Catching up with lessons, excursions & other minutia

After we learned about the Ojibwe and their homes and land it was time for day of the dead. We did the typical day of the dead activities. We made pan de meurto. I liked the recipe we used this year better than any I had ever tried. It was easier than the others, and when you added the glaze it smelled & tasted like fresh doughnuts. I think I will make it again soon, but call it something else. We decorated with simple fold & cut papel picado. I still have not taken them down. I think I will make some red & green ones for Christmas. I thought it would be a good time to start learning spanish. We already knew some basic phrases, colors, numbers, and things like that, we need to learn more so that we can speak it conversationally. We are learning it through songs & movement. We take the words & phrases from the songs & make large cards with the words on them and hang them up. We try to use the new words in everyday life.   I decided since it was day of the dead that we would learn about the mud houses of the Aztecs. Day of the dead has it’s roots in Aztec culture. The Aztec commoners lived in simple one room homes make of pole frames covered in mud or mud bricks. They usually had a thatched roof.   The Aztecs used cocoa beans as money we discussed this very briefly, as we will be going back to it deeper when we do a measurement block on money. Th Mexicolore  website has a really wonderful page about cocoa as money. 3 cocoa beans would have been worth one avocado. I told my daughter the story of how the little blue frog brought cocoa to the people. We made a hot chocolate whisk called a “molinillo” from a piece of dowel & copper wire. All you do to make one is coil about 4 feet of wire around a dowel that is smaller than the one you are using for the handle. This will make your wire look like a spring. You need at least 3 of them. Then you just wrap the coils around the dowel/handle and wire on tightly. 

To make hot chocolate in the traditional way you rotate the molinillo between your two hands placed palm-sides together.  The twisting motion frothes the chocolate. We made hot chocolate in this way while singing a  traditional chant..

Spanish	English
Bate, bate, chocolate,	Stir, stir, chocolate,
Tu nariz de cacahuate	Your nose is a peanut.
Uno, dos, tres, CHO!	One, two, three, CHO!
Uno, dos, tres, CO!	One, two, three, CO!
Uno, dos, tres, LA!	One, two, three, LA!
Uno, dos, tres, TE!	One, two, three, TE!
Chocolate, chocolate!	Chocolate, chocolate!
Bate, bate, chocolate!	Stir, stir, the chocolate!
Bate, bate, bate, bate,	Stir, stir, stir, stir,
Bate, bate, CHOCOLATE!	Stir, stir, CHOCOLATE!

You can hear this chant & others for free at the Texas State Library Archives website.

“Chocolate”  is about 1/3 down the page. This is a great resource for anyone wanting to add spanish to your curriculum or circle time.

We made some easy ojo de dios, or God’s eyes. The Caron website has a nice tutorial if you would like to see how to make them.

My daughter kept asking me “where” these different people we are learning about live. This continued to be an issue. She could not reconcile what their  natural environment & climate was with where they were located. To me this was a huge issue that needed to be addressed.  I decided we needed a map. I printed out a map of North America, or “Turtle Island”  as many indigenous people called it. It was a completely blank map that we could color & fill in as we like. When we study a group of people and their homes we draw their house on the map where they live/d. You can print out a map in just about any size up to 7ft (I think). The one here is 3ft x 4ft. It prints out on regular printer paper & you just tape or glue it together.

The next people we studied were the Cherokee. We did not do any traditional school work with this group. Instead we went to where they lived (and still live & thrive). We went to the north Georgia Mountains. I love it there. We went to many little areas and saw the amazing sites. We went to Tallulah Gorge. This gorge is HUGE. I think they said 950ft. We were lucky enough to be there when they let the water loose. There was some really nice white water, and the kayakers were taking full advantage of it.  They have a small, but very nice museum, and info center. They had a great deal of information on the Cherokee inside, as well as some myths & legends you could read next to pictures & displays.  Outside they had a wonderful blacksmith by the name of David Little doing demonstrations for visitors.  David is a man of many talents. He does black smith demos, makes unbelievable lighting fixtures, rehabilitates birds of prey and works at the Hike Inn at Amicalola Falls, an Inn you have to hike 5 miles on foot to get to. While driving around we discovered a beautiful old water powered mill right outside of Helen, Ga on the Chattahoochee River call the Nora Mill Garnary Grist Mill. It has been there since 1876. They grind all kinds of grain with very old french burr stones that are powered by the river you see in the pic below. This was a perfect thing for a 3rd grader to see as it ties into so many of our lessons.

 While we were up there we went to a great little music festival called Hemlockfest. It is a 3 day camp out festival  put on every year to raise money to help save the hemlock trees which are being utterly devastated by a beetle. The proceeds go to university labs trying to save the Hemlocks. It was a great little festival. This was the view as we walked down the drive toward the festival.

Once we were in the festival it was alive with music & good cheer. The weather could not have been better. This festival is wonderful. They even had canoes you could take out onto the lake for free.  They had a tepee set up at the far end of the lake that you could go inside of.  That’s my husband playing violin on a rock by the lake.The sign read “western plains tepee lodge..come in, sit down, tell stories.” 

They let you bring your dog.  I have been to many music festivals, and this is the only one that is dog friendly. We heard Col. Bruce Hampton, and the Quark Alliance play on Saturday night, and all I can say is wow!! Great show…..I really loved this little festival. I will definitely be back next year.

Shortly after we came home we went on a field trip to Cypress Gardens in Moncks Corner, SC. This was a nice field trip. We all went out into the black water swamp on boats. They have a buttefly pavillion, and aquarium too. I managed to capture this wierd little butterfly with my camera.

Here’s another of the same species in larva form….

That is what we have been up to the past few weeks. We are still working on our shelters block. Right now we are learning about tepees of the plains.

This weeks lessons: the Ojibwe

This weeks lessons focused on the Ojibwe people of the great lakes region. I could have easily taken a month or two on them. I began with the story of Turtle Island, modern day north america. I told this story http://www.gct3.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/creation_story.pdf . It was a wonderful transition story to use to create a bridge from old testament legends  into our native american block. The Ojibwe creation story of Turtle Island is similar to the Noah story in that the earth is flooded by the creator because people had become wicked. Instead of a chalkboard illustration I decided to do a watercolor. I wish I could have taken more time on it, but it served it’s purpose. My DD put the story in  her new native stories main lesson  book.

We learned about how the pre-contact Ojibwe lived. We learned about birch trees that grow where they live/d, and how the bark is removed in sheets and used to create shelters called wigwams, canoes to travel through the lakes on, and buckets for harvesting things. My DD put a paragraph about wigwams, and an illustration in her shelters main lesson book. I put an Ojibwe prayer on the board, and we recited it throughout the week.

We talked very briefly about wild rice, a staple of the Ojibwe. We will return to it when we do our small block on the grains.

We had a great time making a dome shaped hut from newspapers. This was the part of our lessons that was enjoyed the most. It reminded me of the dome shape of a wigwam. It was pretty simple to make, not to mention the bonus of it being absolutely free! You can find a great tutorial at pepper paints blog . Throw a lightweight sheet on, and you have a cosy little hide away ready for hours of play.

We worked on the number 8, and it’s times table through rhymes & tossing a beanbag.  Since it’s halloween we made a spider mobile, and put the 8 times table numbers of the spiders bodies.

We also learned the story of the dream catcher, and Ojibwe legend. We made a dream catcher from things we had around the house. We went outside, and cut some vines that were growing around a tree to make the hoop, and used hemp string for the web. I used a combination of this story & this story to make one smooth Dream Catcher story. 

I also checked out a few picture books about Ojibwe legends from the library.

Windigo’s Return- Great story about a monster from Ojibwe legend who eats people. It’s kind of scary, but has a humorous ending.

The Legend of The Lady Slipper-Beautiful tale about a brave girl who ventures into the night to save her people from a sickness that has stricken her entire village. Were were going to make mocassins in conjunction to this story, but ran out of time.

Ladder To The Sky- Another Ojibwe story with similarities to an Old testament legend. In this story the people lived in peace without sickness, or death, until someone disobeys the creator, and consequence ensues.

On friday we went to Brookgreen Gardens, about 30 minutes from our house. The most amazing trees east of the Redwood Forests are here at Brookgreen. If I were to move from here it would be the trees my heart would ache for.

The trees in the pics are magnificent by any standards, but are not the most amazing in the gardens. These were all in the native species zoo. My camera battery went dead before we got into the gardens, which are just completely enchanted. If you are ever near the mid-South Carolina coast, Brookgreen is a must see.

 

This weeks lessons:rainbows & doves & dolly costumes

If you read this blog you know it’s weird that I post this week’s lessons on Monday. I really just needed to go ahead & post them so that I could close the book, so to speak, on old testament legends (for now). We need to clean the slate & start fresh. Today we finished up the Noah/flood story. First we made easy origami doves which we colored. This was a great activity because this was a “folding story”. I retold the story of Noah as we did the folds. Each of the folds symbolized part of the story. I did a separate post on how to make the doves. If you hold their chests and move them up & down the wings & tail will flutter & appear to fly. My daughter just loved this, and made several of them. My daughter wrote the story in her book & did a few illustrations for it. We had a discussion about what it would be like to build such an enormous structure. Through out Noah we sang Shel Silverstein’s poem”Unicorn“. It is kind of silly, but most kids relish silliness. It tells of why the unicorns did not get on the Ark. There are several youtube videos of people doing it as a song if anyone wants to hear it. My dd likes to sing rather than recite, so I accomodate her when fitting.

We sculpted a few animals, and a rainbow from beeswax.

My daughter made her favorite doll “Posey” her Halloween costume. This served as handwork. Posey has been a constant companion since I made her when my daughter was 4. I have repaired holes, re-stitched hair, cleaned repeatedly, and even had to do a complete body replacement. A mean cousin  drew all over her face with a sharpie. That just devastated my daughter, but fortunately the most wonderful dry cleaners in the world at Conway Cleaners cleaned her up for us free of charge. Posey has reached Velveteen Rabbit status. She’s real. So it is only natural that she have her own costume. A is pretty good at working in 3 dimension. She hand sewed the gnome hat from a pattern she made herself. I was suprised to see a 3 panel gnome hat. That was not something I had ever thought of before, but it worked out well. She sewed pink wings onto the doll’s overalls.

So, thats all for now on the old testament legends. The remainder of the week we will work on wigwams made by the Ojibwe. We will hear about the beginning of Turtle Island, a story about a monster called Windigo that eats people & has a heart of ice, and the legend of the dream catcher, all three Ojibwe legends. We will draw, we will sew puckered moccasins, we will make a dream catcher to hang above our beds to capture any bad dreams that arise from all of the weird, scary, modern halloween images she takes in this time of year. Working from the spider theme of the dream catcher we will work on the 8 times table. I think since we are working on 8 in math our form drawing will reflect this too, although I am not sure what forms we will work on. I am thrilled to have a change, and I know my daughter is too.

easy paper folded doves, for Noah story or not

You need a square of paper. Any size or kind will do. You may not want to get above 9 or 10 inches as it would start to get too floppy.

This week’s lessons: houses

We moved further into our housebuilding block with shelters from the old testament stories. We learned about Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal-Cain, descendants of Cain who made the first dwelling on Earth. This was a nice story, and a very good one that represented the archetypal first house. We used the story from Jakob  Streit’s “And There Was Light” which I purchased through Bob & Nancy’s bookstore. 

My dd put these stories in her old testament book even though they are lessons that are transitioning us into our houses block. She is making great strides in her writing, and illustrating. She is very careful, and makes very few mistakes. This is a huge improvement from the end of last year. Now, I just help her start the story summary, and she writes the body of it herself, in her words, with only a few suggestions from me.

 

I had planned on making, and painting hamsa hands for our own home, and reciting  Jubal’s song of consecration as we hung them up, but as usual we were running behind, and only got as far as tracing the template onto the wood. Hopefully we can make them soon, and if we do I will post it here.

The next old testament dwelling is the story of Noah and the Ark. I told her the story, and we started making animals from beeswax for a scene about the story. This is my incomplete chalkboard drawing. I plan on adding more animals over the weekend. I am not feeling this drawing much. We will finish up the Noah lesson on Monday.

I used “clouds of Glory” by Miriam Chaikin for the Noah story. I like her retellings better than any I have read. They are written in  an accessible way that makes them perfect for children. They are not dark, or dry like so many others, but full of life & color. Most libraries have her books, all of them are wonderful. I bought a copy on Ebay for $5.  

The story of Noah also gave way to a wonderful language lesson. This lesson was born from the notes in Eric Fairman’s Path of Discovery grade 3 book. In the Garden if Eden Adam named the animals & told what they did. With that we learned naming(nouns) & doing(verbs) words. In this lesson we learned color words (adjectives) & how words (adverbs). I began this lesson with a short little story about Noah & his wife Naamah needing to write down and create a record of the animals that made it off of the ark and onto the new earth . They began with the name, then the name & what the animal does, then what it looked like, how it does what it does, and  finally making a complete sentence about the animal by adding the helping word(article) and a period. We did 5 of these. One animal from each of the 5 groups…mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. We kept the theme of each type of word having a specific color so that our words would form rainbows of words when complete. We thought and acted these out together before she wrote and illustrated them on paper.  This exercise helped her to see that with words we breathe life, moods, and color into our writing.

We also worked on form drawing, and knitting a headband. I usually read to her while she knits. This week I read a beautiful book called “A Prayer for the Earth: The Story of Naamah, Noah’s Wife”.   I highly recommend this book if you enjoy picture books. The pictures are done in a soft, but very vibrant watercolor. In the story Naamah is given the task by god to collect and save the seeds of all the plants on earth.

Next week we will continue the houses block, but will transition in dwellings of native peoples.

This weeks lessons:mostly water color painting

When we arrived home Monday after being on vacation for 5 days everyone was wiped out. Tuesday my daughter came down with a 102 fever, and was not up for “school work”.

When she was better on Wednesday we did some catching up in our main lesson book writing out Cain & Abels’ story and drawing illustrations. We also worked on our times tables, and started learning a new word family through our weekly silly sentence, which she copies, illustrates, and puts in her book of word families. We have been gearing up for learning cursive writing by doing running forms. First we begin with a warm up where she draws a lemniscate over & over for a couple of minutes with both her right & left hand, then she draws circles with both hands simultaneously going up & out from the center. After the warm up we begin with the forms. First she draws them in the air, then I let her trace mine on the board, then practice them on scratch paper, and finally put them in her form drawing book. I also have been writing things on the board in cursive to familiarize her with the script. I am not a cursive person, so it is a challenge for me as well to write neatly in cursive.

 

We officially began our block on houses on Friday. We started with a story which told of how the first house on earth was a human. It was a story from Live Ed’s 3rd grade curriculum, so I can not share it here. This lead to a discussion of how our body is the house of our soul, and the earth is the home to all of us. We learned (or I should say we are learning) a beautiful poem by master Waldorf teacher Clifford Monks that perfectly honors the idea. You can find it here http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Clearing%20House/Spring%201977a.pdf it is on page 6 of the PDF file which is all on 3rd grade.

After we recited the poem we did a painting which brought the poem, and story into the visual realm.

This was the first painting session we did with our new batch of 6 paints. Up until now we were only using the 3 circle colors. Now that we are into 3rd grade we will have the option to use 6 colors, prussian blue, ultramarine, vermillion, carmine, golden yellow, and lemon yellow. Theses are our “mother jars”.  I like to use “better than bouillon” for cooking broth, and the jars it comes in are perfect for mother jars. We paint from the smaller jars with the black lids that are in the bottom of the pic.

This is a big deal!! All new feelings & moods can be created with these new additions. Before we did our guided painting about the poem we just experimented & played with the new colors. Here are some my daughter did just for fun.

 A note about stockmar paints: These are concentrated pigments. You have to dilute them. It is best to dilute them into “mother jars”. These jars will not be painted from. Into your mother jars you will empty out the entire bottle of paint.  You will then pour small amounts of your already mixed paints from your mother jars into your little painting jars when it is painting time. Some people like to use baby food jars. Use what you like. Buying fancy jars will not make your paintings better, or worse.  Those little glass mise en place cups work nicely as well, but of course with those you have no lids. When you mix down the paint into your mother jars you should fill the paint bottles with water and shake them to loosen the remaining paint. It is precious gold, and you want every little bit of it to go into your mother jar, however I can not stress this enough… DO NOT OVER DILUTE YOUR PAINTS.  Just like when cooking , you can always add, but you can never take away. The goal is a rich color, not pastels. If you want pastels use a wetter brush, not over diluted paints. You will never be able to get a pure red, or vibrant blue if the paint is too diluted, even if you apply 10 layers. Remember, it dries lighter than it looks when it is wet. When you are done DO NOT POUR YOUR LEFTOVER PAINTS BACK INTO THE MOTHER JARS.  If you do you will possibly taint your entire jar. It only takes a tiny amount to alter the colors in your jars.  If you have paint leftover in your painting cups/jars, cover them, and use them later, but do not mix back into the mother jars. All paint should be refrigerated. If kept cool, it will stay good for months.

This weeks lessons: more apples

We are going to a music festival tomorrow , so this weeks lessons were very short & sweet. Last week we learned how to preserve apples by drying. This week we sauced 1/2 bushel, and learned that canning was another way to preserve the harvest.   I made up an apple running form & we used this for a form drawing lesson.  After she had practiced the form my daughter copied her version into her farming book along with the 3 ways of preserving we learned about.

She really liked the apple running form, and asked me if she could have some time to make up some on her own. This was her idea.

She put the poem we were learning into her poems book. This is what happened to my Eden drawing. I transformed it into a background for the poem.

 

2 stories I told during these lessons were

Why Apples Have Stars Within &

Johnny Appleseed- I really loved this version

Today we prepared for our trip. We like to take most of our food. Being vegetarian can be difficult when traveling, and you can end up “junking out”. My daughter and I made the most delicious energy balls from a recipe we found on Dr. Ben Kim’s blog. I have found his blog wonderful for healthy recipes & articles. These have only 3 ingredients, pecans, dates, & cocoa. I added some spirulina powder to ours. So yummy, healthy, and easy to make.

This years goldenrod dye pot

We have been dying things with goldenrod for a few years. Every year around Michaelmas every field, roadside, and neglected patch of land bursts with brilliant yellow as the goldenrod blooms. Goldenrod is a superb dye stuff. It can give shades of lemon yellow to deep gold, and even olive green with the addition of iron. Last year we dyed golden silk capes.  They have been washed numerous times and are still a brilliant yellow, so it is a very colorfast dye. This year we dyed about 15 yards of cotton muslin, some felted shooting star balls, a white dress that had been lightly stained,  a cotton velour hoodie, and some leggings. Everything turned out beautifully. 

I had 2 pots, one with goldenrod & alum, the other goldenrod, alum, and rusty nails. The nails put iron into the mix, and changed the PH to get the lovely olive green shade. I did a post about how to dye with goldenrod last year.     What I did to get the green is a bit different from what I posted last year. This year I had 2 pots of steeped goldenrod. One pot I put the rusty nails in, the other I left with just goldenrod & water.  I dyed all of my yellow stuff after I added the alum to one pot, and then mixed in the  alum/goldenrod water into the goldenrod/nails water. That is what gave the nice olive green. This will save you alum, which is not really expensive, but it will save you a couple of bucks. Goldenrod can also be dried for later use.

 

 

This weeks lessons:language & apples

This week we began with Adam naming the animals which was turned into a lesson on naming words & doing words (nouns & verbs). This was inspired by Dorothy Herrer”s “An English Manual”. We had been including  the poems about animals that we found in “Wee Sing & Pretend” by Susan Nipp into our circle time, along with the song “Man Gave Names to All the Animals” by Bob Dylan. The entire animals poem can be seen in the book preview on amazon. The link will take you there. I use this book & cd set for many circle time activities.  The Bob Dylan song can be heard on YouTube using the link.  For the lesson I named an anima & wrote it on the board & she acted out what the animal did. I then wrote it’s action on the board. We then talked about the helper words like “A” , “An” and “the”.  She put what we had written on the board in her English book.

 Tuesday kicked off Michaelmas, and we went to the beach with friends to fly kites. I posted about that in the previous post. I told the kids the story of  “Nkosnati & the Dragon”. This one is appropriate for mixed ages. I did change the story to suit the seasons here.

Wednesday we made our dragon bread.  He puffed up so big that I didn’t have a platter to fit him on. We had to cut him up on the bread board. We also collected some wild flowers that were growing by the roadside for our table.

 

We continued with Old Testament legends with Adam & Eve having to make their own way “by the sweat of their brow” on earth. This actually worked out perfect for this week of Michaelmas. In one of the books I am using for stories “Clouds of Glory”, Michael brings Adam & Eve seeds & teaches them how to break apart the ground, remove the stones, and plant the seeds so that they can grow their own garden & feed themselves.  I love  this book for stories.  In this book the author also presents Shekina, gods  earthly presence. Shekina is female. We continued the english lessons with our weekly silly sentence for spelling practice, and an exercise from the Dorothy Herrer book. I wrote several sentences on the board without capitalization or punctuation, and then had my daughter place periods, and capitals  in the right spots. After that she was to underline the naming words in purple & the doing words in red. Before this exercise we talked about 4 things every sentence must have.. A capital letter to begin, punctuation in the end, a naming word & a doing word. I had her put this into her english book along with 2 sentences that contained those 4 things.

 

 

After this we moved onto the stories about Cain & Abel. More really difficult stuff. Honestly, I did not feel good about telling these stories. What is the lesson to be had from it? I have mulled this over & over. Is it that when we do not control our anger, bad things can happen to us & others? Is it that Cain did something horrendous, and is punished severely, but still is given the love & protection of god as he wanders? I really don’t know if this translates to a 8 or 9 year old. I have long been a student of world mythologies, and I can understand what the general understanding of this myth is in academic circles, but what Steiner sees is different.  I can clearly see that this is a story made by a herding people (the Israelites) to denigrate an agrarian culture (the Canaanites) prior to invading them. They are prefered by god over the farmers they are trying to take over, and this myth would have lended some sort of justification of what they perceived to be their rightful destiny. It’s hard for me to present this story knowing what I know about the history & why these stories were really created.It’s hard to keep these truths from her, especially when the questions that arise from the telling just keep coming and coming.  For now I suppose I have to trust the waldorf curriculum as they have been right about just about everything else up to this point.  

Thursday we had our usual swim lessons, and then our weekly homeschool group playdate, and thank goodness because we needed a break. On Friday we took a break form the old testament legends, and took up our farming work again. We did this for 2 reasons. One is we have a bushel of apples that has to be preserved before they spoil, and this needs to be worked into our lessons, and another reason is we are leaving on Wednesday for a vacation. I do not want to start on the sons of Cain, and Noah until we get back. These stories are going to springboard us into our shelters block. I did not want them to be interrupted by or made to be less important because we are trying to prepare for our trip while these lessons are going on.

So, on Friday we worked on apples. I told a brief story about the farming family from our container story, and what they do in fall. We talked about ways to preserve apples. I told my daughter a story we tell every year that she loves called “The Little Red House”. We wrote a summary on the board, and I had her point out the naming words & doing words in the sentences. She put what we wrote on the board in her farming main lesson book.

 We learned one way to preserve apples is by drying them. We peeled & sliced apples and put then on dowel rods to dry.  We strung the rods together & made an old fashioned apple ladder. Monday we are going to continue this and make applesauce. We save all cores & peels & juice them. You get about a cup of juice for every 3 or 4 apples worth of peels & cores. The pulp from the juice we feed to our chickens so that not one bit of our apples are wasted.

 

We also made some white wool balls with stones in the center for weight. We are going to dye them this weekend with the dye bath we made from goldenrod. I will post more on that later.

Picking apples, and Mini German Caramel Apple Pancakes

We went on a field trip  a few hours north to a u-pick apple grove to see how apples were grown and pick a bushel for preserving. The whole picking process was fast. I wish it had been a longer experience, but at least my daughter did get the experience of pulling the apples from the tree with her own hands, apples she will process this week into dried apples, apple sauce, and fruit leather during next week’s lessons. At the orchard a mother pig had just had 5 babies a few days before. Baby pigs are pretty close to the cutest things on earth. You really have to see them in action. CUTE OVERLOAD!!! 

This morning I made everyone mini german apple pancakes from a few of the apples we picked. The recipe is below.