This weeks lessons:language & apples

This week we began with Adam naming the animals which was turned into a lesson on naming words & doing words (nouns & verbs). This was inspired by Dorothy Herrer”s “An English Manual”. We had been including  the poems about animals that we found in “Wee Sing & Pretend” by Susan Nipp into our circle time, along with the song “Man Gave Names to All the Animals” by Bob Dylan. The entire animals poem can be seen in the book preview on amazon. The link will take you there. I use this book & cd set for many circle time activities.  The Bob Dylan song can be heard on YouTube using the link.  For the lesson I named an anima & wrote it on the board & she acted out what the animal did. I then wrote it’s action on the board. We then talked about the helper words like “A” , “An” and “the”.  She put what we had written on the board in her English book.

 Tuesday kicked off Michaelmas, and we went to the beach with friends to fly kites. I posted about that in the previous post. I told the kids the story of  “Nkosnati & the Dragon”. This one is appropriate for mixed ages. I did change the story to suit the seasons here.

Wednesday we made our dragon bread.  He puffed up so big that I didn’t have a platter to fit him on. We had to cut him up on the bread board. We also collected some wild flowers that were growing by the roadside for our table.

 

We continued with Old Testament legends with Adam & Eve having to make their own way “by the sweat of their brow” on earth. This actually worked out perfect for this week of Michaelmas. In one of the books I am using for stories “Clouds of Glory”, Michael brings Adam & Eve seeds & teaches them how to break apart the ground, remove the stones, and plant the seeds so that they can grow their own garden & feed themselves.  I love  this book for stories.  In this book the author also presents Shekina, gods  earthly presence. Shekina is female. We continued the english lessons with our weekly silly sentence for spelling practice, and an exercise from the Dorothy Herrer book. I wrote several sentences on the board without capitalization or punctuation, and then had my daughter place periods, and capitals  in the right spots. After that she was to underline the naming words in purple & the doing words in red. Before this exercise we talked about 4 things every sentence must have.. A capital letter to begin, punctuation in the end, a naming word & a doing word. I had her put this into her english book along with 2 sentences that contained those 4 things.

 

 

After this we moved onto the stories about Cain & Abel. More really difficult stuff. Honestly, I did not feel good about telling these stories. What is the lesson to be had from it? I have mulled this over & over. Is it that when we do not control our anger, bad things can happen to us & others? Is it that Cain did something horrendous, and is punished severely, but still is given the love & protection of god as he wanders? I really don’t know if this translates to a 8 or 9 year old. I have long been a student of world mythologies, and I can understand what the general understanding of this myth is in academic circles, but what Steiner sees is different.  I can clearly see that this is a story made by a herding people (the Israelites) to denigrate an agrarian culture (the Canaanites) prior to invading them. They are prefered by god over the farmers they are trying to take over, and this myth would have lended some sort of justification of what they perceived to be their rightful destiny. It’s hard for me to present this story knowing what I know about the history & why these stories were really created.It’s hard to keep these truths from her, especially when the questions that arise from the telling just keep coming and coming.  For now I suppose I have to trust the waldorf curriculum as they have been right about just about everything else up to this point.  

Thursday we had our usual swim lessons, and then our weekly homeschool group playdate, and thank goodness because we needed a break. On Friday we took a break form the old testament legends, and took up our farming work again. We did this for 2 reasons. One is we have a bushel of apples that has to be preserved before they spoil, and this needs to be worked into our lessons, and another reason is we are leaving on Wednesday for a vacation. I do not want to start on the sons of Cain, and Noah until we get back. These stories are going to springboard us into our shelters block. I did not want them to be interrupted by or made to be less important because we are trying to prepare for our trip while these lessons are going on.

So, on Friday we worked on apples. I told a brief story about the farming family from our container story, and what they do in fall. We talked about ways to preserve apples. I told my daughter a story we tell every year that she loves called “The Little Red House”. We wrote a summary on the board, and I had her point out the naming words & doing words in the sentences. She put what we wrote on the board in her farming main lesson book.

 We learned one way to preserve apples is by drying them. We peeled & sliced apples and put then on dowel rods to dry.  We strung the rods together & made an old fashioned apple ladder. Monday we are going to continue this and make applesauce. We save all cores & peels & juice them. You get about a cup of juice for every 3 or 4 apples worth of peels & cores. The pulp from the juice we feed to our chickens so that not one bit of our apples are wasted.

 

We also made some white wool balls with stones in the center for weight. We are going to dye them this weekend with the dye bath we made from goldenrod. I will post more on that later.

Happy Michaelmas!!

We began our celebration of Michaelmas today by going to the beach with some friends to fly kites. I should say we tried to fly kites, because our kite saw no action at all. It was a windless 90 degree day here. The kite layed on the sand while our kinds played on the beach, and in the ocean. Sad dragon….. We spent last night after dinner making him, and anxiously awaited to see him fly only to leave him lying lonely on a hot windless day…. I was dumb and didn’t wear sunscreen, so right now my face looks like a roasted beet, and my arms are burned only on the lower half. The sunburn left me feeling spent, so we didn’t get to make our dragon bread today. Lucky for us Michaelmas is celebrated right up to Halloween, so we have plenty of time to bake a dragon, and make some shooting star balls with wool, and the golden dye we made from the goldenrod we harvested over the weekend.

Michaelmas activity round-up

Michaelmas is quickly approaching. This is my favorite time of the year, and for me heralds the beginning of the holiday season. Michael is the brave dragon conquerer who wields a sword of cosmic iron, and brings strength to mankind, strength we can draw upon as the days become darker and we find our light within.   I am working on planning for activities for the festival. This is a nice little list of links with ideas for activities, stories, verses, and songs.

• how to make a dragon kite
• Michaelmas circle activity
• dragon bread-verse & recipe
• Li Chi Slays the Serpent- a girl hero story
• How to make an easy silk cape- I give you a cape of golden light, to gove you courage, strength & might
• Dying with goldenrod- a gift from fall. Goldenrod is free, creates beautiful golden colors, and is easier to find than marigolds this time of year.
• Beautiful article by Donna Simmons of CHristopherus
• Wet felt Michaelmas star balls (I can’t wait to do this. We will dye them with goldenrod since it is in season, plentiful, and free)
• Story-Nkosnati and the Dragon- beautiful story for Michaelmas from South Africa
• Holywood Steiner video of children singing Michaelmas song
• dragon kite #2
• dragon pinata out of recycled materials

 

Lastly here is a verse that  we use in circle time to reinforce the rhythm of the 3 times table 1-2-3, 4-5-6, 7-8-9, 10-11-12, ect

Brave & true  I will be,

Each good deed sets me free

Each kind word makes me strong

I will fight  for the right

I will con-quer the wrong

A wooden sword tutorial

I had desperately wanted to make a sword, and a tutorial to go along with it. We are just too busy this week to do it. I did find a nice tutorial for a wooden sword over at Neither rhyme nor reason. It is pretty simple, and only requires a jig saw. He also shows an easy way to make a shield in the same post. I suppose you could do this on a band saw, or scroll saw too if that was what you had available to you. You can even make your own sandpaper for the beginning phase of sanding your sword.

 

A word about Michaelmas

I am no expert on the festivals. So we tend to do what we feel is right at the moment. We tend to celebrate Michaelmas & explore it’s meaning a week prior to the actual day, and then one more week after. It provides for us a bridge from summer into fall. For us this timing gives us a good starting point for Halloween & fall nature activities. I have been told by one waldorf teacher I had met at a music festival, that at her school they celebrate it from the day of Michaelmas, the 29th, up until Halloween. I do not know if that is traditional in Waldorf education. For us that would be too long, and we love Halloween too much to allow Michaelmas to encroach that far into our favorite Holiday. You just have to go with your own instinct and do what feels most natural to you.

Dragon bread: a recipe, and a verse

Today I wanted to share a very simple, nearly fool proof recipe for a bread dough that we use when we make our dragon bread. We also use it when we want to make a simple bread anytime. The recipe is at the end of the post. I also wanted to share an original verse I wrote to go along with the activity.

 

Fresh baked bread’s a yummy treat

Made with love, and warmth, and wheat

knead the dough, then let it rise

and soon you’ll have a big surprise

From the water, flour & yeast

grows a golden, delicious beast 

I give you a cape of golden light: a silk cape tutorial

We made a simple, but very lovely cape from the silk scarf we dyed with goldenrod flowers. Here is a mini-tute on how to do it.

I give to you a cape of golden light, to give you courage, strength, & might.

  

Natural dying with goldenrod

Dying with found, natural materials is one of the most fun, & least expensive activities you can do. This time of year goldenrod is plentiful in most parts of the country, and is easily obtained. Gathering the golden flowers was a wonder filled nature walk activity. To make golden yellow dye from goldenrod all you need is a pound or 2 of goldenrod flowers, and a few tablespoons of alum. Alum can be found at almost all grocery stores in the spice isle.

Li Chi Slays the Serpent: a girl power story for Michaelmas

 

 click here for the story “Li Chi Slays the Serpent“

I love Michaelmas Even though I am not Catholic or even Christian. I love it for the symbolism. The dragon stands for all of the evils in our world (racism, sexism, commercialism, egoism), and in our own hearts (fear & anxiety). We must summon our own inner power, and for ourselves become the dragon slayer who conquers those base emotions, and allow our inner light to shine & lead us through this time of increasing darkness until  the sun makes a return after the winter solstice. This time of year brings about a renewal of spirit, and challenges us to develop brave, and Strong free wills.

I also love the story of St. george and the dragon, but since I have a daughter I feel it is important to present a girl hero. The story of how Li Chi Slays the Serpent is a beautiful sister tale to the story of St. George. Just click on the title above to be taken to a simple version of the story. Jane Yolen also wrote an anthology about girl heroes called Not One Damsel In Distress. It is a great book full of real folktales about girl heroes.

All this week we will be doing Michaelmas activities & posting them here. We will be making

• a wooden sword
• sandpaper to sand our sword
• a dragon hat
• natural dyes for our cape
• a golden cape of light
• dragon bread
• a  dragon kite to fly

I hope you all have a rich, and wonderful fall.

A Michaelmas story: The story of George & the dragon

ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
. Adapted from the English legend.

 
**If you have a daughter, be sure to check out the story of Li Chi as well for a version where a girl wields a sword, and is the hero.

 

ONCE upon a time, when it was long,
long ago, there was a good king, and he had a little daughter,
Sabra, whom he loved better than his fields, or his gold,
or anything which he had. For little Sabra was as fair as a lily,
 as sweet as a rose, and as kind and true as she was sweet.

But one day a terrible thing happened to the king. Down from
the mountains, and straight through the gates of the city, came a ravening dragon! It was black and horrible to look at, with eyes like two red coals and a mouth that breathed out fire. Its jaws were wide open, its claws were sharp, and it was as tall and huge as a forest tree.

Through the king’s fields it raged and it tore up, by the roots, the harvest of barley and rye and wheat. It killed the cattle and uprooted the grape vines. It did not stop with the fields—it lay in wait by the river bank in the tall reeds, and no one in the whole kingdom was brave enough to kill it.

The king sent his nobles to beg the dragon to leave, but it would not; and this is the message the dragon sent to the king:

Each morning the king must send one of the fairest little girls in the whole kingdom and fasten her to an old oak tree by the bank of the river, for me to devour at my pleasure. Unless the king does this, the farmers will not be allowed to go back to the fields, and there would be no food in the land.

There was great grief in the kingdom. Each mother held her little girl more closely, lest she should be the first one to go, and there were great hunger and distress, for no one could plant or harvest the crops. But little Sabra still laughed and sang as joyously as ever.

“Father, dear,” she cried, “let me be the first little girl to go. I know if the dragon has your little princess he will ask for no other child. I will go in their stead, father.”

Then the people came crowding to the palace gates, begging the king not to send Sabra, for they all loved her as well as their own little ones, but still Sabra said: “I will go to the dragon.”

At last, the king’s high priest said: “We will bring a mother pigeon into the palace yard, and set her free. If she flies north, or south, or west, Sabra shall not be given to the dragon. If she flies toward the east and the sunrise Sabra shall go.”

So they took a brooding pigeon from her nest, and set her free in the courtyard. She spread her white wings and circled about in the air, and then flew straight to the east! Poor, sweet little Sabra! They carried her out to the river bank and fastened her to the oak tree where the dragon could find her, that so she might save the other little girls. Then they went sorrowfully back to the city again.

But the pigeon flew on and on, through field and forest, until she came to a brave knight riding through  the woods. The knight was tired, and his good horse, also, for they had been in a far country and had fought many brave battles. He had stopped to rest under a tree, that his horse might drink at the spring—but, as he rested, the mother pigeon flew straight to his shoulder and began cooing softly in his ear.

“I wonder what she means,” said the knight to himself, as the pigeon flew off a little way and then returned, cooing. At last he jumped upon his horse and followed the way the pigeon led.

Straight through field and forest the pigeon flew, until she brought the knight to the place where the Princess Sabra was fastened to the oak tree and the dragon close by ready to devour her. The dragon’s breath was so hot that it burned the knight, and the smoke from its nostrils blinded his eyes, but he was brave and strong. He made a huge ball of the sticky sap of the pine tree; he thrust the end of his spear through it, and he rode straight toward the dragon’s angry jaws.

The dragon reached out its sharp claws for the knight, but he hurled the ball of sap down its throat and it was not able to open its mouth again or use its poisonous fangs. Then the knight killed the dragon with his spear, and he unfastened the little princess. He lifted her to his saddle and carried her home to her father once more.

Oh, there was great rejoicing in the kingdom! The people crowded the streets and strewed flowers all the way for the knight to ride over. The old king held little Sabra close to his heart, and she put her arms about his neck and kissed him again and again. And the king said the knight should be called St. George, and he gave him a wonderful gold cross to wear upon his breast.

It was so many, many years ago that St. George killed the dragon, but still the people in England remember him, and the English soldier who is the bravest may wear a tiny cross like St. George’s upon his breast.