Skills

A quick review of Monday's catechism. Ask: what does the Fourth Commandment ask? (Honor your father and mother, and legitimate authority.) What does the Fifth protect, and why? (The sacredness of every human life, because every person is made in God's image.) Connect to the week: the same truth that the Fifth Commandment protects — the God-given dignity of every life — was the ground on which Catholic voices defended the native peoples of the Americas. End with a short prayer for respect for all human life.

This week's geography is full of names, so capitalization is the perfect grammar focus. A proper noun names a specific person, place, or thing and is always capitalized; a common noun names a general type and is not.

RULE 1 — Capitalize specific names of people and places: Columbus, Magellan, Spain, the Atlantic Ocean, Tenochtitlan, Florida. But not the common noun alone: a captain, a country, an ocean, a city.

RULE 2 — Capitalize a directional word only when it names a specific region, not a mere direction: 'the Southwest' (a region) is capitalized; 'drive south' (a direction) is not. So: 'The Spanish settled in the Southwest' but 'They sailed west across the Atlantic.'

RULE 3 — Capitalize official titles when they come directly before a name: 'Queen Isabella,' 'Friar Bartolomé.' But lowercase the title used alone or generally: 'the queen,' 'a friar.'

RULE 4 — Capitalize the names of nationalities, peoples, languages, and religions: Spanish, Aztec, Inca, Nahuatl, Catholic, the Pueblo peoples.

RULE 5 — Capitalize the first word and all important words in a title of a work, but not little words like 'of,' 'the,' or 'and' inside it: 'Our Lady of Guadalupe,' 'The Praise of Folly.'

Today you map the two continents that joined the world's story in 1492. North America and South America are linked by the narrow bridge of Central America (the Isthmus of Panama). Between North and South America, and ringed by islands, lies the Caribbean Sea — where Columbus first landed, on islands in what we call the West Indies. The whole landmass is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west; the Pacific is the vast ocean Magellan crossed (and named for its calm, 'peaceful' waters) on his way around the globe. As you draw, locate the places from this week's history: the Caribbean islands (Columbus's landfall, 1492); central Mexico, site of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (modern Mexico City); the Andes Mountains running down the western spine of South America, heartland of the Inca; and, in North America, Florida (St. Augustine, 1565) and the Mississippi River valley (the mound builders and Cahokia). Then sketch the great routes: Columbus's westward Atlantic crossing from Spain to the Caribbean, and Magellan's expedition sailing west across the Atlantic, around the stormy southern tip of South America (the Strait of Magellan), across the immense Pacific to the Philippines, and onward around the world. Drawing these continents and routes together lets you see, at a glance, the scale of the encounter — and how small the ships were against so vast a world.

Look at your map and your capitalization practice. Write one sentence about the voyages that uses at least three proper nouns capitalized correctly (for example, a person, a place, and an ocean).