Irish dancing

Springy has been twice now to an Irish dancing class.  She loves it. I'm so pleased because it's a good cardiac workout, along with being enjoyable and good for her co-ordination and posture.  At the moment she's dancing barefoot and is doing "soft shoe" style reels.  She picked up the 1-2-3 move in a week (practising on the farm tracks).  It also reminded me of how I used to love dancing.  I did ballet and tap until I was about 11 years old and in tap I used to get distinctions.  I've been learning some of the moves so that I can help her practice at home.

Springy gave the guineapigs a bath this morning.  It was new guineapig Martha's first time in a full bath bathtime.  With piggies that means they go swimming.  They look like mini capybaras (who are also South American creatures). Our dog fell asleep on one of my knees earlier.  We played three rounds, as a family, of Bananagrams. We love the game - it's a good way to increase vocabulary and spelling awareness.  I'm surprised how many words Springy knows at times.  She's currently reading a book called Dog Detectives.  I'm reading The Lord of the Rings - I read it every year.  I see it as a holiday (since we don't have a holiday otherwise) to voyage to Middle Earth and read of first Bilbo Baggins' adventures in The Hobbit and then travel with Frodo and Sam.  I liked the films but feel they fell short of the books by a long way.

I've been working on the garden a fair bit the past few days.  It's been quite cold outside but dry enough to dig up some of the borders, pull out some of the old and decaying plants e.g. the angelica.  I've kept back some of the angelica stalk to make a musical instrument with.  We're also hoping to do some willow workshops over the next week as we're moving into our block on Shelters again.  This time we're hoping to have some hands on opportunities.

We finished our Old Testament block.  We've covered since last year Adam and Eve (which is about questioning and disobeying authority and the loss of innocence), Noah and His Ark, Joseph and his Coat and Moses in the Bulrushes.  I dislike the Bible generally speaking because I find that the deity is rather nasty and into smiting.  However, I took the stories that I felt had general wisdom in them and that would meet some of Springy's 9-year change aspects.  It's interesting how prone to melancholy she is recently.  She was always very sanguine in nature - happy, skippy, la-de-da like a butterfly.  However, in the past 6 months we have much more of a huff and a "not fair" and general "I'm not doing that" going on.  It's involved at times lots of psychological ploys including the melancholic empathy thing whereby I've done "Oh I remember that when I was your age..."  Some of it has been peer influence.  There  are a few friends that I'm having to stop her seeing - they're not bad per se but they don't have the same curbs on pop culture that I prefer.  I know that this too shall pass but it can be a little exhausting at times and also a little sad to see some of them go through this change into 'attitude'.  Ho hum as some of my good friends would say. 

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....