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....

 

 

Class 2 type year

Well we're not really a class - although I learn just as much as Springy at times.

This year we're going to be focusing on Fables, Animal Friends, Saints/Sages, Nature Stories and so on.

I can really see Springy is fascinated by animals. With our new addition to the household, our lovely dog, I can see how Steiner would have observed the interest in animals. He was really astute with his observations. Springy is totally occupied with animals and wanting to accumulate more pets.

Our doggy is gorgeous - she's lovely temperament and ever so loving and easy to care for (apart from the revolting ticks that I had to remove from her the other day).

So:

Times Tables - keep practising 2x, 1x, 5x, 10x and we need to add in 11x, 3x and 4x
Regular use of arithmetic (Magical Maths books by Letts) and conversations on other mathematical themes
I want to do a recap on Roman numerals which we did cover but I'm not sure how much of this Springy retained.
Learning the spellings of common word clusters e.g. would, should, could and peep, sheep, deep etc
Doing small blocks on the Animal themes above along with Form Drawing to help improve that focus and concentration - simple sentences from the Fable e.g. "The mouse saved the lion" or "Slow and steady wins the race"
Increase the frequency of handwriting use and with practice we hope will come improved writing stamina and appreciation

I'm more aware of doing my research before the fable to ensure that I know enough about the animal concerned. I've always been someone interested in wildlife and animals anyway so that makes it easier. Springy already loves nature so it's not hard to instil that love for the main characters in the fables.

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 :)