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.

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.

 

 

 

 

Our lessons this week- In the garden

 This week we finished up the 7 days of creation, and wrote the pages for the book we will make from the paintings. On the sixth day we went outside to sculpt some animals that may have been made on the 6th day. My daughter made man & woman, and I made a little green anole lizard. We found several of those little guys outside. My daughter loves to catch them, and then hypnotize them. She can hypnotize just about any small creature. It’s a strange gift.

 

 

  On Monday & Tuesday we worked on learning a little bit about a multiplication square, and drew one in our math book. I was worried this would be too much for her, but she saw the patterns with out me telling her. After a short explanation about what a square number means she noticed on her own that the square numbers run diagonally down the middle of the square. At that moment I was a very proud mama. I’ve always loved numbers & their truthful beauty.  I am trying to instill a love of mathematics in her as well.

  For spelling we have been using a book called “Silly Sentences” by lively lessons. I believe it is out of print. Basically they take word families, and make silly sentences like the one in the pic above. We do a couple of them a week, and try to think of as many other  words as we can that are in the same family. We try to master any words she does not know how to spell, and she write the sentence, and word families in her silly sentence book along with a funny illustration of the sentence.

 On Wednesday we began the story of Eden and the fall. This was hard, and many questions arose from the story that I honestly had a hard time answering. Such as why was  the fruit so bad? Why did they have to leave just because they made a mistake? If they were innocent then they didn’t really understand what they were doing right Mom? Hard stuff…. But she wants to hear more about them, and I guess this is where the 3rd grade journey truly begins. Today we made a new main lesson book to put these stories in. My daughter likes to have very large books so that there is plenty of room to write & draw. I bought a very large pad of heavy watercolor paper to make main lesson book covers with  for about $14 at A.C Moore. They usually have watercolor paper at 40% off. I usually buy the 140lb weight.  She painted a nice cover for it. I like the water color paper as a cover because it is a bit heavier than drawing paper, but not as thick as poster board.

 When it dries we will stitch together the MLB, and she will write Adam & Eves story today before I go onto their life east of Eden.  Tomorrow we will be visiting an apple orchard to learn about growing an orchard and to pick apples to preserve for future eating.

The rainbow snail-a game for math

 We went outside today for our circle time. I always do some kind of math movement in the morning. When we finished up with all of our songs & multiplication rhythms we went over to the driveway and drew a huge rainbow snail on the cement. It has 13 sections. One for the start, and the rest for numbers up to 12. The very center was blank, and was used to turn around in.

  I started this game with a fairly short story about the rainbow snail. I used the enchanted kingdom, gardener and witch from our 2nd grade epic math story of Alister & Amelia, mighty young twins born to a benevolent king & queen.  This snail lived in the garden, and was an enchanted snail, who was at the very least 600 years old. This snail was special. He could communicate with the gardener. He told him what crops were hungry for what nourishment, what plants needed more water, or were being eaten by pests. In this way he helped keep the kingdoms food supply healthy and abundant. He also knew which plants could make a person well if they fell ill, so this was another way he kept the kingdom healthy and at peace. There is a horrible witch, who for various reasons, wants to destroy the good kingdom. She knew this magic snail was needed dearly by the people, so she placed a spell on him so that he would forever be locked in his home.

  The gardener & the twins had to find a way to fix this, so they went to their kingdoms wise woman. She knew instantly what had happened to the rainbow snail, and told the children the only way to unlock the curse was to draw a huge rainbow snail on the ground.  Someone with a pure heart must then hop to the center of the spiral and back, gathering te secret number code as they travelled the spiral. When all of the numbers secret codes were gathered the snail would be set free.

You number the spaces from 1 to 12. We used large cork cubes to make huge dice. My daughter then rolled a dice to see what number she would skip count to. For example if she threw a 5 she would start at one, and skip count to the center, 5-10-15-20-25, ect, and back again 60-55-50-45-40, this would give her the “secret code”    This was a fun way to reinforce the times tables. Expect this to take at the very least an hour. It takes a while just to color the snail. This is what ours looked like. It was impossible to get a picture because of the size, and our driveway is so shady.

Fish & Birds on the 5th day

We finished up our week with the 5th day of creation. We heard the story, had a discussion about fish and how they use their swim bladder to go up & down, and then did 2 paintings. One was of the sea, and the other the sky. I made a little poem to go with the 5th day. I think I will have my daughter help make other rhymes for the other days, and we will put them in our book when we finish.

In the watery depths of the deep blue sea

a  shimmering rainbow of fish came to be

from the soft, green earth to the pale blue sky

creatures of wings, and feathers did fly

from great flightless birds to tiny crustaceans

all came to be on the 5th day of creation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  After our lesson was over we headed out for a field trip to our local aquarium to look at the creatures from the sea. These fish are from the Indo-Pacific region, and are mostly venomous, using razor-like barbs on their dorsal fins & tails to sting when they are threatened.

On the wall at the entrance, a quote by Goethe was displayed.

I managed to catch a spectacular shot of my favorite fish, the 9 year old Azure fish. This fish is somewhat elusive, and sassy, but  full of fun.

Jelly fish always look neat. They have no brains. They just go with the flow. The movements they make are caused by electrical pulses. They have  a very primitive nervous sytem.

I don’t know what these guys are called, but they like to travel in a school.

 

Besides the aquarium we did celebrate Rosh Hashana by making circular challah, and eating honeyed apples.

This morning we took some left over bread from last night’s dinner, and cast bits of it into the river. This casting away is called Tashlikh, and is meant  to symbolize the washing away of any misdeeds, mistakes, or unkind words from the old year.  I thought we should focus more on the future year rather than the past, and cast away any negative things, but also wish for things we would like to improve  apon this year. I focused on patience. I need more of it.

I will be back with a post on the book we create from the paintings of our  lessons on the Hebrew 7 days of creation.

Fox fairies, tangrams, and drawing: a summer math lesson

 

It’s been a while since I posted anything on this blog. I promise it’s not an “abandoned blog”. I plan on posting lots of stuff when the new school year picks up in fall.  We have been enjoying a summer of activity. Swim lessons, the library, the state park, picking fruits & vegtables & preserving them, going to the theater, and the beach. We just haven’t done much  that would be worth putting on this blog.

Today we did a fun tangram math lesson. Tangrams are a chinese puzzle game made from a square broken into 7 pieces which can be arranged in endless ways to create pictures.  I thought I would share our lesson which is based on a book by Ann Tompert called “Grandfather Tang’s Story. The book begins with a grandfather & his grandchild taking a walk & resting under a tree. The grandfather pulls a tangram set from his pocket & begins to tell the little girl a story with them. This ties in wonderfully with  waldorf based

Summer dragonfly craft & story

I found this cute & simple tutorial for a dragonfly mobile using clothespins. They use stiffened fabric for the wings, but some nice paper would work as well. Maybe leftover watercolor paintings?  When I saw this it reminded me of a beautiful story about how the dragonfly came to be. In the story many creatures were complaining to the creator about a feature they did not like. The creature took these features away, and from them crafted the dragonfly.  You can find the story below.

 

NOT QUITE RIGHT — a Rumanian folktale

Back in the beginning when the world was still new and smelled fresh, the Creator was taking a well-deserved rest. He leaned back under a tall tree and noticed that everything he saw was beautiful. He was pleased with his work.

But back then, even as now, there were some individuals who were never happy with how they looked. The Creator had closed his eyes to catch a quick nap but he could feel someone staring at him. You know what it’s like when that happens. You feel the tickle of a gaze that will not go away. He opened his eyes to see a green frog which had hopped out of the water to land by his foot.

Baking bread: cheesy snails, and some books

cheesy snails

I recently bought “Baking Bread With Children” by Warren Lee Cohen. I can’t say enough good things about it. It’s full of songs, stories, verses, recipes, and ideas. It has sections on why bread baking is important, how to integrate bread baking into a curriculum, and even how to make an earth oven.  This is a must have book for ny one who is integrating Waldorf ideas into their homeschool. This is not just for early childhood. We will be using it a lot, and my daughter will be starting 3rd grade in the fall.

The first thing we made were the cheesy snails. They are made pretty much like sticky buns, so that they have a spiral shape. I can’t give the recipe since it is in the book, but It is basically a basic dough with tomato sauce used in place of the water. The tomato sauce gives the dough a bright orange color. The dough is rolled into a rectangle, sprinkled with cheddar,rolled into a tube, then cut into 1 inch slices, and then baked. These were delicious, and we had so much fun kneading the orange dough.  

                                                                                                                               

 

 I have also been reading “Encountering Self: Transformation & destiny in the ninth year“. It deals with the nine year change. In the book the author relates the act of baking bread to process which the grain goes through in the earth. In both all 4 elements come together to create the whole. It was in idea I had not ever read before, and I was struck by the truth of it. In the grain we have the sun-fire, soil-earth, wind-air, & rain-water. In the bread we have the same. The oven-fire, the grain comes from the earth, the yeast makes gas (air) which make the loaf rise, and have those delicious bubbles, and nooks inside, and of course water. I had always baked bread with my daughter. It was always fun, and something we looked forward to. I had not really had a full understanding of how truly sacred it is. I do recommend both of the books I mentioned in this post. You won’t be sorry you bought them.  I have a couple of snail stories, and verses posted on this blog. You can find them in the snail category on the right.

It hasn’t any windows
It hasn’t any doors
Although it has a ceiling
It hasn’t any floors
‘Twas built without a builder
A hammer or a nail
Because you see this funny house
Belongs to ___________.

Our lessons: Honey bees

We did a very fun lesson block about bees. This was an interdisciplinary lesson. Included was math, language, nature study, art, form drawing, painting, cooking,and others. The lessons were based around The Story Of Hildy Honeybee, an original story I wrote for the lessons. It is a 4 part story which tells of the life stages of a honey bee from a tiny egg to adult. I did a huge amount of reading on the subject so that I would have a thorough understanding of the facts, and it was good that I did because the questions were many. I have included links to many of the pages I gleaned the information from. This block took almost 3 weeks for us. I used the standard Waldorf 3 day rhythm: Day 1 Story, day 2 artistic realm, then on the 3rd day academic realm. We learned a few new bee verses, and a couple of funny bee riddles ( youcan find them in the info links). We had a honey tasting. You can really taste the difference between the different flowers. We  made a no bake cookie called Honey Crispies, a type of rice crispy snack. Both of these activities were met with great enthusiasm. We worked on the number 6 all throughout this unit since the comb is hexagonal, and the bee has six legs. We skip counted, and tossed the ball to the 6 times table. In form drawing we drew freehand hexagons, six sided stars, and a form that mimics the bee’s waggle dance that we learned about in part 4 (see pic below).  Our spelling words came from our lessons. We do a spelling list each week. Our words were

Bees: links to info for lessons

• Uses for beeswax http://www.texasdrone.com/Beeswax-Uses.htm#copper
• genereal info with math problems http://extension.usu.edu/AITC/teachers/pdf/fieldguide1/bees.pdf
• good, simple general info http://kindernature.storycounty.com/display.aspx?DocID=2005418942
• general info http://www.beeman.ca/id19.html
• general info http://www.main.org/cahbs/hive.htm
• crossword for older kids http://www.ncbeekeepers.org/bees.pdf
• bee riddles http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/insects/ahb/act30.html
• songs & poems http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/songspoems53.html
• The Rose Elf, a story by Andersen http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=rhead&book=andersen&story=rose
• waggle dance info http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/entomology/apiculture/PDF%20files/1.11.pdf