the sorting hat...

After a visit to diagon alley for measurements and purchases of wizarding supplies, we headed to the welcome feast where the sorting hat sorted us all into Smithindor House.  Gracyn and Braeden both wrote Smithindor verses for the sorting hat song.

Braeden's Smithindor verse:

The ones who are silly are always in Smithindor.

These crazy people do crazy things, 

but however loving they are, 

Their sense of humor rings.

Gracyn's goes like this:

Dwell you might in Smithindor,

where you find the clever.

They're not afraid to be themselves,

and their thoughts you cannot sever.

We learned about verse, stanza, and rhyme scheme.

more fun

There is a lot of reading going on around here.  I have many things I want to post about but I need to download more pictures.  Today began "magical writing" (writing styles) class.  We also began "charms" (latin) class.  Braeden drew a cartoon of 2 wizards, dueling and yelling latin phrases.  One yells, "aqua-sem" and has water squirting out.  The other is yelling, "inflammo!" and fire is shooting out of his.  Gracyn also thought of these:

fabulamus:  tricks someone into believing your story

viadatum:  creates a road or a way out

silvantase:  finds a way out of a forest

terrabilse:  makes the ground change

portase:  makes a gate appear where there wasn't one

Dareduce:  makes someone do what you want them to

Creative way to remember those vocab words which we haven't bothered to memorize until now.

It's fun to pretend and learn simultaneously!

Hey, wait a minute!

Here are G and B measuring and figuring *together* as we take the fun things from Harry Potter and use them to learn math concepts on Tuesday.

At one point, Braeden stopped and said, "Hey, wait a minute!  Is this just a fun way to do math?"

harry potter unit study

It's simply corking to announce our upcoming Harry Potter unit.  Our activities will include fun things for 3rd through 7th grades.  Here are some of the things my kids can expect:

magic squares

marauder's map

quidditch-additionally, they will be asked to create a version of quidditch themselves

a few of these activities

some of these

pretty much all of these

plus some ideas of my own which include but are not limited to:

arithmacy class (known to you muggles out there as arithmetic):  

• we will learn about area and perimeter of cupboards and choose which one we might best enjoy  living in
• we will create a mock diagon alley in which we go from room to room to measure for our robes and wands.  we will measure using various units of measure
  
• we will purchase our wizard supplies by converting muggle money to wizard money and the reverse
• we will solve logic "potions" problems as in the end of the sorcerer's stone

We will have a reader's theater in which we each choose our favorite dramatic reading from one of the books and present it in our dress robes with snacks served 

We will create a newspaper that tells of our favorite parts of a HP book as a report.

We will choose a chapter to re-write as a play.

We will draw our favorite characters according to the descriptions in the book.

owl study

We will create our own "apples to apples" game called, "Quaffle to Quaffle."

Latin practice of latest vocabulary words will be creating incantations using the words.

Letter Writing.

A stuffed, white owl will bring a morning message...either a journal topic or letter to be answered.

And some writing activities will be pulled from a book I like called, "Grammar for Middleschool."  It includes some practice forming sentences in the style of J.K. Rowling.

But wait, there's more!  In an effort to involve my son with autism, we will be doing some hands-on-montessori-style activities...

• We will connect train cars on the Hogwarts Express with words on them to create sentences and talk about grammar topics such as parts of speech and parts of a sentence as well as learn about conjuntions.
• We will place macaroni (gluten-free, of course) quotation marks on pre-written sentences from the stories.  Then, we will take turns reading the dialogues in play form.
• We will practice gauge reading by creating a dashboard of the flying anglia with dry erase gauges.
• We will categorize animal cards including reptiles like snakes and shoot falcon paper airplanes at the eyes of a poster of the baskilis to add points together for column addition practice.
• We will match keys (correct math answers) to their wings (equations) in a folder.
• We will perform other folders that depict the last scenes of the Sorcerer's stone..I haven't thought them all through yet....