Grade One, X, Y, Z

These letters were very difficult for me to plan. I have been trying to stay as true to waldorf principles as possible with our approach to the alphabet, but coming up with stories to base this lesson on just wasn't happening. I finally went back to Steiner's lecture "Teaching Children to Write" and realized that the letters and thier forms can come from life experiences and don't have to be tied to a specific fairy tale! Whew! So that is what I did. Thus we came up with the following words and pictures. I think it worked well, as Elsa did not balk at all and is now finished with her lessons about the consonants.

Grade One, P & Q

Letters P & Q
Waldorf Alphabet Book
A Journey Through Waldorf First Grade
Oak Meadow Kindergarten

Story:
The Three Spinners - Grimm, as told in Oak Meadow Kindergarten Fairy Tales

This is a great story to flesh out with details and dialogue. I based my retelling off the interpretation in Oak Meadow Kindergarten as I knew Elsa would love the addition of the little pet quail. We also named our lazy girl soon to be princess "Polly" and the prince "Peter" and said that they had been best friends in school. "Polly" wasn't so much lazy in our version, but rather dreamy.

Grade One, L & N

**I am doing some serious catching up here! I really want to post about as many of our Waldorf homeschool lessons as possible as I know how helpful it can be to see what other families are doing. So the next few posts actually occured in the last 3 months!


Letters L & N
Waldorf Alphabet Book
A Journey Through Waldorf Homeschooling Grade One
Oak Meadow Kindergarten

Stories:
Little Red Riding Hood - Grimm
The Nixie of the Mill Pond - Grimm

"Little Red Lingers on the Lane"

"Naughty Nixie Needs Nelly's Gold"

King Winter

"King Winter now is in the land

He reigns with cold and freezing hand.

He makes Jack Frost touch nose and toe,

And brings us white and shining snow."

~M. Meyerkort, Wynstones Press "Winter"

Grade One, F & R

Letters F & R
Waldorf Alphabet Book
A Journey Through Waldorf Homeschooling Grade One
Oak Meadow Kindergarten


Stories:
The Curious Fish by Elsa Beskow
The Roly Poly Pudding by Beatrix Potter
Rapunzel by Grimm
The Dream Fairy (poem) by Thomas Hood


Activities:
Add new fish to our pond
Bake Roly Poly Puddings (recipe in Oak Meadow Kindergarten p. 209)

The newly released in English book by Elsa Beskow was perfect for F! We actually scheduled our lessons for F around the release of the book and I am so glad we did. It is such a sweet tale, and Elsa loved all the different kinds of fish in it.

We told several different tales for the letter R, but the image we finally settled on as most meaningful was the river. It lent itself so nicely to the shape, and really flowed in and out of all our stories this week.

One of our resources this week was the poem "The Dream Fairies" by Thomas Hood. It is in the public domain, so here it is:

A little fairy comes at night,

Her eyes are blue, her hair is brown,

with silver spots upon her wings,

And from the moon she flutters down.

She has a little silver wand,

And when a good child goes to bed

She waves her wand from right to left

And makes a circle round her head,

And then it dreams of pleasant things,

Of fountains filled with fairy fish,

And trees that bear delicious fruit,

And bow their branches at a wish;

Of arbours filled with dainty scents

From lovely flowers that never fade,

Bright ‘flies that flitter in the sun,

And glow-worms shining in the shade;

And talking birds with gifted tongues

For singing songs and telling tales,

And pretty dwarfs to show the way

Through the fairy hills and fairy dales.

So many beautiful images! "Fountains filled with fairy fish" was our repeated sentence for F. And Elsa was so inspired by "...pretty dwarfs to show the way/ Through the fairy hills and fairy dales." that she had to paint her version of her dwarf guide through fairyland...

...a lovely opportunity for a painting exersize in Red!


I wanted to share the picture Robin drew for Elsa. He put in as many "R"s as he could from the story Rapunzel. Elsa had a great time finding them all!

Grade One, G & K

Letters G & K
Waldorf Alphabet Book
A Journey Through Waldorf First Grade

Stories:
The Golden Goose - Grimm
King Thrushbeard - Grimm

Activities:
Gardening
Autumn Nature Walk


Elsa in the golden early autumn light in Payson, AZ. We took a little trip to visit my sister in Gallup, NM the first weekend of October and stopped at my parents' cabin. The woods were so beautiful and golden!

For some reason, Elsa had a difficult time with G. She loved the story, but did not think she could draw the picture. She started and then was so frustrated that we had to put it on hold. It took her about three weeks of letting it settle before she was ready to revisit it and make her MLB entry. That's ok. It is why homeschooling is so wonderful! It was no problem to move on with other things and come back to it when she was ready. I did not make a big issue of it, so she did not feel stupid.

The story of King Thrushbeard is adorable! Elsa loved the Princess' silly descriptions of the Princes, and was glad when she learned her lesson to be less proud and selfish. She had great fun acting this one out with me, and really enjoyed the drawing of the King and Princess dancing at thier wedding!

Grade 3/4, Math Block week 2

Not a lot to talk about this week. We are really working on memorizing those multiplication tables, so it was more skip counting to marching and singing, writing them out, etc...

Robin made this fun tool that makes different patterns for the different numbers. Above is the 3's. He sanded the wood and pounded the nails all on his own. I wrote the numbers.

We are working on 2's, 3's and 4's right now. We discovered that the threes can be sung to Frere Jacques. Memorizing the times tables is tedious work though, no matter what you do. They just have to be memorized. Even when the concepts are understood, it really just comes down to memorization. So, we try to make it as fun as we can!

Grade One, J & B

Letters J & B
Waldorf Alphabet Book
A Journey Through Waldorf First Grade
Oak Meadow Kindergarten
Kit'n'Tales

Stories:
The Water of Life - Grimm (a prince brings his father a JUG of the water of life)
Flora Flutterbye - Sieglinde de Francesca (Kit'N'Tales)
Hummy Bee - Sieglinde de Francesca (Kit'N'Tales)


Activities:
Make clay jug
Make jam
Make bee and butterfly from Kit'N'Tales
Bake bagles




We actually spent most of the week last week on J. I was under the weather with a bad cold and just couldn't seem to focus on academics. We told the story of "The Water of Life" and illustrated the jug and fountain in our MLBs. We made strawberry jam, but I couldn't find clay I liked so we didn't make our jugs. We did have tons of fun dying silk and wool with flowers from our yard - more about that in another post! We also spent a lot of time with our goats and our new neighbor- a little calf named Sassy...

We did all of B on Monday of this week. Well, actually, we were talking about B all weekend as we observed the bees in our garden, thought of all the B words we could think of, baked bread, and talked about butterflies. Elsa was very ready for the two stories on Monday, and was very happy to finally enter her picture in her MLB.

The highlight of our B lesson was making a little Hummy Bee using our sunflower dyed wool and the instructions in Sigi's Hummy Bee story. So cute!!! Elsa loves her little bee and has been taking very good care of her.

We also started the butterfly from Sigi's Flora Flutterbye story (downloads free on the Kit'N'Tales website!) But this morning Elsa discovered that her wings needed a little more color so she had to repaint them. We will finish that one before bed tonight.

Grade 3/4, Math Block week 1

Robin is working on a 3 week math block. We started out working on his times tables and did lots of fun activities to continue memorizing them.
These multiplication clocks were very fun to do. I had Robin draw the circles freehand (also covering form drawing for the week!), then he figured out the numbers and I wrote them. We colored them together and hung them on the wall.
We also did tons of skip-counting in circle time, and marching while skip-counting. He made a multiplication table and filled in the blocks for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, and 12.

Grade One, H & D

Letters H & D

Waldorf Alphabet Book
A Journey Through Waldorf Homeschooling Grade One
Oak Meadow Kindergarten

Stories:
The Hut in the Forest - Grimm
The Twelve Dancing Princesses - Grimm
Fairy Houses, Everywhere - Barry & Tracy Kane

Activities:
Make a fairy house

Last May on a visit to Grandaddy & Gramie's cabin, Elsa picked up all these rocks. We were on a little hike, and she saw so many pretty rocks. I told her she should only pick up what she could carry herself and she ended up with her whole skirt full! We brought them home, and she has used them for all kinds of creative play.

To go with our lesson about H and Houses, Elsa built a fairy house. She was so excited to use her rocks from the mountains to make a house for the fairies.

She wrote a little note to the fairies, and sure enough, they wrote back! They thanked her for the beautiful house, and obviously they danced all night as there was fairy dust sprinkled everywhere!

September Circle Time

Candle Verse:
When everything is quiet, the light fairies come,
Bringing light and warmth, from the stars and sun.

Opening Verses:
Morning has come, night is away
We rise with the sun to welcome the day.

I can be as tall as a tall, tall tree.
I can be as small as a small, small seed.

German Songs:
Kommt ein Vogel Gefloegen
Haeschen in der Grube

Fun songs:
The Little Rabbit (little cabin in the wood)
It's Autumn Time

Activity song:
Oh, Oh, Oh, (the Dwarves March in a Row)

Math Practice:
Skip counting by 3's - marching, bean bag toss, clapping, song (tune of "Frere Jacques")

Seasonal Story:
"September" from "A Time To Keep" by Tasha Tudor or "All Year Round" by Elsa Beskow
"Christopher's Harvest Time"
"The Apple Cake"
"Our Apple Tree"

Recorder Practice

Closing Verse:
Here is a spark from Father Sun's light,
To keep in our hearts so warm and bright.

Grade 3/4, Week Three

Culture: Southwest
Resources: Keepers of the Night
Mythfolklore.net
A Journey Through Waldorf Homeschooling Grade Three

"Creation of the Moon" (Navajo/Dine) Keepers of the Night

Southwest Culture (drawing of Hogan)

"The Boy Who Became a God" (Navajo) mythfolklore.net

The Origin of Summer and Winter"" (Acoma/Laguna) A Journey Through Waldorf Homeschooling Grade Three

Since we live in the Southwest, this culture is very near and dear to us. We were able to find many resources locally through friends and family. Above you see Elsa picking the seeds out of cotton bolls. We picked the cotton at a nearby farm.

Gramie has tons of experience with southwest cooking, so invited the kids over for a cooking day. She helped them roast chilis and make delicious lamb-stuffed chilis.

Stuffing the chilis.

They were a little spicy for the kids, but Robin and Elsa enjoyed eating the lamb filling with cornmeal pancakes. Yum! Thanks Gramie!!

My sister lives in Gallup, NM and has Southwest Indian culture all around her. She sent me the recipe for Navajo fry bead and beans which we made one night for dinner. So simple, but soooo good! She also sent the recipe for really amazing Zuni bread and a lamb stew. The bread and stew turned out so good!! Thanks, Hanne!!