What We're Doing – Week 14 Links & Ideas

History – Watch this video about Lovemore Mashapure, a Zimbabwean sculptor.  I watched it & loved it.  A bit of personal history, I visited Zimbabwe for a month on mission right after graduating high school and my heart still tugs me back there.  So, I’ll also be sharing personal photographs, stories, videos, and Zimbabwean art with my littles.  And one day {in the not so near future}, I hope to bring my littles and husband to visit there also.  

Latin – More copywork!  

English – Using our homemade laminated train engines and train cars from last week, we’ll use one of the helping verbs in each sentence we form.  This will make for 3 sentences and hopefully the opening to a story.  I will then ask my oldest little to copy these sentences and add artwork to this journal page.  I’m hopeful that by week 20 we’ll have a great longer story.  I’m going to use this time to teach my littles to write a story with a beginning, middle, end.  We will also try to keep in mind these things.

Science – Watch this video from the Geology Kitchen about the 3 types of rocks.  Then, conduct our own lunch time experiments and eat them too!  (Y’all know I like any idea which involves food!) And finally, complete this rock cycle comic strip together for the littles’ notebooks.  I doubt we’ll have time to make these also, but the idea is too cool not to share. Plus, the rock cycle image alone would be great to have on hand (click on it to enlarge).

Math – I’m going to use this week to introduce the ruler to my middle littles and review the ruler with my oldest little.  We will measure various items by centimeters/inch, inches/foot, and feet/mile.  All while, learning the King of Measurement song.  I am also hopeful, if the weather is nice, that we’ll be able to walk a mile and count our steps. If it’s not nice out, perhaps we’ll just take a run on the treadmill to “feel” how long a mile is in steps.

Geography – Do a “blob-like drawing” of Ancient Africa. Have you read The Core by CC founder Leigh Bortins? I really appreciated her approach to learning and teaching geography.

Fine Art – Fold a sheet of paper in to six squares, open it back up flat, and draw Old or New Testament scenes in each of the six squares with gold or silver colored pencils, a la The Gates of Paradise by Ghiberti.  

I don’t know about you, but I’m learning right alongside my littles.  & I love it! Part of the fun of homeschooling, right? 


Mwari vakuropafadzei! (God bless you in Shona – one of the official languages of Zimbabwe & what was spoken where I visited.)