Roman Celebration

Last night was our unit celebration about Republican and Imperial Rome. What I love about unit studies is that all of our kids can work on the same topic through all the disciplines: History, literature, science, cooking, art, and Bible. You'll see it all here. Most of the craft ideas are from Classical Kids: An Activity Guide to Life in Ancient Greece and Rome and Ancient Rome!: Exploring the Culture, People & Ideas of This Powerful Empire.

The kids wore togas, recycled from our Greece unit celebration.

Toga Party!

Our ten-year-old son painted this mural of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Click to see it bigger.

Crossing the Rubicon

This shield depicts a dragon burning a tree.

Roman Shield Craft

Roman army units used standards in the same way current units use flags. Our eight-year-old daughter designed the one on this table. I don't know if the heart on top would strike much fear in enemy hearts, but I sure like it.

Roman Standard Craft

This paper mache Roman helmet is a fairly accurate replica of a real Roman helmet.

Paper Mache Roman Helmet

We ate omelets sweetened with honey, the only sweetener they had in ancient Rome.

Honey Omelet

A little physics lesson doing target practice with this simple catapult.

Simple Catapult

Rich Romans wore gold earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and anklets. Our eight-year-old d.d. made this jewelry. She lost her beaded earrings and made these straw ones at the last minute.

Roman Jewelry Craft

The boys put on a gladiator show with swords, nets, and whips, and spears.

Gladiator Show

Dad read Mark Antony's "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. We talked about why God chose Imperial Rome as the time and place to send Jesus (Pax Romana, common language). It was a fun night to celebrate, share, and solidify what we've learned the past several weeks.

   

Your comments are welcome!

Cloudwatching

What does this cloud look like to you?

On a breezy spring day, read Eric Carle's Little Cloud or Charles G. Shaw's It Looked Like Spilt Milk. Then go outside, watch the clouds, and ask your students to describe, draw, or write what they see.

To extend the fun, check out these cloud craft ideas at Fun Bliss.

Photo: Michael Roper

Fun Spelling Activities

Spelling practice can be fun. When I became a teacher, I swore off repetitious spelling drills and looked for ways to make spelling time a fun time. Shaving cream, Wikki Stix, magic markers, magnetic letters, and even Q-Tips can enhance your students' word work. Check out the following hands-on, creative, and fun ways to practice spelling.

Shaving Cream
Tactile Spelling Practice

Shaving cream is wonderful for tactile spelling practice. Just spray it onto a desk, smear it around, and start writing. Shaving cream words are easily erased which provides three benefits. Mistakes are gone at the swipe of a hand; students can practice a word several times without seeing their previous effort; and they can work through several words in a short amount of time. Children love the cool, smooth feeling, and teachers love how clean the desks are after spelling practice with shaving cream. Here are some more fun things to do with shaving cream.

Word Pictures
Visual Spelling

For visual learners, word pictures are great spelling practice. This photo shows one of my first graders doing spelling practice. She is writing some words randomly, but notice the placement of "up" in the upper part of the page, the word "blue" written in blue, and "time" with clocks all around it.

Concentric Spelling
Fun Spelling Drill

Why write a spelling word five times in a list when you can write it five times in colorful concentric bubble letters? Make sure your students put extra space between the letters in their words so they have room to write each letter bigger and bigger. I don't have the data to prove it, but my hunch is that spelling words written like this leave a longer-lasting impression than writing the same word over and over in list form.

Magnetic Letters
Quick Spelling Practice

Magnetic letters work well when you want your students to practice several words in a row, and especially well when working with word families. Keep the cluster of letters that you are working on, and switch the other letters in and out.

Q-Tip Spelling
Build Spelling Words

Good, old cotton swabs work well for tactile spelling practice. It's tricky to form curved letters, but as you can see by the letter e in little, it can be done. The space between the two ts is there to indicate the division between syllables.


Wikki Stix Spelling
Focus on One Word

I've written elsewhere about wikki stix as learning tools, so I won't repeat myself here. They are durable, flexible, inexpensive, and versatile manipulatives for spelling and, well, for just about anything else. This student formed her letters from wikki stix, spelled the syllables of yes-ter-day, and then pushed the syllables together to form the word. Check out wikki stix on amazon.

Looking for fun ways to teach kids dictionary skills?

Brain String Advanced - Fun 3D Spatial Reasoning Puzzle

Whoever thought untying knots could be so much fun? Improve your sense of spatial relations with Brain String Advanced, a fun puzzle that, like all good logic games, is strangely addictive. It's a tetrakaidecahedron (14-sided geometric solid) with colored elastic cords running through the middle of it. The goal is to get cords of the same color each surface without any tangles in the middle. As you can see in the video below, it isn't easy.

This puzzle is a great tool to improve spatial reasoning, plan several steps ahead, and think through what unintended consequences an action may trigger. It can be solved by lots of trial and error, but in the process, you begin to see more and more steps ahead in untangling the knot.

My ten-year-old son received this puzzle from his grandparents, and we have been fighting over it ever since.

Brain String Advanced - Solved!

Blink - Fun Card Game for Learning

My oldest child received "Blink - The World's Fastest Card Game" for his tenth birthday last year. It sat on a shelf for a while, but we recently started playing it and have gotten hooked. Like it says on the box, Blink takes less than two minutes to play, so it's perfect for those in-between times.

From the product description on amazon.com:

This game is a clever variation on the classic card game, Spit. As cards are turned face up on the table, you must try to get rid of the cards in your draw pile by matching at least one characteristic on the card (color, shape, or count). These cards are colorfully designed with stars, moons, triangles, and more. You can only have three cards in your hand at one time, but may continue to pick cards from your draw pile as soon as you discard. Includes 60 Symbol cards and instructions. 

Educational Benefits of Blink Card Game
As a teacher, here's what I like.

• Children have to think about three attributes of their cards, color, shape, and count.

• It's great for working memory. Players need to keep in mind the attributes of their cards and the the ones on top of the discard pile.

• Children learn to make quick decisions under pressure, but the pressure is harmless.

• Unlike a regular deck of playing cards, if you lose a few it doesn't really matter.

• It's easy to handicap the faster players to keep the game competitive; just deal them more cards than the slower players.

More Card Games for Learning

Read about how to teach math with UNO.

Cloud in a Glass

We found a simple weather experiment online and tried it at home this morning. The idea is to make water condense in a glass to simulate cloud formation. You fill a glass about a quarter full with warm water and place an ice cold metal dish on top. The water vapor in the warm moist air trapped in the glass is supposed to condense as it cools near the cold dish and form a cloud.

Our first attempt didn't work. I think the problem was a combination of the water not being warm enough and a gap where the rim of the glass and the bottom of the bowl met.

First try. No cloud, just some condensation on the bottom of the bowl.

So we tried again. This time we heated the water more and put it in a different cup, one that we hoped wouldn't have a gap. We heated the water too much because the water was steaming even before putting the cold dish on top. The glass immediately fogged up with condensation and we couldn't see whether a cloud was forming inside or not. Steam escaped through the gap again.

Second try. The water was so hot that it immediately fogged up the glass.

So we tried a third time. We let the water cool a little and covered the glass with plastic wrap so no water vapor could escape. We put the ice on the wrap and watched the condensation happen. Again, no visible cloud inside the glass.

Third try. We definitely saw condensation, but no cloud.

 This experiment turned out to be a good one for the kids to learn that whatever the expected outcome, good scientists don't fudge their results. Instead, they learn from what they observe and think about how to structure the experiment better next time. We did observe condensation when hot moist air met cooler air, and the kids could visualize how clouds would form. Here are their write-ups.