The Hare in the Moon: a jataka tale

 This was our main story for the moon lessons unit. It is an animal fable from the well known Jataka Tales of India.

Many strange things happened long ago, and one of them was that a hare, a monkey, and a fox agreed to live together. They talked about their plan a long time. Then the hare said, “I promise to help the monkey and the fox.” The monkey declared, “I promise to help the fox and the hare.” The fox said, “I promise to help the hare and the monkey.” They shook hands, or rather shook paws. There was something else to which they agreed, and that was that they would kill no living creature.
 

Rabbit & the sky box: a story, form drawing, & handwork

The Rabbit &  the Sky Box is a short legend from South Asia that I used as a bridge into form drawing & handwork.  It explains the phases of the moon. It goes something like this……

 Up in the shimmering sky there is box. Inside the box lives a silvery white rabbit. Rabbit slowly opens the lid, and as he opens it a sliver of light escapes. He opens a bit more, and that sliver of light gets bigger. He opens it a bit more & it gets bigger still. Until he opens it all the way, and hops out. The light is the full, round moon. He grazes a bit on the field of  glittery flowers in the sky, and then hops back in, and slowly closes the lid of the box.

You can easily elaborate on it & make the story longer. We decided upon a ribbon motif for the box, and practiced it on the chalkboard. First straight lines, then curves, then a combo of the 2, and finally a mirror of our final running form.

 

 We then took the ribbon motif & painted it on a round paper mache’ box which we had painted a deep blue. We made a white rabbit to go inside.  A pom pom rabbit would be nice for little hands to make, or a knitted one from a single square  would be nice too.  Here are some pics.

 

 

This week in lessons: the sun, and rabbits

My daughter has been asking tons of questions about the universe. She asks about the sun, moon, & other planets almost constantly. I decided we would learn a little bit about them in a 3 week block, and satisfy her curiosity. I know astronomy is not usually taught until later grades, but I felt since she was so receptive to learning about it,then I could not let an opportunity to teach a fully engaged child. That’s the nice thing about homeschooling. You can make it fit just for you.In keeping with the Waldorf 2nd grade ideals I am using animal legends to open the door to teaching about the sun,moon & stars. Since it is so close to spring, and rabbits are the consummate spring icon, I used the story “How Rabbit Saves the Sun”. I changed it a bit so that I could use the story as a basis for a painting lesson, and form drawing lesson. I am going to start posting stories, verses, and recipes separately to make the blog flow a bit more smoothly.  You will just have to click on them to be directed towards them if you would like to view.

I love how Waldorf methods integrate almost all subjects together. To me this synthesis makes it so much easier to teach. Instead of “lets put this away, and start that”, our day just flows together organically. In our circle time this week we started a new movement verse. I originally found it in “Looking Forward”, a wonderful movement & music book. It is called “Sally go round the Sun”. It is an old folk tune. It sounds very similar to “Here We Go LoobyLoo”. I changed it to go along with our story/lesson this week. Instead of Sally go round the sun, I substituted “rabbit”. Then I encouraged my daughter to choose other animals & act out what the animal would do, or how they would move. We also said her name, and my name along with the animals.  We sang the song, and did the movements in a circle around a yellow playsilk which was puddled in the middle of the floor to represent the sun. We changed the day of the week in the song to whatever day it was. I think this really helps in learning the order of the days of the week.

Rabbit go round the sun
Rabbit go round the Moon
Rabbit go round the chimney pot
on a Monday afternoon.
Whoopie!!! (hands meet over pot, and then fly into the air on “whoopie”)

then…

Horse…
rooster…
cat…
mommy….
elephant…..

Until you’ve had enough.

For sculpting this week we cooked some home made air dry clay.
It is a bit like salt dough, but it does not use as much salt. I think the salt dough makes your hands feel too dry, and to me that is really unpleasant.  This recipe made enough for me & her to make a sun, and we has a fist sized bit left over. We let ours airy dry for a few days, and then painted them with acrylics. I am going to put a topcoat of varnish on them to make them shine & preserve the finish. My daughters sun is tired. She said he was tired of burning so brightly, and wanted to rest. That is why he is frowning.

 

 

  

Our painting lesson involved our “Rabbit Saves the Sun” story.
This is my daughters painting.  We started our lesson with the sunlight painting verse, and then began the painting with a fiery red dot in the middle of the page. We circled out and made it bigger, and bigger. Then yellow came in from all four corners, and tried to get  as close to the red as possible. I think this helps to learn how to control the brush as well as the paint. As soon as yellow was as close as it could get we circle the yellow around the red, and then allowed them to meet.Then we painted rays extending out from the center like a sun..
We took a bit more red & made the center of the sun just a bit more hot.

You could just start with covering the whole page with yellow, and go from there if your child is younger.

We made sure to leave a part just yellow so there would be a nice yellow spot to put our rabbit. After our brushed were good & clean we too a bit of blue & made an oval at the bottom corner (this was his body)and a smaller oval on top of it ( the head). Lastly 2 small blue wisps created the ears. This made a cute, fuzzy, green rabbit. Green for spring, and green is a bit sneaky just like rabbit when he snuck in a stole the sun from the imps.

 

 

I always like to give some free painting time too to let her express herself. She made a little story for me to follow along to also. She said this is all of the children on a playground circling round playing a game. In the end, blue was a bully, so red came and made him be nice, which turned him into that soft lavender you see on the outermost part of the circles.

Our form drawing came from the part of the story when Rabbit kicked the sun into the sky, and it grew bigger, and bigger, and bigger. The second for we did was a mirrored form of the first when the animal council saw the sun & it’s reflection in the lake. It is rally like drawing an ever increasing figure eight or lemniscate. Steady in one fluid motion, always coming back & touching that center point.

  I always have a batch of 10 to 15 spelling words that come out of a lesson. This week they were….

Sun

Solar

Moon

Lunar

Star

Stellar

Constellation

Revolve

Revolution

Rotate

Rotation

orbit

The science comes in the form of discussion, movement, and observation. We talked about how the sun is a star. The closest star to us, and it is 150 kilometers away. We talked about how hot it musty be to warm our earth so gently, and pefectly from so far away.  We talkedabout how seasons are made by the earth revolving around the sun, and the earth rotating on it’s axis. We did 2 experiments to show this. First she was the sun, and I revolved around her while spinning. Then we traded places, with me being the center of the  universe. Then we did a similar experiment with a globe & a shadeless lamp. With this experiment you can clearly see why we have seasons.

We also went outside & traced our shadow onto brown craft paper. We did this  in the same spot at 9am, 12pm, & 3pm. That was a fun experiment. I let her color the tracings. Sorry, no pics.

I made up a poem about the solar system to teach the simple facts we were learning.

We also read the book “Sun Bread”, and then made sun bread. This is a really beautiful & fun book. I highly recommend it. It even has a nice bread recipe on the back, but I tend to use my basic no fail recipe for bread.

We continued the sun as a theme for a week. The next week we will focus on the moon.

Story: How Rabbit Saves the Sun

Rabbit Saves the Sun
Once upon a time, mischeivious, little imps stole the Sun from the world. And in the dark that followed all the birds and beasts stumbled about seeking their food by touch. It was totally dark.

Soon the birds and the beasts decided to call a grand meeting next to the large lake where they all lived; Representatives were sent to the meeting from every species of animal and bird.

The old raven whom all considered wise spoke up: “My friends, how much longer must we dwell in darkness? I have heard that close to our land, in a great cavern, live the imps who have stolen the Sun. They keep it in a white stone pot. If we steal back the Sun from them we can light up our world again. So I, old raven, advise you to send the biggest and strongest among you, the big brown bear, to fetch the Sun.”

“The bear, the bear!” chanted all the animals.

At that moment, the ancient, half-deaf owl was busy cleaning her feathers and noticed all the commotion. She asked the little rabbit nearby for news, she was told that the bear was to be sent to fetch the Sun.

“Oh, no, no, no!” cried the owl. “That won’t do at all. No sooner will he come upon some scrap of food than he’ll forget all about his mission. And we’ll never get the Sun back.”

With that they all had to agree: “True enough, the bear will find some scrap of food and forget about everything else.”

The raven spoke again: “Then let’s send the wolf; after the bear he is the strongest and he is much faster.”

“Eh, what’s that they’re saying?” the owl asked the rabbit.

“They’ve decided on the wolf,” replied the rabbit. “He is the strongest and swiftest of us all after the bear.”

“Fiddlesticks!” snapped the owl. “That wolf is greedy and will stop at the first deer he sees and gobble it up; and he’ll forget all about the Sun.”

Hearing the owl’s words, the animals had to agree. “Quite true, quite true,” they said. “That wolf is greedy and when he sees a deer he will stop to kill it, and forget about the Sun. But whom shall we send for the sun?”

Just then a tiny mouse raised her squeaky voice: “We should send the rabbit; he’s the best runner amongst us; he’ll fetch the Sun back for us.”

Once more the birds and beasts cried out: “The rabbit, the rabbit, the rabbit!”

And for the third time the deaf old owl asked the rabbit what they were saying. Back came the answer: “They want to send me to fetch the Sun. They say I am  the best runner and I may be able to get the sun back.”

The owl thought for a bit, then said: “Yes, You may indeed steal back the Sun. You hop well and skip well, and are not selfish. Nobody will be able to catch you.”

So the rabbitwas chosen. Without more ado, he went on his way guided by the raven. He hopped and skipped for many days across the land until at last he spied a shaft of light far ahead.

As he came closer he saw that rays of light were coming from under the earth through a narrow crack. When he put his eye to the crack he was able to make out a ball of fire lying in a great white stone pot, its rays lighting up a vast underground cavern.

“That must be the Sun,” thought the rabbit. “And over there must be the imps, lying on those soft carpets in the corner. “

The brave little rabbit squeezed through the crack, let himself down on to the floor of the cavern and hopped over to where the ball of fire lay. Then he snatched it up from the stone pot, banged the ground hard with his hind legs and sprang up through the crack.

At once the mischievous imps jumped up, and out of the crack in pursuit of the hare.

The little rabbit ran as fast as his legs would carry him. It was not long before the imps were on his heels. Just as they were about to grab him, he gave the ball of fire a hard kick with his hind legs, breaking it in two: one part small, the other big. With a second kick, he sent the smaller part flying high into the air until it reached the heavens.

And there it became the Moon.

He then kicked the big part even higher so that it soared into another region of the sky. It started as a small flaming ball, but as it went higher it grew bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and became the Sun.

How bright it then became on earth.

The imps were blinded by the light and scampered back underground, never to appear on earth again. And all the birds and the beasts  could see the beautiful light of the sun reflecting on the lake where they were all waiting. They all chanted rabbit’s name in praise, “rabbit, rabbit, rabbit!!!!”.  And that is how rabbit saved the sun.