bad choice after another that students could make concerning their school work.  After each choice, I said no one corrected the student and made them do it right or correct their error.  After several examples and our volunteer was sufficiently wrapped in her "bad habits", I had her try to "break" free of them.  She wasn't able to, of' course.  I drew the comparison of good and bad habits in our school work ethic and how they can affect you down the road, causing you to struggle later on to break free from the bad habits you develop.  We also read a final story about Mary McLeod Bethune. 

Great Books

Today was our final Aesop's fable and the assigning of our student's to their parts they will be playing for our final learning celebration of the year!  Some will be puppeteers, some narrators and some proverb tellers.  This is going to be lots of fun!  Ms. April is the best at this stuff.   

Fine Arts

In Fine Arts our students continued with developing their understanding and skills in shadow puppetry, in preparation of their final learning celebration!  Ms. Jamie is amazing at her creativity, ability to help the students grasp some higher level concepts and teaching them the art of puppetry!  Wish I was a student in her class.

Schole' Lunch

We had the pleasure this week of having J. Seth Davey come read to our students.  Mr. Davey has authored three children's books with some very fun and lively characters.  Our students were blessed as he interactively read two of them to us.  If you are interested in learning more about his books or purchasing them, you can check it out at  http://www.storiesbyseth.com.  We hope to have Mr. Davey back again next year to read more of his fun stories!

Schole' Playground

A relay race was the playground game of the day.  Students had to run to the first line and do 3 jumping jacks, run to the next line and do 10 one leg hops, turn around and race back for the next person in their relay to do the same.  The first of the final persons in each line of students to race back, was the winner!

Math

Math consisted of reading the book Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi and then they did an activity related to what they read.  This is a clever book, if you haven't read it, then I'd highly recommend it!  

Latin

Nearing the end of their Latin books, the students continued to learn their vocabulary, declensions and conjugation chants.  We even had a birthday celebration in the girl's class today with one shy and surprised student.  

Science

A seed study was the order of business today for nature studies.  The student's did a comparison of three types of edible seed, including tasting each one (you can see one student found that less than pleasant - lol).  Then they made a seed glove project; using a non-latex glove, cotton balls and a variety of vegetable seeds, they stuffed each finger with a different seed in a cotton ball soaked in water.  This made a seed starter for a little garden.  They could take home their glove and watch their seed grow, planting them if those chose, once the seed sprouted.

We ended our seed study by talking about types of seed dispersal methods and then hitting our nature trail and looking for different types of seeds in nature.  The students then had to discuss and identify how those seeds they found, dispersed.

I can't believe we are almost done!  Wow this year has flown by!