This weeks lessons:mostly water color painting

When we arrived home Monday after being on vacation for 5 days everyone was wiped out. Tuesday my daughter came down with a 102 fever, and was not up for “school work”.

When she was better on Wednesday we did some catching up in our main lesson book writing out Cain & Abels’ story and drawing illustrations. We also worked on our times tables, and started learning a new word family through our weekly silly sentence, which she copies, illustrates, and puts in her book of word families. We have been gearing up for learning cursive writing by doing running forms. First we begin with a warm up where she draws a lemniscate over & over for a couple of minutes with both her right & left hand, then she draws circles with both hands simultaneously going up & out from the center. After the warm up we begin with the forms. First she draws them in the air, then I let her trace mine on the board, then practice them on scratch paper, and finally put them in her form drawing book. I also have been writing things on the board in cursive to familiarize her with the script. I am not a cursive person, so it is a challenge for me as well to write neatly in cursive.

 

We officially began our block on houses on Friday. We started with a story which told of how the first house on earth was a human. It was a story from Live Ed’s 3rd grade curriculum, so I can not share it here. This lead to a discussion of how our body is the house of our soul, and the earth is the home to all of us. We learned (or I should say we are learning) a beautiful poem by master Waldorf teacher Clifford Monks that perfectly honors the idea. You can find it here http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Clearing%20House/Spring%201977a.pdf it is on page 6 of the PDF file which is all on 3rd grade.

After we recited the poem we did a painting which brought the poem, and story into the visual realm.

This was the first painting session we did with our new batch of 6 paints. Up until now we were only using the 3 circle colors. Now that we are into 3rd grade we will have the option to use 6 colors, prussian blue, ultramarine, vermillion, carmine, golden yellow, and lemon yellow. Theses are our “mother jars”.  I like to use “better than bouillon” for cooking broth, and the jars it comes in are perfect for mother jars. We paint from the smaller jars with the black lids that are in the bottom of the pic.

This is a big deal!! All new feelings & moods can be created with these new additions. Before we did our guided painting about the poem we just experimented & played with the new colors. Here are some my daughter did just for fun.

 A note about stockmar paints: These are concentrated pigments. You have to dilute them. It is best to dilute them into “mother jars”. These jars will not be painted from. Into your mother jars you will empty out the entire bottle of paint.  You will then pour small amounts of your already mixed paints from your mother jars into your little painting jars when it is painting time. Some people like to use baby food jars. Use what you like. Buying fancy jars will not make your paintings better, or worse.  Those little glass mise en place cups work nicely as well, but of course with those you have no lids. When you mix down the paint into your mother jars you should fill the paint bottles with water and shake them to loosen the remaining paint. It is precious gold, and you want every little bit of it to go into your mother jar, however I can not stress this enough… DO NOT OVER DILUTE YOUR PAINTS.  Just like when cooking , you can always add, but you can never take away. The goal is a rich color, not pastels. If you want pastels use a wetter brush, not over diluted paints. You will never be able to get a pure red, or vibrant blue if the paint is too diluted, even if you apply 10 layers. Remember, it dries lighter than it looks when it is wet. When you are done DO NOT POUR YOUR LEFTOVER PAINTS BACK INTO THE MOTHER JARS.  If you do you will possibly taint your entire jar. It only takes a tiny amount to alter the colors in your jars.  If you have paint leftover in your painting cups/jars, cover them, and use them later, but do not mix back into the mother jars. All paint should be refrigerated. If kept cool, it will stay good for months.

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.

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.

watercolor painting in the tub

My daughter took 1st place at her swim competition so I bought her a new bottle of strawberry bubble bath to celebrate. While she was in the tub I brought her a few pieces of watercolor paper, a brush, and some watercolor paint in an ice cube tray. The ice cube tray worked well since  it’s not breakable, and allows you to hold all the paints in one spot while keeping the colors separate. She had a really nice time in her bubbles, just painting the night  away.  First I gave her a piece of  watercolor paper, and she immersed it in the tub. Then she placed it on the wall, and smoothed out the bubbles. The wet paper sticks like glue to the wall, just like it sticks to a paint board. The same rule of cleaning the brush between colors still applies. This was a really good painting  lesson even though it seemed like play. The paper being upright caused the paint to run, which made it an excellent exercise in controlling the paint. The first thing she painted was a ocean picture with a ship in the background, and a mermaid. After that she just did color experiments. I didn’t tell her what to paint or how to paint, and let her be free to explore the colors, and the water. A s soon as she was done I had her rinse the paint away. It all rinsed away with no staining.  We loved this, and will probably do it again soon.

How to Write Color Stories for painting with k-2

This was found via the Waldorf in Louisville website.

Waldorf In Louisville

How to Write Color Stories:
 for Painting with K-2

Red, yellow, blue…. They all are characters in a painting story.  Each color has a feel, a gesture and a momentum in a painting.  Here are some examples:
But before you begin, please remember that there is NO replacement for painting the painting yourself well before the class lesson.  Then ideas will come to you for the story from the colors themselves.
Yellow- Bright, happy, light, joyous, likes to jump from thing to thing, playful, friendly, short attention span, takes an interest in all.  The sun is yellow and shines on all without being discriminating!
Red - courageous, bold, dominant, bossy, loud, gets things done,
Blue - shy, gentle, loving, careful, comforting like a mother,

When I make up a story, it is for a particular class and has pieces in it just for them.  For example, introducing Blue to a group of 1st graders:   A new child entered their room who crept from one corner of the room to the next where he watched the class to see if they were friendly.  Ever so slowly, Blue began to creep toward the center of the room where confident Red comes in and puts his hands of Blue’s shoulders and says “Welcome!”

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

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.

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.

Sunlight painting verse

Sunlight shines into each day
And takes the dark of night away
Brings the colours to my eyes
The deep green earth, the bright blue skies,
The setting sun, the red red rose
That in the gentle garden grows
So on our paper let it be
Sunlight and water, joyfully.

Fantastic website: Exploring The Word In Colour and Speech

I just found a very interesting website which will be useful to any one using Waldorf homeschooling methods. Exploring The Word In Colour and Speech: A Synthesis of Anthroposophical Speech and Painting Therapy  is dedicated to thereputical use of language & color, but has tons of useful information all of us Waldorf influenced homeschoolers can use. On the sidebar of the website under “the story in motion” you will find verses/rhyme stories divided by ages. The “gallery” section has lots of pictures & paintings to inspire you.