Week 12

FYI- if you have iTunes on your computer, do a search on PODCASTS, some of our favorites are:
Naked Science
       (everyone is clothed, super cool semi-animated explanation of science subjects)
Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips
There are great audio story items too.
Language? We did One Minute Mandarin last year which started us on our quest to learn Chinese! You have a minute don't you?


HISTORY
Civil War Trivia
More Trivia....
About Robert E Lee
About Ulysses S Grant
Transcontinental Railroad-1
Chinese contribution to Transcontinental Railroad
Lesson on Transcontinental Railroad  +Activities
Great new site for history

GEOGRAPHY
We are currently talking about Appalachian Mountains, my old stomping grounds! Appalachia is beautiful and consists of miles and miles of rolling rounded mountains. The mountains are some of the oldest and have eroded as compared to the younger mountains in the west. Rolling rivers riddled with giant round rocks, thick forest and musty moss covered earth is the heart of Appalachia. The people in the Smokies are warm and take care of those around them. The food is rich and flavorful. The music is fun and warm, often funny. If you ever get a chance, do go visit. I joke about being a "redneck" and "My Daddy married his sister but it didn't bother me none", but in truth, I am proud of my heritage and have many warm memories of the area. God spared nothing, it is gorgeous.

Learn more about Appalachia  This site is great, you can listen to music, search on just about any subject.   Project: Make a quilt square!

Decent Mtn info


SCIENCE
If you go on the CC website under foundations/file sharing/ science projects.  Someone made these GREAT worksheets to go along with the My Body readings we did the last 6 weeks.  I just found them and wish I would have found them six weeks ago.  We are going to do them over our "break" and review all that we learned about My Body!


Purposes of Blood

LATIN
I am going to have the kids memorize the verse in English first, don't you think that would make it easier?

MATH
1000 meters = 1 Kilometer
so what.... I am so not a math person.... but for YOUR sake (aren't I just so giving?) I thought I'd dig around and see if I could find anything interesting. Lo and behold I did!

Check these out, scroll down and see the comparisons.

This is more science but still interesting. 

Klick is a common military term meaning kilometer.[1] Its use became popular among US soldiers during the Vietnam War during the 1960s and 1970s, although veterans of the war recall its usage as early as the 1950s. The origin is from the sound military vehicle odometers made as they turned over each kilometer. Some also believe it to be an example of condensed pronunciation or contraction of the term kilometer. I believe that it comes from some item of military equipment, maybe a range-finder for artillery or the like, where there was a knob which was rotated through a set of fixed positions, giving a click for each step, until it found the setting which corresponded to the distance of the target. Each further "click" meant one more kilometre to the target. So when the range-finder said the target range was "five clicks", that meant five kilometres, and the gunners set their weapons correspondingly.