Week 76: Helping Them Manage the Puzzle Pieces (Norms & Nobility - 10C)
June 10, 2025
In this edition:
🎉🥳 Off-Center Celebrations! 🥳🎉
🎤Podcast - The Grammar of Classical Education 🎤
📚☀️ Quick Classroom Reviews ☀️📚
💖💖 Amazing Blessings 💖💖
☕️ 🫖 Enjoying the Reali-tea ☕️ 🫖
🎉 🥳 Let’s Celebrate! 🥳 🎉
Off-Center Celebrations - 2025
June - Week 3 (June 16 - 22)
Universal Father’s Week
Getting to Know You Better to “interview” their father or father figure. [1 worksheet]
Have your students think about the father or father figure and fill out Thank you, _____ worksheet. They can then use the planning sheet to write a thank-you note to him or a description of him. [2 worksheets]
Follow the instructions on A Special Gift to make a sweet little gift for a father or father figure. [3 worksheets]
Allow the students the opportunity to complete the coloring sheet or card to give to their father or father figure. [2 worksheets]
June - Week 2 (June 8 - 14)
National Flag Week
The worksheet, You’re a Grand Ol’ Flag introduces students to some of the basic history and facts about the American flag. [2 worksheets – student version and key]
Help your students understand the symbolism of the flag with A Picture of America. This worksheet helps students see how the elements of the flag were carefully selected and allows them the opportunity to create a family flag by considering the elements and colors they will include. [1 worksheet]
Flag Etiquette addresses some of the key “rules” for handling and using the flag. This would be a wonderful opportunity to discuss these ideas and look for them in use / or being broken in everyday life.
It’s not very often that students would have the opportunity to fold an official American flag, but why not give them the chance to learn? On How to Fold an American Flag, the students will learn how to fold a flag, and can practice
with a printed (colored or black and white) flag. (Photos included for clarity.) [5 worksheets]
June - Week 1 (June 1 - 8)
National Garden Week
While you and your students probably have a good idea of what a garden actually is, take a moment with the worksheet, What is a Garden? Then have your students take their new found knowledge and design their own garden.[1 worksheet]
If you have a garden area near your school, co-op, or even your home, spend a little time this week sprucing it up. Break into groups and do a bit of weeding or even a bit of planting.
Spend some time looking at Good Things Said About Gardens with a collection of quotes that can be used for discussions or writing activities.
[6 worksheets]
Celebrate all of the beauty of flowers and gardens while learning about chromatogaphy in a science and craft combination with Color Chromatography. This simple and engaging activity comes complete with samples and pictures to guide you through this delightful and educational activity. [4 worksheets]
Allow your students (and even yourself) to have a little break and enjoy the Earth Laughs in Flowers coloring page. [1 worksheet]
☺️ Please jump over to Classroom Collective, where you can use the “password” you received with your subscription (on EVERY level) to access many freebies like the Off-Center Celebrations (daily in 2024 and weekly in 2025).
🎤 Podcast - The Grammar of Classical Education 🎤
While introducing Norms and Nobility chapter 11, David Hicks sets the stage for “Three Schools in One Academy.” He begins with the foundational idea of "separate but equal," with the added element of all working in support of one another.
Hicks, however, spends the next substantial portion of the chapter addressing the importance of Humane Letters, the joint study of literature in the context of history. The case that he builds for establishing that program in the upper school, strongly supports the foundation that can be easily established in the grammar school.
Our goal as educators is to help give our students a solid foundation of learning by helping them “put the pieces together” - linking all subject areas. Granted, our students may have tiny puzzles with really big pieces, BUT the puzzles they put together in grammar school will comprise the larger pieces they will be called on to assemble later.
Let’s play with some puzzles!
🔬 🧪☀️ Summertime Science ☀️🧪🔬
For the summer, we will take a break from the review games and switch to some fun Summertime Science activities. These activities can be one-and-done science experiments that include an explanation of scientific principles, BUT they also will include wonderful opportunities to encourage wonder through thought-provoking Extension Questions that invite further investigation. ☺️
Milky Fire Works
Items Needed:
A plate with a lip or a smaller baking dish with sides
Milk
Food coloring
Q-tips / Cotton swabs
Dish soap (Dawn is recommended)
Preparation:
Gather supplies
Pour a small amount of milk into the plate or baking dish (about 1/4 inch) and allow it to “settle” before continuing.
Process:
When the milk has settled, place one drop of each of the food coloring colors in the center of the milk. (Put them next to each other - not on top of one another.)
Take a Q-tip and GENTLY TOUCH the milk where the four colors meet.
Do NOT swirl the Q-tip in the milk.
It is okay if you touch a color drop.
What happens when you touch it gently with the Q-tip?
Get a new Q-tip and dip it in the dish soap.
GENTLY TOUCH the Q-tip covered with dish soap to the center of the four colors.
What happens when you touch it gently with the soap-covered Q-tip?
Wait for the color to stop moving and touch the Q-tip to the milk again. (You may need to re-dip in the soap.)
What happens this time? (I added quite a bit more Dawn spray soap!)
Scientific Principles Explained:
The first thing you need to understand is that some molecules are polar and others are non-polar. Polar molecules stick together and find other like molecules to join them. Non-polar molecules don’t usually stick together like polar molecules. They “hang out together” but they don’t hold on to each other like the polar molecules do.
An example of a polar molecule is WATER.
An example of a non-polar molecule is OIL.
An example of polar AND non-polar together is SOAP.
[If you want another quick science demonstration - put some water into a plastic water bottle, add a little food coloring, shake it up and then add some oil. Notice they don’t mix! That is because water is polar and oil is non-polar. The water will also settle to the bottom because it is denser, but that’s another experiment altogether!]
Milk is made up mainly of water, proteins, minerals, vitamins, and fats, which means it has a mixture of polar and non-polar molecules.
The food coloring is not attached to anything in the milk. Think of it as just hanging out on its own, but it’s going to get caught up in the action very soon!
Did you notice that when you gently touched the first Q-tip, nothing happened? That is because it didn’t have any effect on the milk or the food coloring. (That is why you didn’t want to stir it or move it around - then you would have actually had a bigger impact on the molecules.)
BUT when the soap-covered Q-tip touched the water, WOW! Fireworks!
Here’s why:
The polar part of the soap, attached to the water molecules.
The non-polar part of the soap stuck into the fat molecules and took them for a ride - to find more water molecules!
With all that movement of the fat molecules, the food coloring gets bumped, and shoved, and moved around! WALA! Fireworks!
When the movement stops, try touching another drop of soap. If you saw more “fireworks,” you can tell there were more fat molecules to be grabbed!
Extension Questions to Investigate:
What happens with a higher or lower fat content milk?
What happens with oat milk or almond milk?
What happens with other liquids?
What happens with other soaps?
What if you touch the soap to the very edge of the milk?
What if you put a drop of soap into the milk instead of using a Q-tip?
Can you figure out why Dawn has had the slogans “Dawn takes grease out of your way!” and “Dawn: Tough on Grease, Gentle on Wildlife”?
🙏💖 Amazing Blessings 💖🙏
Join us as we begin our study of prayer, focusing specifically on the Lord’s Prayer. We’ll be looking at it as it was originally intended to be used - as a model for our prayers. Sadly it too often becomes merely something mindlesslly repeated, putting our brain in neutral while we say words without thought. Let’s seek to change that as we examine the elements of this prayer and how they can transform our prayer life in the twenty-first century.
Today we begin by looking at the context in which we find the Lord’s Prayer - as that helps us get a better picture of the whole, and will lay the framework for what prayer is supposed to (and not supposed to) look like.
☕️ 🫖 Enjoying the Real-i-TEA 🫖☕️
As you may know, my goal with Leading to Wonder is to strengthen and encourage teachers, whether in the classroom, at home, in person, or on Zoom. I want to meet you where you are and help you move toward becoming the best teacher you can be. To do this, I trust you will feel free to reach out via our Substack chats or by sending an email to Newsletter@LeadingtoWonder.com.
In the next couple of months, there will be a few live chats offered online to our Substack subscribers, and I would love to have you join us! Keep your eye out for information regarding these special times to discuss the real-i-TEA of teaching!
Let us seek to “bear one another’s burdens” and “encourage one another. . just as you are doing.” (Galatians 6:2 / I Thessalonians 5:11)1
Thank you so much for joining me at Leading to Wonder! I am honored that you have spent the time reading and possibly listening to my passion project. I do want to be as helpful as possible, so if you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, please use the button below, and I will try to address them in a timely fashion! Thank you again, and remember - “always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder!”2
English Standard Version Bible. (2001). ESV Online. https://www.esv.org
E.B. White