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.

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.

 

 

 

 

This week in lessons

We officially started our 3rd grade lessons on September 1st. We started with a math review. We did math stories, and movement in order to help solidify our knowledge of the multiplication tables.  My daughter began a multiplication main lesson book. This week we began our first complete week with farming. I introduced the lesson with a story I made up about a family who live on and operate an organic farm. I used Mellissa Neilsens idea of using a container story for your lessons. The family is of mixed heritage with the father being Jewish, and the mother Cherokee. The lessons we do on farming will be about the family and the work they do on their farm throughout the year. The old testament stories will be told by the jewish grandma when she visits, and the native american stories which we will use for weaving, pottery & houses, will come from the mother. Here is the blackboard drawing I did of the family farmhouse for the first lesson.

The next part of their story was about the work they had to do in the late summer/early fall. They have to cut & bring in the hay & straw to feed the animals in winter. The wheat should be nearly ready. They have to plant some root crops & winter greens for their market garden. We also talked about chickens & my daughter sculpted some from beeswax. I added the father & the oldest son loading hay into the cart to the blackboard drawing, and she put these lessons into her farming main lesson book.

 Each moring we started our day with circle time. An opening verse, and some singing & movement. We worked on one multiplication table each day through hand clapping, stepping, jumping, and rhymes. My daughter then worked out the table on her multiplication board, and then put the tables shape into the book along with the actual table & an illustration that represents the number.

 This week we included several of the activities of farming family did into our own life. We prepared a raised bed for planting turnips for our fall turnip lanterns. Turnips are fast growers, only taking 50 days. Hopefully ours will be ready in time. If not we will buy some locally, and eat ours.  We harvested a bushel of  field peas, and dug up peanuts at my Dad’s house.  The field peas were much harder to shell than they were to pick, but they are beautiful, nutritious, and easy to dry & store to use in winter.

 

 

 On Friday our farm family prepared for their jewish grandmother’s visit. When their grandmas arrived they baked challah for Friday’s Shabbat dinner. She told the children a story from her sacred book. This was the opener to the old testament stories. I told my daughter the story of how lucifer and his angels were cast out of heaven in preparation for starting the story of the days of creation next week. I used the version in Jakob Streit’s book “And There Was Light”.  This story came exactly when it was needed. Last week my daughter started being sarcastic, and back talking us. It seemed as though she thought she was our equal. In the story, Lucifer thought his garment was a bright as God Father’s, and that he could be a god too, just like God Father. He got together a band of lesser angels who forged him a throne, and he became their little god. God Father offered him a chance to see the error of his ways, but he did not want to change, and was cast out of the heavens by Michael into the cold depths below. When I told her this story, I could see on her face that she “got it”.  I haven’t had any back talk today. We will see if it sticks. We also made some challah for what was our very first Shabbat we will celebrate in 3rd grade. I used this recipe. I did add an extra egg, and another 1/2 cup sugar, but it was still not very sweet. It was excellent, probably the best bread I had ever made, and my daughter loved rolling out the dough snakes, and braiding them into the loaf. We made 2 loaves. I will use the leftovers to make a bread pudding.  

This morning we went to our little local farmers market in downtown Conway. We were able to pick up some wonderful locally grown produce. My daughter was attracted to a table that has baskets of huge, red, shiny apples. Next to them was a nice lady who had some equally large, but kind of ugly apples. I took my daughter over to talk to her. Her apples were organic, and grown only a few miles form our house. They did not have the pesticides, and fungicides that the beautiful apples grown who knows where) did. We bought the ugly apples. They were unbelievably good. This lead to a discussion of what sustainability means. It was also a good lesson in that not every thing is what it seems on the outside. We also were able to buy some locally grown, and processed peanut butter, locally grown & milled corn meal, and some aromatic rice that was grown only 60 miles away. South Carolina is one of the few places in North America where rice can be grown successfully. Rice plantations are enjoying a huge resurgence here. I couldn’t ne happier about that. A rice field is a thing of beauty.

We went home and had some left over challah with our local peanut butter. It was heaven.

We had a very fruitful week in lessons. I will be back soon with pictures of main lesson books.

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

Honey for health & beauty

Scientists there have found that honey kills a wide range of bacteria when applied directly to the skin and so helps prevent infection. Part of honey’s antibacterial activity can be explained by what’s known as an “osmotic” or “water-withdrawing” effect. Honey has very little water – that’s what makes it thick and gooey – whereas bacteria are made mostly of water. So when certain kinds of bacteria come into contact with honey, the honey basically sucks the water out of the bacteria like a sponge, and the bacteria die. And even though honey tastes sweet, it’s actually quite acidic – and certain bacteria can’t grow in an acidic environment. Finally, honey contains hydrogen peroxide, a known antiseptic.

For a sore throat:
If you have a minor sore throat or cough, try a home remedy containing honey instead of over-the-counter medication. Simply boil a whole lemon, and after the lemon has cooled, squeeze the juice into a container. Blend in one cup of honey, and every four hours take two tablespoons. Your throat will be coated and soothed, and a cough caused by minor irritation should be alleviated.

Sinus and Stomach Problems:

Do you have minor stomach or sinus problems? Try honey and vinegar. Before you turn up your nose at this combination, it really isn’t bad when mixed with ice-cold apple juice. Simply mix a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar with a tablespoon of honey, and mix it with one cup of ice-cold apple juice. This concoction tastes like delicious apple cider, and it will help alleviate minor sinus and stomach ailments

For boo-boos:

Honey contains an antimicrobial, and after a minor wound has been properly cleaned, a little honey can help prevent infection. Simply spread a thin layer of honey over a light abrasion or minor cut. Honey aides in healing, and this natural medication provided by nature helps keep wounds free from bacteria.

 Afternoon Fatigue:

At 3:00pm (or when the body is feeling fatigued), drink 1/2 Tablespoon of honey in a glass of water and sprinkled with cinnamon powder. Energy will increase within one week if taken daily.

* Anxiety and Nervous Tension:

 Honey is said to calm a nervous, high strung person. It can also help you sleep at night. For insomnia, take 1 Tablespoon of honey at dinner. If that doesn’t work, try mixing 3 Tablespoons of Apple Cider Vinegar to 1 cup of honey in a jar. Take 2 teaspoons before bed. If you don’t fall asleep within the hour, take 2 teaspoons more. An old ayuverdic remedy has men taking the same dosage (2 Tablespoons of honey) before bed to treat impotence.

* Honey for pain relief:

Mix 3 Tbls. of honey in boiled water and drink. Honey has natural pain-relieving powers.

* Longevity Tea:

 Boil 3 cups of water with 4 teaspoons of honey and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder. Drink 1/4 cup, 3 or 4 times a day. Said to give steady energy and keep the skin soft!

* Honey Relieves Coughs:

Here’s a recipe from the book, Folk Medicine, by DC Jarvis: boil a whole lemon slowly for 10 minutes. Cut the lemon in 2 and extract the juice. Add juice to a 4 oz glass. Then add 2 Tablespoons of glycerine and fill the remaining glass with honey. Dosage: 1 teaspoon during the day. Stir with spoon before taking. If you have a night-time cough, take 1 teaspoon right before retiring and then another one during the night. If your cough is severe, take concoction every 4 hours starting with when you wake up. As the cough gets better, you take less and less.

* Honey for Burns:

 Apply to burn, cover with a soft bandage.

* Honey for Asthma:

Right before going to bed, take a mixture of 1 tsp. honey with 1/2 tsp. cinnamon.

* Honey for Hang-overs:

Eat honey on bread or crackers. The fructose in the honey helps to flush out the alcohol in your system.
HONEY OR HONEYCOMB FOR ALLERGIES

Honeycomb is an old Vermont remedy for allergies. When honeycomb is chewed regularly during allergy season, it completely alleviates allergies.

Recipe: Chew a piece of honeycomb as long as possible as though it were a piece of gum. Within 30 minutes of chewing honeycomb, symptoms like a stuffy nose and headache disappear. Start chewing honeycomb a week or two before allergy season starts and you may not get any allergies. The honeycomb should be from a local bee farm so your best luck in finding a local variety is probably at your farmer’s market. If you can’t find honeycomb, try combed honey. Plain honey apparently works as well: dosage is 2 TBLS at each meal, three times a day.
SKIN CARE

Honey has been used for 2,000 years as an antiseptic dressing for minor wounds. Because honey contains potassium, bacteria cannot survive in it. Potassium withdraws moisture, which is essential to bacteria’s survival. Honey also promotes healing and prevents scarring.

Studies have shown raw honey to have significant antioxidant properties. It is also an anti-irritant. As such, it is often one of the ingredients in sunscreen, since the chemicals in sunscreen can cause skin eruptions. Honey is a humectant (it attracts and retains moisture) and is often used in soaps, cleansers and lotions. Due to honey’s anti-bacterial nature, it can cleanse the skin’s surface as well as temporarily tighten the outer skin layers. Honey acts as both cleanser and toner.
HONEY RECIPES:

Honey Facial Moisturizer: 2 Tablespoons of honey 2 Teaspoons of Milk. Apply to face and leave on for 10 minutes. Rinse with warm water.

Summertime Honey Mask: When the humidity and/or filthy city air is producing breakouts and oily or gritty skin, a honey mask is a great solution! The recipe is as easy as they get! Simply spread a thin layer of honey over your face for about 15 minutes. Rinse with warm water.

Honey Scrub for the Body: mix 1/2 cup of raw honey with 1/2 cup sugar or salt. Step into the shower (sans water, of course) and scrub mixture into the skin. Then shower off.

Honey Scrub for the Face: 1 Tablespoon of honey mixed with 2 Tablespoons of finely ground almonds and half a teaspoon of lemon juice. Rub gently into the skin and rinse with warm water.

Skin Infections: Applying honey and cinnamon powder in equal parts to the affected parts cures eczema, ringworm and all types of skin infections.

 

HAIR TREATMENTS

Hair Conditioner: Mix 2 Tablespoons of honey with 1/2 of a fresh avocado and 1 Teaspoon of coconut oil. Massage into hair and leave on for half an hour. Works beautifully for dry and damaged hair.

Hair Loss: To the scalp, apply a paste of hot olive oil, one Tablespoon of honey and one Teaspoon of cinnamon (powder). Keep on for approx. 15 min. and then wash the hair.

Fairytail Tea & Luncheon

It has been dreary & rainy here for days & days. We really needed something fun & whimsical. I had just bought a set of lovely tea cups with strainers & lids at world market intending to just use them as our regular tea time/story time cups. They have the prettiest little berry patterns on them. They were the inspiration for our fridayday afternoon Fairytail Tea Party & Luncheon.

 

We came up with a fun menu that was easy enough to prepare for a lunch. My daughter drew a fancy menu while I began to prepare the lunch.

 

 Our menu:

• the 7 dwarf’s 7 fruit salad
• mama billy goat’s goat cheese toasts w/ your choice of cucumber or pepper relish
• stone soup
• Fox’s sour grape jelly doughnut cupcakes
• sparkling grape juice
• tea

Everything was very tasty. We both loved the jelly doughnut cupcakes

here are links to the recipes for those. One is vegan & one has eggs, milk, ect.I made the vegan ones, but I used rice milk instead of soy. When possible I do bake vegan things. They are lower in fat & have no cholesterol than comparable egg/milk/butter recipes. It also reduces exposure to hormones & toxins that occur in animal foods.  When these were done cooling I noticed mine had holes where the jelly was. I just spooned a little extra jelly into them & then dusted them with sugar. My daughter told me that we should have called them Mother Holle’s Snow Capped Jelly Doughnut Cupcakes”. I have to agree.  I wish I  had thought about that before we made the menu. Children are brilliant, all of them. We made our own sparkling grape juice with organic grape juice, and club soda. She helped make the soup while I told her the story of  “Stone Soup”. You can find that in the link above, or in many places on the web.  My daughter doesn’t usually like soup much, but she had 2 bowls of it. It’s rare for her to want seconds. It was so much fun.

 

 She made us both paper crowns to wear. My daugter told me no proper tea time is complete without a hat or crown.

 When luch was over we had a strawberry & honey facial. She told me that was ” a dream come true”.

She LOVED it! All it consists of is a few strawberries mades with a tablespoon of honey. Edible, and good for your skin. Commercial facial products are really to harsh for a little girls skin, but strawberries are perfect. You just rub it on your skin & was off with a bit of warm water ( or a shower if you have a daughter like mine).

Swedish cherry half moon cookies

We made some very yummy cookies to go along with our moon week lessons. They are swedish cherry half moon cookies. The recipe is at the end if this post. We followed the recipe, but an easy cheater version could be made by using a pre-made pie crust dough. They make some really good natural, whole wheat pie crust now.

 

 

 

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.

A Child’s Seasonal Treasury: excellent book

 

Betty Jones was/is? a waldorf kindergarden teacher. She wrote one terrific book. I have used this book for years. IT has seasonal games, verses, handwork ideas & songs. It also covers basic verses to use with numbers, painting, drawing, cleaning up, ect. I just discovered that it can be seen for free in its complete form on google reader. Here is the link. It served me well over the years & still does. I encourage you to have a look at it. It is a really good one to buy & keep on your bookshelf. You will find yourself going back to it again & again.