CTG Weeks 11-12

I recently ran across a series of CDs called Classical Kids.  I found them just in time to listen to the drama for kids called Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery during our last week's study of Vivaldi.  Next we will begin Bach and we will listen to Mr Bach Comes to Call.



Also during our study of classical music I found a site called Classics for Kids @ classicsforkids.com.  This site also has radio dramas in addition to activity sheets and kid friendly biographies.  The kids enjoyed this as well.


I purchased a set of inexpensive notebooking pages from currclick.com entitled Famous Composer Notebooking Pages produced by notebookingpages.com.  Yes, I could have just given them a sheet of paper but for some reason a pre-printed form seems to work better for us.  I like that the set gives several different notebook pages to choose from for each composer and covers most, if not all of the composers we will be studying over the next few years during our CTG studies


After our study of Tchaikovsky two years ago Beau decided he really enjoyed classical music.  Just recently he even voluntarily asked if he could listen to classical music while doing his school work.  I have gotten to where I even enjoy listening.  :)


When we studied of Moses birth we made a lapbook piece from the Ancient Egyptian section from homeschoolshare.com.



We have now started our study of the 10 plagues of Egypt.

For the plague of frogs I printed 160 frogs and we placed them all over the house.  The kids couldn't wait until their dad got home so he could find their hidden surprises.  They put them in the refrigerator, on the toilet lid, in the drinking glassed in the cabinet, in his work shirt hanging in his closet, etc. They had a blast with it.  I think they had as much fun hiding the frogs as they did taking their dad around finding them.

I didn't think to take pictures of the hidden frogs but here's a sample of a couple of left over frogs that the kids keep finding around the house and bringing to me.

We didn't reenact the flies.  I prepared black dots to tape onto the kids but they just don't like flies and didn't want to participate in that one.  So they decided to be Hebrew slaves for that plague. 

We have now completed Lesson 3 of Zoology 3.  This was another enjoyable lesson for the kids.


Since this study included bears the kids decided they wanted to watch Disney's Brother Bear.  This movie does have a lot of 'spiritual content' but my kids know and understand this as fantasy and not reality.


We also watched the Itty Bitty Kiddy DVD about Bears.



The Zoology 3 textbook suggests printing or drawing animals you are studying in each lesson and putting them on a world map.  I decided that might be too much work to find pictures for each lesson so I found a sticker book called Animal Sticker Atlas.   I purchased one for each child.  The book is broken down mostly by continent with the animal stickers in the center of the book.  At the end of each chapter the kids go through this book and look for animals that we just studied.  They then place the animal stickers in the appropriate places on the map.  They are really enjoying this activity.



We also completed the lapbook for lesson 3.  Again, I made the cover.  My kids never seem to tire of making lapbooks.

We did the experiment to show why it's better that a polar bear has black skin.  We placed two plastic bags in the sun with a thermometer under each.  One was black and one was white.  We waited about 20 minutes.  Then we checked the temperature of each.  The thermometer under the black bag read 95 degrees whereas the thermometer under the white bag read 84 degrees.  Both thermometers read 78 degrees before we placed them under the bags.  Conclusion:  Darker colors attract more heat than lighter colors.



We will finish our plague study next week.  :)