NOTES ABOUT THIS WEEK: A lovely spring week!
______________________________________
ART APPRECIATION:
This week we studied the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. We chose which paintings are the most representative of his work, so we could print them out and add them to our Art Cards deck. The kids already have a good feel for the French artist Matisse, so they were amazed to see how Klimt's work changed after he traveled to Paris and met Matisse. I love when the kids can notice when one author is influenced by another, or one artist is inspired by another's style. Lvov's jaw actually dropped open at the similarities!
ARTS & CRAFTS:
This week Lvov chose to color a lovely mandala. The kids also made garden stones with their handprints and "Germany" written on them, to go with our "Japan" garden stones from 2003.
CITIZENSHIP:
We decided to bring gloves and trash bags to the meadow behind our house to clean up the area where teenagers party and have bonfires. It's a shame that they leave so much trash there.
CREATIVE WRITING:
We wrote poems mimicking Dylan Thomas' rhyme scheme in "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night" (which we studied at length this week). Their assignment was to write a poem as if they are the main character of the novel they are currently reading, about another character in the same novel. Akychame is reading Huck Finn by Mark Twain, so Huck is writing the poem. Lvov is reading Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, so Alice is writing the poem (all following the structure set forth by Dylan Thomas).
GEOGRAPHY:
We studied Italy, namely where Mt. Vesuvius is located (it ties into our Latin and history work this week). We also studied Alexandria, Egypt, where Cleopatra lived, and Syria, where she fled to rally an army against her brother's forces.
GERMAN:
The kids spoke German in our neighborhood, speaking to German people about their dogs (always a good topic for casual conversation in Germany).
HISTORY:
We watched National Geographic's video "In the Shadow of Vesuvius" because the fictional family we are learning about in our Cambridge Latin textbook lived in Pompeii, just before the eruption. The Latin text is wonderful! It creates a typical family from that time period, based upon archaeological evidence and records. The family seems so real to us, that we have an excellent idea of what life must have been like at that time. It's so exciting.
The kids were amazed and saddened by the images of people in their last moment of life. We learned about how archaeologists poured plaster into the hollow spaces left by the bodies. The plaster is so life-like, it seems as though the bodies had actually turned to rock. We duplicated this process with doll molds and clay.
We also had a great talk comparing and contrasting Chris Columbus, Alexander the Great, and Lewis & Clark as explorers, highlighting their motivations, goals, hopes, and methods of interacting with indigenous populations.This was in preparation for writing an essay on this topic.
We read one-half of the book Cleopatra by Diane Stanley. The book has illustrations and ancient maps.
HOME ARTS:
The girls baked banana bread from scratch.
LANGUAGE ARTS:
We reviewed the process of writing a report: coming up with a thesis idea, making an outline, writing a couple of rough drafts, then writing a seamless, flowing, cohesive final draft. The kids did great. It's so difficult to keep all of these variables in order! The took my edits with a smile, and their report writing skills are improving.
We also played a few games of Scattergories - it's a great tool to fine-tune your recollection of language, and lots of fun.
LATIN:
We learned about the city of Pompeii after the eruption of Vesuvius, which relates to Latin because they spoke Latin in Pompeii. The family in our textbook lives there.
LITERATURE:
Lvov: Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Akychame: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Akychae made a connection in literature. We were watching an Eyewitness video all about plants, and Akychame noticed a reference to the "Green Man," which also features in her Fantasy Encyclopedia. Lvov made a connection between her book Alice in Wonderland and a song we've been listening to by Anna Nalick, called Drink Me. The lyrics say, "Have another 'drink me' baby, slowly, I'll disappear..." - Lvov never understood the reference until now. The reference is a little sophisticated, too because the song hints that the singer is an alcoholic, and since she is losing the love of her life, she feels as though she is no longer important in his life - she is disappearing from his life, getting smaller like Alice. Suddenly the light bulbs went off. It's so wonderful to be there by my kids' sides when the epiphanies come!
NATURE STUDY:
On a lovely, sunny day we decided to visit the pond behind our neighborhood. It is always teeming with life. At this time of year, mature frogs are everywhere protecting great clusters of foamy eggs.
Our dog Kuma was doing a little research too.
Fascinating. The frogs were so bold. Every time we came close, they splashed and wriggled up close to us and croaked furiously. When the eggs have "hatched," the frogs are more shy, hiding in deep waters.
This led to a great discussion about the maternal instinct to protect offspring.Were we just reading human emotion into the frogs' behavior, or do frogs really protect their eggs? If they do, isn't it interesting that they would sacrifice their own lives for babies that they will never know? Just to blindly propagate their species?
On the other hand, if we're just projecting our own feelings onto the frogs' behavior, then isn't that interesting, too? That we see ourselves and our own feelings in all other living creatures? Perhaps that is the root of all compassion.
Or, viewed in a different light, it could be the root of all hatred - being unable to believe that other people (or species) can have ideas or beliefs or needs or customs that are different from our own. We need to feel that "our way" is universal and right and good.
So, we set out to observe frog behavior and ended up studying ourselves a bit.
POETRY:
We studied Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night.
The lines are deceptively complex:
A (night)
BBB (age, rave, day)
BBAA (rage, rage, dying, light)
Not as complex as Poe's lines, but a good starting point for the girls to mimic (lots of off or imperfect rhyme make it less sing-songy and sophisticated). The kids charted out the entire poem in this way, and then wrote their own poems with the same exact structure.
SCIENCE:
We wanted to understand the process by which archaeologists "fleshed out" the stone molds created by bodies in the wake of the Vesuvius eruption. How were the hollow spaces created? How can archaeologists create such life-like recreations of the bodies?
So I gathered some doll molds I had from long ago, and we pretended that the molds were the ash covering the bodies of the victims (the dolls). The bodies deteriorated long ago, leaving a hardened impression in stone - a "mold." In order to really be able to see what the bodies looked like, scientists had to inject the empty spaces with plaster. We used Fimo clay to fill the space in the hollow of doll bodies. When we pried the molds off of the hardened clay, we had actual faces...
We watched an Eyewitness video about plants - history, medicinal uses, explorers in search of new plants, what the earth would be like without plants, seed propulsion, cooperation with the insect world, and mythology. The kids loved it. The video referenced the hanging gardens of Babylon, which we learned about while studying Alexander the Great.
SHAKESPEARE:
Akychame had a piano lesson, and she has started to practice pieces by Mozart ad Handel for a recital in June.
Lvov had a horseback riding lesson.
