9-year change

I'm listening to this by Melisa Nielsen:

http://thewaldorfconnection.com/9year-change/

I've bought quite a few of her resources (A Little Garden Flower) and they're pretty useful, affordable and have some great ideas.

I'm noticing quite a few changes in Springy.  She's questioning me a lot and huffs a fair bit too at times.  She's also having some melancholic moments when she's normally been very sanguine in temperament before.  I think 9 is coming soon...

I'm also going to listen to this interview with Steiner Early Childhood educator Janni Nichol:
http://raisingplayfultots.com/podcast/raising-playful-tots-show-36-waldorf-education-with-janni-nicol

Chilly overnight

Springy had a Scout Chilly Camp last night.  It's the first time she's stayed away from home without a family member with her (she's only stayed at her grandparents before).  She was very confident about staying over and I made sure that she felt that she could say no to going.  Anyway she seems to have had a fairly good time although she's very tired today.

She's now back and playing with her guineapig.  I'm trying to sort her bedroom out but it's got so much clutter plus the guineapigs are now living in her room too!

Martha - our new guineapig

Today was our dog Lily's birthday and we also got Springy an early birthday present. She is a little 12-week old guineapig and her name is Martha.  She is gorgeous and reminds us a bit of Sarah. Rose and Martha seem to be getting on well.

I love this recipe from here http://natural-kids.blogspot.com/2008/11/recipe-for-stutenmann-or-weckmann.html  (I've copied it below in case I can't find it again and so I can utilise it but it's not mine - it belongs to the link):

"Ingredients for 6 little Guys:

600 grams of flour

40 grams of fresh yeast ( if not available use about 2.25 teaspoons of dry yeast)

1 cup of lukewarm milk

2 eggs

60 grams of sugar

100 grams of butter ( a little less than one stick)

a pinch of salt,

grated lemon zest from one whole lemon

a touch of vanilla

Raisins and almonds to make mouth,eyes, buttons

Sift flour into a bowl and make a hole in the center. Mix the warmish milk with the yeast and pour it into the hole. Gently mix it in with some of the flour scooped from the sides of the hole. Germans call that the Vorteig=Predough.

Cover the bowl with a towel and let rest in a warm place for 15 minutes. Add the melted butter, eggs, salt, sugar, lemon zest to the mixture and blend it all together. Knead the dough until nice and smooth. Let it rest again for 15 minutes.

Roll out the dough about 1/2 inch thick and cut out or shape into breadman. Decorate as shown in the pictures. Children love to help with this! Rub on some beaten egg yolks to give a nice brown shiny tint! Let them rest another 15 minutes before baking.

In Germany the breadman usually come with a pipe made of clay. I prefer the non-smoking kind =).

Bake at about 380 degrees for 10-15 minutes."

Riding, swimming, Scouts and Brownies

Because Springy is a) an only child and b) someone who happens to love being around other people, we have made a lot of effort into ensuring she gets regular contact with other children as well as the socialising she does with us, her family and friends or out and about shopping, at the library and so on.

Springy goes riding, to Scouts and to Brownies.  We've also got a weekly or sometimes fortnightly swim going on with some other friends who happen to be home-educators too.

I think that the 'socialisation' issue is important but more from whether a child's personality and temperament makes it so.  It's also more about socialising than socialisation.  If you have a gregarious child then it's imperative imho that their socialising needs are met. My advice to home educators with only children is to ensure that you do set up meet-ups or join in with group activities of some sort on a regular basis, unless your child really can't cope.  If they can't cope then it's worth considering why e.g. auditory processing. I've met home ed only children who were on the autistic spectrum and who to the outside world came across as "odd" and therefore were deemed a "reason not to homeschool" but society often doesn't understand that a.s. children often don't thrive in school either.  In these cases it may be that any group socialising you do is very selective and serves a true need for your child e.g. an interest. 

Baba Yaga's chicken legs

I often wish I had a house on chicken legs.  I love where we are most of the time but sometimes I wish I could say to my home "Wake up, please go here..."  As someone with a very strong Venus in Cancer in terms of my chart I love being at home.  I like to have all my home comforts - tents are not for me.  It would be so nice to be able to take everything along including the heating and go to different parts of the world (safe parts).

I'm also pulled in more learning directions again.  I love learning - I'm a perpetual student as well as being a home educator.  At the moment, I want to do a clinical massage diploma (2 years), take my ArtReflex training to completion, study with the Scottish School of Herbal Medicine for their correspondence course (just personal use on family) and also do an astrology course.  I'd also like to learn more about needle felting and knitting and crochet.  However, with a small home there isn't enough room to do any of it.

I love the facts that the plants you need always find their way to grow about you.   I really believe that if someone has a health condition then all you need to do is look closely around where they live and the plants that choose to grow near them will give an indication of what they need to deal with.

12.11.10 - Springy  has created Hamster World in her bedroom with toilet and kitchen roll tubes, several cardboard boxes and lots of sawdust. (We don't have a hamster nor will we but she's trying very hard to hint).

She also has her own restaurant and has made a fat ball with peanuts and sunflower seeds for the garden birds.   We got some lard and softened it a little in our hands and then cracked open some monkey nuts and some sunflower seeds to add into it.  We've hung it up in the front garden in the hopes that we will see some of our winter visitors as they feast.

Friday, 11th November 2010

We are stocked up on dog food, hen food and guineapig food. We have a tube of cardboard wide enough to accommodate our guineapig and Lily has new dog toy that she is very excited by and keeps asking us to throw.

We also lit a lantern and walked around the kitchen table as it is far too wild and windy to go outside with a real flame. Poor Lily had to wait until this afternoon for her walk because it was pouring down at an angle.

We keep seeing either a curlew or a whimbrel in the harbour (not today though as it was far too choppy when the tide was in). I need to take a photo so that I can fully identify it with Springy's help. From the way it is staying it's more likely a curlew as they stay resident in the winter, whereas whimbrels just pass through.

 

And Springy   is currently still up singing her times tables in a rather odd operatic voice. "Numbers are are fun, threeeee times six iszzz eight-teeen..." !!!

The Tower of Babel

We did some 3 times tables (with stamp stamp clap), told a story about the Tower of Babel and Springy is now playing with some old clay that is soaking in water. She's going to be doing some clay tablet writing over the next few days (I hope - not much clay though!). We've also read Story of the World about the first writing.

 (update:  we didn't have enough clay to make the tablets but she made a mini Tower of Babel.  It was interesting to note how she has recently been asking about what did people talk like in the past.  She was asking about the Stone Age and so on and how people would have sounded so the curriculum meshes with her developmental needs).

Old Testament Stories and clay

We did some 3 times tables (with stamp stamp clap), told a story about the Tower of Babel and #Springy is now playing with some old clay that is soaking in water. She's going to be doing some clay tablet writing over the next few days (I hope - not much clay though!). We've also read Story of the World about the first writing.

 I went to Michael Hall earlier this week and had a great time experiencing a Day in the Classroom.

We covered Nature Stories.  I learnt a lovely story from experienced Waldorf teacher David Smith (30 years of class teaching).  This is an adaptation because it as an oral story and I didn't tape it:

Once there was a plant nursery and in the autumn and spring, as you may know, a lot of birds either leave or come to our country.  They travel from far away, sometimes from countries to the far north with ice and snow and sometimes from hot places such as Africa.  Now there were a lot of new baby plants growing in the nursery and some of the birds had travelled long and far and they watched the little plants.  They noticed that one of the plants was growing bigger than the others.  They gathered around and had a look and they noticed that the leaves on this baby plant were so big.  "Aha" said the swallows, "You must be an elephant plant - you have a trunk and two big ears."  The birds laughed.  The baby plant felt sad because he didn't want to feel different from the other plants in the nursery but the birds kept calling him an elephant plant.  The birds said to the other little plants growing in the nursery that they shouldn't talk to the elephant plant anymore.  The little plants at first said "Oh no we're all plants" but the birds said that if any of them kept talking to the elephant plant that they wouldn't be friends with them.  The elephant plant felt very sad.  He was all alone and so he turned his head up to the sun and asked the sun to make him like the sun.  "Please make me like you Sun."  And he grew and he grew as he held his head to the sun.  The birds had flown away for a while and when they came back they noticed the elephant plant.  "Ooh, you've changed, you're just like the Sun," they said.  They started to make a fuss and told all the other birds and the other plants in the nursery that the elephant plant looked like the sun.  The birds said "How did you stop being an elephant and turn into the sun?  We know what you are, you're a sunflower," but the plant didn't want to talk to them.  He started to turn away and as he did his heart went cold.  He didn't want to know the birds or the other plants in the nursery.  They'd been so mean to him and his only friend had been the sun.  But as his heart turned cold he started to change again.  His golden sunshine flower darkened.  The birds tried to talk to him again.  "We're sorry," they said.  "We're sorry we were mean to you but we didn't know that you were a flower of the sun."  The other plants said sorry too.  "We're sorry too, we're sorry we listened to the birds when they said not to talk to you.  It doesn't matter that you were different."  But the sunflower was still hurt and his heart went even colder until all the light went from him.  And then he felt so sad.  He missed the birds and the other plants and he began to cry little grey tears.  His tears fell to the ground and the birds gathered about and they picked them.  "Ooh, these taste delicious. Thank you," they said to the sunflower.  And the sunflower didn't hurt anymore.  The birds took some of the seeds and they planted them.  "Next time we see an elephant plant we'll remember to be kind."

Mr Smith tells story after story throughout the Main Lesson.  He doesn't just do one.  He links them to the next day and the previous and so on, adding on.  It's nothing like most of the curriculum emphasise where there's only one story per day.  He had such a quiet voice but it seemed to resonate all around the room.  We were leaning in to listen.  He held a picture of a Cicely Baker tree picture - a beech tree.  This is not verbatim but is the gist of what he was doing:

 "Do you remember I was telling you about the trees and at this time of year the leaves start to change colour and they fall off.  Well there's a tree called the Copper Beech and they're all one tree.  What colour do think it is?  It's a brownish red colour.  Now the squirrels ran off with some of the beech mast (and he had some to show because they go out gathering up stuff from nature before or having a look about and he links his stories in that way).  They buried it in the ground and it grew and grew.  And do you know what colour the leaves were?  Green!  Not copper because copper beeches are all one tree.  No, to grow a copper beech you have to take a branch off a copper beech and plant that, not the seed.  It's called grafting.  Apple and pear trees are grafted.  Can you remember the tree that the King of Spain's daughter had?  I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bear but a silver nutmeg and a golden pear...  Later in the year we'll do some grafting.  Some pear trees can have 10 different pears on them or apple trees can have different branches each with a different type of apple...but we'll do that in the garden later on."

He also had some plastic worms, yes plastic, to show the different lifecycles of a worm because he says bringing animals to the classroom often results in accidental death.  He also has a briefcase of plastic insects including a preying mantis.  He asked whether it was a praying mantis or a preying mantis (good way to discuss spellings).

He said that Grade 3 is when you introduce rules.  The Old Testament is rule introduction.  Then you start with grammar, spelling and so on.  I was amazed by how much writing there was for Class 3 in their Main Lesson Books.  The writing was small and cursive already.

Music:

Nice idea on how to introduce musical staves - once there was a little gnome playing his recorder but all the notes kept floating away on the breeze and he couldn't remember how to play them again. Fortunately there was an angel sitting in a nearby tree and her hair caught the notes....