Memorize the Presidents

There are songs, there are raps and then, there's a story…


Song…quite sedate.


This has additional information about most presidents.


We're working on the "President's Comic" based on a YouTube video I found, but I'm no longer posting the link here. Naturally, if students' creative genius takes them into a different way of memorizing the presidents, that's perfectly OK. This is what we have so far…

An alien named WAJ (George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson) comes out of his spaceship eating M&Ms (James Madison, James Monroe) and wearing a hat with the letter A (John Quincy Adams) on it. He is met by Michael JACKSON (Andrew Jackson), who invites him to go for a drive in his VAN (Martin VanBuren). 

Michael’s very HAIRY SON (William Henry Harrison) is with them. The TIRES (John Tyler) of the van are huge (picture monster truck wheels)...but as they’re driving, one gets POKED (James Polk) and gets a rip in it. They have to take it to a TAILOR (Zachary Taylor) who fixes it. Then they have to go to the gas station to FILL MORE air  in the tire (Millard Fillmore). We hope the tires will never get PIERCEd again (Franklin Pierce).

Then there’s a big celebration because the tire got fixed -- it’s like a 4th of July celebration and they shoot off the CANNON (James Buchanan) and along comes the parade, led by President ABRAHAM LINCOLN. After Lincoln, there’s JOHNSON (Andrew Johnson -- 2 of the 4 assassinated presidents were followed in office by a Johnson). Lincoln & Johnson go and write a GRANT (Ulysses S. Grant) to buy 19 bales of HAY (Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th president). While they’re writing the grant, GARFIELD the cat (James Garfield) is there to help.

They get the shipment of hay from King ARTHUR’s (Chester Arthur) Round Table and ask to have it shipped to CLEVELAND, Ohio (Grover Cleveland). But then Michael Jackson’s HAIRY SON (Benjamin Harrison) gets things mixed up and he sends it to CLEVELAND, Tennessee (Grover Cleveland served two terms not in a row) instead. People are so angry that the order got messed up that they banish everyone involved to the top of Alaska’s Mount McKINLEY (William McKinley). 

On the way up Mount McKinley, they see a whole bunch of Teddy Bear ROSES (Teddy Roosevelt). It’s really cold on the top of the mountain -- the wind is blowing such a DRAFT (William Taft) that they get the shaky shaky WILLIES (Woodrow Wilson) and they start to HARDEN (Warren Harding) into ice because they’re so COOL (Calvin Coolidge). They pull out their HOOVER (Herbert Hoover) vacuum cleaner to try to warm themselves up, but it doesn’t work, so they head back down the mountain, again passing the ROSE bush which now has pictures of Ben Franklin on it (Franklin D. Roosevelt) and is the biggest rose bush they've ever seen (FDR had the longest presidency).

History 5/6 links - 3 Branches of Federal Government; State & Federal Governments

Here's a diagram showing the three branches.  Important phrases to understand are "separation of powers" and "checks and balances."

Ben's guide has an explanation of this, starting here.

Wanna rap about it? You can!

Compare: state & federal powers

Limitations of state & federal powers

I've only skimmed a couple of the articles linked here, but About.com's quick study guides look helpful.

Botany Class - reproduction in Flowers

Simple animation of the process of pollination & seed development in flowers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMQtLWpAdXI

You think this was done by a homeschool family? Caution: name-calling/pre-school style potty talk at the end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htMZYR1nCOQ

Botany Class Alert: Carnivorous plants videos (she said, hopefully)...

I'm gathering a few videos of carniverous plants and thought I'd post them here. We'll be watching a few in Botany on Monday.

Here you can watch a pitcher plant growing...the music makes it almost creepy.

This shows some of the plants in action.

This shows the partially digested bugs inside a pitcher plant.

As always, be careful what else your kids may see if they go on YouTube!!!

K-2 Art and Science

Hello moms,
   
     I hope your girls are enjoying their art and science classes  :)

    Each week in art class, we will be looking at 3 museum works of art and talking about the pictures and the artists. During the second part of the class we will work on art projects. During the music portion of the class, Jenny will be teaching a Bible verse set to music.  The girls have already done Beautifully, and Jenny has emailed you how you can take it a step further if you would like (if you'd like to play them on the piano, learn them with your family, sing them on the way to co-op?)

      In science, we will be exploring 30 different parts of science with "Miss Frizzle" on the PBS show "Magic School Bus." Then we will delve deeper into each area with books and worksheets.

     It would be helpful for each child to bring a pocket folder for each subject, with a pencil and pen in their backpack (or a little bag?)
   
      Looking forward to a great year,
                Cindy

History Grade 6 - Week of Sept. 16

Hello Happy Homeschoolers!

I hope the assignment sheet I handed to your students for History is clear. We already did the reading, map work, literature reading & timeline work for Lesson 6. All that's left for Lesson 6 is the creative writing activity.

Then, for each lesson, you'll see a checkbox for each activity that is assigned and an x for each activity that is not assigned. I thought this would be an easy way for them to visually see exactly what needs to be done for each lesson and if they're check-off-the-box types they can easily do that and see how quickly they make progress on their History lesson for each day.

If you have a question, please contact me -- you can click below to make a comment (It will either say No comments or ## Comments - just click there to comment). Blogger will then send me the comment and, when I answer it, you'll get an e-mail telling you my response. The advantage of this is that if I've been particularly confusing about something and you both have the same question, the second person to visit the blog will find the question and answer already there. (This may not be a big deal for this class, but for some of the bigger classes, this could save the teacher from sending out 5-6 answers to the same question.)

I'm looking forward to working with this group of students -- I really enjoyed the class yesterday!

Writing/Literature Grades 3/4

In this class we will be discussing the literature assigned each week, and using the handbook (Write on Track) to use and improve the students' writing skills. We will share about what the girls have written in their journals. Additional work will be assigned from the SkillsBook according to each girl's needs which will benefit her individually.

I have previously distributed the booklist and the assignment to accomplish before our first class. I will be emailing each of the moms with these handouts as an attachment which you can disregard if you still have yours.

It was made known to me that there are two editions of the handbook (Write on Track). I have already been working with the 1996 edition. I am sorry for the confusion this will cause if you have the newer version. Esther has both versions and compared them and says: "The two editions seem to vary mostly in layout, resulting in slight difference of page numbering -- they're mostly just a few pages off -- but occasionally they've taken a sub-section and completely relocated it." I do apologize for this. If you have trouble doing the homework for the first class, just do the best you can and the girls and I will inspect the books together on Monday. Each week when I give out the assignments I will make sure the girls all have the correct page numbers.

I am looking forward to meeting you and your daughters. May God bless you all!

In Him,
Jenny Zaloum