Covered wagon family

http://chasingcheerios.blogspot.com/2010/12/meet-ingalls-family.html

 Thought the above was adorable.

It snowed overnight - not good sticking snow but rather slushy and sleet.  However, it was a whiteout this morning and still snowing.  We had a lovely walk around the harbour this afternoon. Lily got very muddy, Springy got very cold but we made it back inside after the fresh air, the slippy slush and seeing the Brent geese, the lapwings and the oyster catchers.

Springy has also been writing a story about a goose landing in our garden (based on a chapter from Schoolroom in the Parlour by Rebecca Caudhill about the Fairchild family).  She also did Fl words in her Main Lesson Book.  She's been reading for a good few years and although this kind of simple spelling would have normally been done last year (in the Waldorf or Enki Curriculum), we've focused elsewhere.  We're going to do a whole load of words and finish off this MLB.  I tell her the start of the word, she has to come up with words and I join in too.  We compile a list of words in her regular text book - I write them out, she then copies them and then she transfers them all to her MLB in her best writing and for homonyms or synonyms she does a little illustration.

We're going to do Ch, Tr, and St words tomorrow.


Springy also had a playdate with a friend this morning when Scouts was cancelled.  They built a magnificent snowman.


Several of our relatives have received Springy's poetry book which we published through Lulu.  It has her poems and photographs in.  It's such a nice way of gifting a number of people with something personal.

OT and Waldorf

I've been making gapped paragraphs for Springy.  The idea is say you are working on a Fable, you tell the story, but a very expanded version (Sigi De Francesca has a brilliant book on the Fables) and then I wrote a simpler version out of the story but left spaces in the text and a list of words my daughter had to use to fill it in.  That way she got to do some spelling, copywork and so on but tied it into the Fables.   Then after she had done quite a few of these gapped summaries (so she's not having to write out the whole summary herself) she then copied them out into her main lesson book and illustrated them.

I think one of the points of Grade 3 thinking in Waldorf is that the child is going through the 9-year change.  They're coming out of their dependency on you as parent but not yet independent.  The OT stories are to do with authority - the Garden of Eden, Noah having to build an Ark - big boss parent authoritarian figure saying "Do as I say...or else you will pay consequences." I've done a few of the OT stories but I have to say that spiritually (I'm an atheist) I was concerned and morally I had concerns too because God in OT stories from an outside perspective comes over as a complete and utter bully.  However, I have a few books by Margaret Mayo and Usbourne bible stories that have made me review my relation to the stories, not spiritually, but as a parent I have an understanding of how our role as passive or authoritative or authoritarian person changes depending on context etc e.g. safety issues.  There is a certain wisdom in them as stories (although I still don't understand why anyone would want to be in a religion that had such an aggressive, mean, authoritarian, death-loving deity). I've used the stories without putting them into a religious context, other than mentioning they are from the Jewish, Islamic and Christian traditions of religion so she can place them amongst her friends who believe in those faiths. 

My daughter has said quite a few times things like, "Oh he's so mean, why did he have to flood the Earth?"  However, she's also picked up on how mean the other people were.   However, she's also picked up on how mean the other people were and asked "Why couldn't he have saved all the nice things and not just some?".  I haven't answered as such but she's been left with some big questions and it is these big questions that work on us through our lives.  As a parent I often find myself questioning how I parent.  In the children's versions of the Old Testament the deity is diluted somewhat so I can relate to him as a "parent".  He created his children and he's trying to look after them, even though they go astray.  If he created them does he have the right to destroy them if they disobey?  It's not going in like that to Springy now but it locks into the synapses for a later date.

Sachertorte - sort of...

We made a sort of Sachertorte with Springy today. It's a bit too bitter for her taste so next time I will use a lower percentage dark chocolate for the ganache. I reckon it would be nice to add grated orange rind and use marmalade instead of raspberry in it too (it would be lovely with Cointreau or such but I'd probably fall over after one slice then).

We spent the morning doing our lessons - Springy did some paper weaving because we've been discussing baskets and tried to do some form drawing type exercises with the up and down of that. We stuck it into her Main Lesson book.


We've had 2 walks with our dog today so far, cleaned out R, our guineapig and played a very intense game of Ludo this afternoon.

We also played a tune on the recorder together. The words involved weaving sweetly, weaving neatly, up and down, down and up...

Recipe needs modifying to larger quantities too (although it was probably enough to make 12 Sachertorte type fairy cakes) as it was a bit thin in the cake pan.  The current one is as follows:

4 oz caster sugar
4 oz butter
2 oz almond flour
4 eggs - separated
1 tsp vanilla essence
100g dark chocolate
+ chocolate ganache and raspberry jam

Prepare a round cake tin - brush with butter to prevent sticking
In a bowl:
Cream butter and sugar together with almond flour.
Add 4 egg yolks.  Gently fold in the dark chocolate (melted in a bain marie) and add vanilla essence.
Sieve Self Raising flour into mix and gently mix it in.
Beat the egg white until forming stiff peaks and fold it into the rest of the mixture.
Pour into cake tin and even out top with spatula.
Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes
Turn out onto cake rack and cool for 5 minutes.
Cut cake top off and spread a layer of raspberry jam in the middle.

To make ganache - 50g of dark chocolate, 20ml double cream and a dash of rum or brandy (if you wish)
Melt chocolate in bain marie, add double cream and mix in and then add dash of rum/brandy (you could subsitute with a dash of fruit juice)
Spread ganache over Sachertorte.
Serve your torte with a coffee or whatever drink you feel fits.

Spring has sprung

We've had a lovely day. I did a blackboard drawing yesterday (I'm not very good at drawing but always have a go) in anticipation of the Spring Equinox and drew a daffodil and a primrose and also a night sky with moon and stars and a sun in a paler blue sky.

I wrote down:
SPRING EQUINOX
NIGHT = DAY

and we talked about spring. Springy came up with the following words that remind her of spring:

birds, flower, warm, sun, daffodil, hyacinth, primrose, tulip, lamb

Then I asked her to use her magic book (main lesson book) to do a picture in. She got frustrated by it so we used some ordinary sheets of paper for her to practice on first. She still hasn't put a picture (apart from a partially drawn robin) in the magic book but it may take a few days. Then I asked her to go out in the garden and count how many daffodils there are. She found 5 patches of them and then I asked her to count them because the fairies need to know how many there are in each patch. We did a bit of mental arithmetic adding up how many altogether. Lily-pup was out there with her, charging about and stopping to listen to birds, trying to get the chickens (who are in the run) to play with her and then Springy made a mud pie. Yum to mud pies - every child should make mud pies. I asked Springy to wear a hat because the sun is strong enough to be a summer's day today.

Ron Jarman - maths

I have the Ron Jarman maths book. It has been discussed on a few lists. It's been very useful. I'm doing a block with Springy on Roman numerals. We talked about how the numerals look a bit like fingers with the V (5) being the shape between thumb and first finger indicating the whole hand of 5 digits etc.

Springy has begun to copy the numerals into her Magic Book and we have completed all the alphabet entries (lower and upper case but no pictures/illustrations) - I felt she didn't need to because she already knows them and we discussed the alphabet in terms of relating the letters to words e.g. C is for cat and a curly cat lying down in a C-shape etc. She has also done some lovely pictures for the number properties. She's been able to count and recognise numbers for years and we have done some story work about the number properties before but it's nice for her to have a book that she is creating herself with her own work.

We're continuing with the Four Processes and Springy gets to do little sums almost daily. I write them on a little chalk board. She's allowed to use the abacus and her little bag of stones if she needs to. I also do some aural/oral maths with her so she does it mentally rather than with manipulatives. The colds we had stopped a lot of our maths flow but we will hopefully get back into it all again this week.

So to sum up:

Alphabet
Introducing the alphabet visually - Upper case - giving M for mountain and then relating the symbol of the letter to an image.
Introducting the alphabet visually - Lower case - same, although lower case are companions
Alphabet - upper - written - Springy has used this for a few years (not very Steiner but there you go...) to write us letters and to write stories - self interest and self initiated - knows them all
Alphabet - lower - written - not as confident or as competent as upper but getting there.
Oral awareness - can correspond letter symbol to sound. Is aware that some letters in words do not correspond with the sound.

Maths:
Introduced properties - via stories. What is 1? (Marsha Johnson/Eugene Schwartz)
The Four Processes - Springy can do plus and minus (up to 20) but still struggling with divide and multiply (my fault - and needs me to put more energy into this - the right kind of energy)
Counts in twos - yes
Counts in tens up to 100 - yes
Counts in fives up to 100 - yes
Knows her shapes - yes
Starting to recognise time - o'clocks, half pasts

I could go on about all the everyday maths that is conversational and through everyday life but won't yet.

What I'd like to do again is have another letter search. We've done these a few times around the house, looking for items that start or end with particular letters or have used themes such as animals.

Language

I've been working on phonemic awareness with Springy quite a bit recently and in particular making her aware of the sounds as they apply to her oral and nasal areas. For instance, we've been doing fricatives and I've been asking her to "feel" where the sound is. She's picked it up very quickly and seems to be aware.

In terms of vowels and consonants, we have been doing a rather Waldorf-inspired thing with the AAGGGH or AYYY, EEEE or eh, ih/i (as in aye) Ooooo (going on and on) or oh, Uwww/ur and so on. I've been explaining the vowels don't stop and then we got on to mmmm and nnnnnn and the fricatives (since they don't stop either) but she seems to have understood the difference by sensing the feelings that the sounds make and give.

Our Magic book (main lesson book) is coming along well with the capital and lower case letters (4 per page) and also the numbers (one per page but with a drawing). I don't want to overdo them in a Steiner Waldorf way because she knows her letters already but at the same time I wanted her to have a book to look back on and it prepares the way for her to apply her will and to be careful with her "work".

A new Steiner Waldorf resource - poems

This is an excellent Steiner Waldorf resource for poems, verses and so forth:

http://www.straightlineandcurve.co.uk/

The Museum and paper

We've had a busy past few weeks - played lots of games, been on playdates, to swimming, Beavers and so on.

Springy has written a delightful book (she goes off, cuts up paper, sometimes asks for a little help) and when she has written and illustrated her books she asks to read them to us.

The latest is The Museum (spelt THE MUOZEM) which is about a dinosaur who is hungry. No, she hasn't seen the film Night at the Museum although we did go to the Natural History museum a couple of years back and saw the Tyrannosaurus Rex animatronic there, and this seems to have stuck. The book is backwards but that doesn't matter. It is lovely that she has book making as a creative outlet.

Today, I have been poring over the Hope Education and NES Arnold catalogues. I'm one of those home educators who is able to laugh at some of the contents rather than wanting everything. It's such an irony to see play money, shopping games and so on because we do these things for real so we have no need, unlike schools, to simulate these experiences in a classroom. That said there are a few items I would like. There is a wooden cube set - 1 cm cubes which form 100 by 100 by 100 cubes for length and volume. The plastic stuff leaves me cold though - I'd much rather dip into the Myriad catalogue.

This afternoon we went on an adventure around the home. I used the vignette on paper from the Live Education website as a basis to spring from. We explored toilet tissue by pulling it when dry and then wet it to notice what happened. We held pieces of different paper up against the window to see how much light was let through and then poured a little cooking oil on to show how early people had used oil to waterproof their paper windows and also allow more light in. We discussed wasps and I drew a set of hexagons on our chalkboard and Springy knew that bees used wax instead of paper for the same construction shape. We discussed papyrus and it is fortunate that we have a piece of Egyptian papyrus (it came from the World Scout Jamboree in the summer) so Springy was able to feel it. We then pretended to be wasps and chewed up toilet tissue (not really) with our fingers and added water and then squashed it into a different shape to dry (we'll look at that tomorrow). We have a bamboo plant growing in our lounge so when we discussed paper making in China she could see a bamboo as well. We went around the house on a hunt for paper items - kitchen roll, books, magazines, newspapers and Springy was very excited about each new discovery. We also looked at our house construction with the plasterboard - some of it is falling off in Springy's room which meant it was easy to see the layers. All in all brilliant and I just wish there were more resources written in the same way for me to bounce off with the hands on/discovery approach.

We came back to wasps at the end and Springy had grabbed some plasticine (our lovely new non-smudge Oko certificated stuff from Myriad) and made a wasp. Beautiful :)