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.

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

The Story of HIldy Honeybee part 1

I’m going to tell you a  story about a very hard working girl named Hildy. Hildy came from a large family.

Our Lessons this week: stars & dandelions

I had so many cool things planned for a week of stars, but some personal business really got in the way. I did however manage to get in one nice story that tied in the sun, moon, and stars while opening the door to spring with the inclusion of dandelions. I do love those glorious yellow weeds!! Our rabbit Ms. Bun loves them too!! 

  

 My daughter learned this poem when she was 5. It was her favorite, but her bigger girl self had forgotten what she had learned, and loved so very much when she was smaller. She re-learned it & put it in her book of poems, and songs. My illustration ties it into The Star Children story. If we can we will paint about the story later in the week.

She loves it just as much now as when she was 5, and took a great deal of joy in blowing the white puffy seeds froms the stems. They are really every where right now. I think they are truly the Ambassadors of Spring.

O DANDELION

O Dandelion, yellow as gold, what do you do all day?
“I just wait here in the tall, green grass, ’till the children come to play.”

O Dandelion, yellow as gold, what do you do all night?
“I wait and wait, while the cool dew falls, and my hair grows long and white.”

And what do you do when your hair grows white, and the children come to play?
“They take me in their dimpled hands, and blow my hair away!”

   Lastly, I shared with her information I learned from this article that I found through the Waldorf Online Library. It  was about how you can never really pick a dandelion.  It is a really beautiful article that is worth taking a moment to read. I hope all of you are having a wonderful time watching this spring unfold!

The Man in the Moon: a poem

The Man In The Moon
Author Unknown

The Man in the Moon as he sails the sky
Is a very remarkable skipper,
But he made a mistake when he tried to take
A drink of milk from the Dipper.
He dipped right out of the Milky Way,
And slowly and carefully filled it,
The Big Bear growled, and the Little Bear howled
And frightened him so that he spilled it!

watercolor painting the phases of the moon

We painted the phases of the moon with blue water colors. I cut 8 x 12 watercolor paper in half & rounded the edges. We both began painting at the new moon & painted up to the full moon. We coombined our paintings to get a total circular lunar cycle. The entire thing would have been too long of a process for her to do on her own. I mounted them on construction paper and we hung them up in a circular fashion on the wall.

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.
 

Our lessons: the phases of the moon

Along with the 2 stories, form drawing, painting,  and handwork we did, we also learned  about the phases of the moon. I drew them on the board & she put them in her lesson book along with the rhyme we learned to help  remember if the moon is waxing or waning. 

  Lady Moon, if your horns point to the east, your size will increase.

If your horns point to the west, Lady Moon take your rest.

 

 

    We also started a moon phase journal that we made from black construction paper. We are looking at  the moon every night at about the same time, and entering what we see in the journal. I had my daughter put some simple moon facts on the first pages of the journal. This project strengthens her observation abilities, and  also helps to learn how to write the date properly.

 

 

 

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.