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.

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.

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

Sunday inspiration: Out of the Color

Ted Mahle is a waldorf art teacher. He teaches classes around the country.

His website has a gallery full of inspiration.  He has wet painting, veil painting, chalkboard drawings, pencil drawings, and other forms of art for you to view in the different galleries on the website. There are hundreds of  inspirational works of art on the website. http://www.outofthecolor.com/gallery.html

 

 

 

 

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

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.

Homemade, air dry modeling clay recipe

2cups water

2 cups flour

4 tsp. cream of tartar

1/2 cup salt

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

 

1.Mix together in a medium-sized pot.

2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly.

3. The dough will eventually become hard, Stir the mixture till it starts to stick to the spoon.

4. At this point, dump the dough onto wax paper and allow it to cool (about fifteen minutes).

5. Knead the dough until it is smooth.

This will air dry. You can speed up the process by baking in a 200 degree oven for 30 minutes to an hour.

Valentine craft: tissue paper heart windows

 

I was very inspired by the book “Rose Windows & How to Make Them”, but the projects are too complicated for my daughter just yet. We made a very simplified version of the rose window. It probably took an hour altogether. We colored cardstock with block crayons (2 pieces per window) then cut 2 cardstock circles to make the frame. We then took a square of tissue paper a bit larger than our circle, and brushed a little glue over it. We then applied the tissue hearts we had cut out earlier, and let it dry. Once it was dry we put glue on the circle frames & matched them up with tissue picture in between the 2 frame circles. We took the leftover cardstock that was colored and made small heart shaped windows to hang from the bottom of the circle. We used a hole punch to make a hole at the top, and threaded through a string for hanging in front of the window where the light could shine through & illuminate the hearts. 

  jjj