The Glory of Blue

Here is my chalk drawing of an eagle. I am not showing you this eagle because it is very good, but I am showing it to you because of the beautiful, perfect, formerly-elusive blue. Yes, blue chalk! Finally, after all these long years, I have blue chalk! I have many kinds of chalk… some bought from Mercurius (decent chalk, but expensive). The blues in the box below look nice, but in my boxes (bought years ago) the blues are so light they look white, or so dark that they don’t show up at all on the chalkboard. However, these chalks erase easily, which is nice.

I also have Prang Ambrite Gallery Colored Chalk, which is wonderful, and the price is great, but still, the blue is not quite right for some things. On a whim, I purchased Sargent Colored Chalk at Hobby Lobby for only a few dollars. The chalk is bright an beautiful, and finally… blue! I usually find Hobby Lobby an annoying place to shop (I mean, it takes ages to check out), but they came through for me this time.

From now on, I will be buying both the Prang and the Sargent, and I will skip all the way home!

I read on a teacher’s blog a couple of years ago that it is helpful to keep the chalks separated by color, so I use an old make-up organizer to hold my chalks, and this keeps them much cleaner and easier to find:

I am not much of a chalk artist, I cannot yet create anything like those beautiful creations by Waldorf class teachers, but I do find it inspiring to have a large part of the board covered in a drawing!

 
The Norse drawing on the left is mine, while my 4th grader drew Peter Pan.

I think my daughter was in 5th grade when she drew Jacob’s ladder.

My drawing of North America.

Grade 6 – Mineralogy

I am starting to feel like this blog is quickly becoming a commercial for Eugene Schwartz, but I never would have been able to feel comfortable with many of these blocks without his online conferences. His work is just so valuable to me!

In addition to his lectures and main lesson book photos, I used Kovacs’ book:

Geology and Astronomy by Charles Kovacs

I also needed some rock specimens, since I did not trust my identification skills, and I was unsure if I would be able to find everything that I wanted to present in my area. This rock kit was very helpful:

Rocks and Rock Forming Mineral Collection (24)

 

We studied about 6 or 7 stones in the box, but it was very nice to look at the different types of rocks and feel them. The kit labels each rock, and the accompanying pamphlets give a good deal of information about them.

I also used Live Ed, the World Book, and a few books about caves, volcanoes, and oil from the juvenile non-fiction section at the library.

We began with the study of granite, which is composed of quartz, feldspar, and mica. Here is where the rock and mineral kit came in handy, as we had a sample of each. We did a detailed, careful drawing of the granite, making sure that we drew the rock instead of a blob of pink and gray. It took quite a while, actually. My daughter also chose to draw quartz, feldspar, and mica as well.

Next we studied volcanoes. I used information from all of the sources listed above, plus we looked at picture books, and talked about what it is like to witness an eruption. The drawing is from Live Ed.

I told her about sedimentary rocks that are formed by shells of the ancient seas, and the many products that come from limestone and chalk. She drew some tiny shells that created chalk (I believe I found the pictures of the limestone/chalk shells in the World Book Encyclopedia). Then we studied another sedimentary formation… caves. We have many wonderful caves here in Texas, so I hope that we will have an opportunity to visit one soon!

Lastly, we talked about the impact of these minerals in our daily lives. We learned how coal, natural gas, oil, and salt are extracted and processed. Very interesting! The picture above took forever to draw, and then at the last moment, the oil drill was very crooked. It was quite disappointing, but it is still a great picture.

I believe it took us three weeks to complete this block.

Here are my pictures:

  

My drilling picture took ages to draw as well… I think we spent two days on it. Does it take everyone else that long?

Candlemas

So, we did not have time to celebrate Candlemas this year, since we were busy with the Youth Orchestra and other activities, but my daughter made us a lovely candle. Just when I am wondering why we homeschool, and why we homeschool the Waldorf way, which is so time-consuming for me, I find this on our dining table:

She made this lovely candle, then she took little pieces of watercolor paper and painted them to look old. While the paper was wet, she curled the edges so that they would be little scrolls, and printed music on them with a fountain pen. The roses and ribbons were made flattened beeswax circles and thin strips of beeswax.

Lovely, isn’t it?

Grade 6 – Astronomy

I have not posted in a while because honestly, my daughter and I were struggling during the first part of the year. But we have seemed to reach our stride, and I am feeling better about homeschooling and ready to share again! I’ll start with a block from last semester… Astronomy. You can tell in my daughter’s handwriting and drawings that she was not pleased with me, but hopefully there will be something here to give some inspiration!

I mostly followed Eugene’ Schwartz’s lessons. He indicated that it is best to steer clear of the traditional focus on the constellations, as this is something that is readily found anywhere, and to map these constellations and draw their pictures seems a little public-schoolish. We can do better, he says.

So, if we are not covering constellations, then what are we to do? We help the child to understand our relationship with the cosmos around us. The earth, moon, sun and stars. Where are they in the sky? How do they “move around us”? This was a wonderful way to approach the subject, especially considering that my daughter has been fascinated by astronomy since 2nd grade, and had already read H.A. Rey’s book on the subject, plus a few others. And, she can already find the constellations on her own.

My Resources for this Block:

Geology and Astronomy by Charles Kovacs

 
Sky Phenomena: A Guide to Naked-eye Observation of the Stars

The Stars by H. A. Rey

So we began by going outside several times in one night to track the movement of the stars. We drew pictures showing their movement in each of the four directions. Next we discovered how we see the stars in different places, depending on our latitude. These lessons come directly from Eugene Schwartz. The “movement” of the stars is covered in detail in Sky Phenomena, and the relationship of the pole star to our latitude is covered in The Stars.

Before the block, we observed the moon for a month, and my daughter recorded the changes. Then we learned how to find the moon in the sky, according to the cycle and season:

  

We learned about the sizes and distances between the sun, moon, and earth:

So, even though Eugene convinced me that his approach to astronomy is better than simply covering the constellations, we tried to sneak in a few of them anyway (inspired by Live Ed’s Astronomy book):

Here are a few of my drawings:

    

 

And finally, I asked my children to continue working while I took a quick shower. When I came back, my daughter informed me that she has balanced her ruler perfectly and has taken photographs to prove it. Me: “Umm… did you get any further with your picture”? Her: “No, I wanted you to see the ruler.” Excellent.

Grade 3 – Shelters

For the third grade shelters block, I used the “Elements from Grade 3” from Eugene Schwartz, and a little bit of Live Ed.

    
Wiki-ups
Third grader’s drawing on the left, mom’s on the right.

For the past few years, we have made several shelters. During my daughter’s third grade year we built a wiki-up with some friends. First we cut down young willow trees around my friend’s lake (she was glad to thin them out, as they drink a lot of water). Then the children cut the branches from the trunks to make nice poles. We dug holes in a circle and buried the poles in the earth, then we bent the tops of the poles together and tied them up at the top. We added support poles around the dome shape, and covered it with some brush, but mostly left it open. We had a magical soup dinner inside our wiki-up, under the stars, that will always be remembered. Unfortunately, I cannot find a single picture of that wiki-up. I could go and take a picture of it today, but it is several years old, and now it looks like ancient ruins… we can see why these structures had to be rebuilt often!

 

The above shelter is a little difficult to see, but it is a survival shelter. Last year during our nature program on Fridays, we did activities related to wilderness ‘survival’. We made a solar water still, learned to make fire, how to find food, and create shelter. In Tom Brown’s Field Guide to Nature and Survival for Children, he talks about trying (and failing) to make a shelter for himself as a youth. His mentor showed him how the squirrels make their shelter, and it is said that the best survival shelter can be made in the same way. It is basically a ridge pole, with supporting poles on either side, and a LOT of leaves piled on top to keep it warm and dry.

Tom Brown’s Field Guide to Nature and Survival for Children

 

The beautiful shelter above was made by my children and their friends over the course of a few hours. They were inspired by the survival shelter, and wanted to make one that was larger. This one has more features… a walkway, seating areas, and little storage nooks carved into the sandstone.

This one isn’t exactly a third grade shelter, but a fairy garden that we made long ago. Perhaps we may call it a shelter for little imaginations to thrive and grow. The fairies loved to leave little gifts of flowers and ribbons here. Sigh.

So, that is a lot of shelter building… on to the book work:

First up was the tipi. We talked about how the Indians used tipis, and I told a myth called How Tipi got its Shape. I found this story a several years ago at a site called cheyennetribe.net, but the site is no longer hosted, and I cannot locate another source for this lovely story. If anyone knows of the source, I would be grateful if you would let me know.

We also read the picture book Houses of hide and earth.

We talked about the pueblo, and we enjoyed drawing these houses. We checked out Houses of adobe from the library and read it for our lessons. I like this series for the shelter block. The books are interesting, informative, and the pictures are rich. Plus, they are just the right length to be read in one or two main lessons. I think the picture and writing above came from Live Education.

The drawing inspiration and the poem above was from Eugene Schwartz’s Elements of Grade Three. For the study of the igloo, we started by reading a few bits of “Houses of snow, skin and bones”, and looking at the pictures.

Houses of snow, skin and bones

Then we began reading The Igloo by Charlotte and David Yue. The books in this series are much longer… it probably took us 4 or 5 days to read this book. My son was absolutely enthralled by the detailed description of Eskimo life. However, I decided to skip the last chapter, as it ends with a description of how the Eskimos lives changed when the Europeans arrived. I believe it is best to avoid dwelling on these concepts with young children. There will be plenty of time for the sad truth of this terrible time in the history of the Americas. Also, I think that all too often when we study the natives, we seem to begin with the European impact, when in fact, there is so much more of the history of these peoples that occurred long before the Europeans knew of this beautiful place.

The Igloo

 

Next we moved from the study of native shelters to the homes of the early pioneers. We began with sod houses, reading from two sources:

On the Banks of Plum Creek (Little House)

We read a chapter or two of On the Banks of Plum Creek, in which Laura describes the sod house. We read the book in its entirety sometime in the months before, so we were just revisiting Laura’s house. But it seems like this would be a nice book for nighttime reading during this block.

 

Sod Houses on the Great Plains

Sod Houses on the Great Plains is a simple picture book with just a few lines of text on each page, but the author describes how and why sod houses were built. He also describes the problems with a sod house: insects, mice, snakes, and leaks! However, they were relatively safe from the dangerous prairie fires.

For our study of log cabins, we are fortunate enough (as probably many Americans are) to have historical log cabins nearby. We went for a visit and looked at the hand-hewn logs. When my daughter was in third grade, we went for a walk along a creek and identified the local trees that were often used for these early cabins. She made crayon rubbings of the leaves for her main lesson book.

 

I never found any great books for stilt houses, but I really wanted to draw one! So, I did some research online and we talked about why people would want to build a house on stilts, where they are built, how it is done, and what it would be like to live in one.

Talking about building a modern house was fun, but I wish I would have had an opportunity for my son to go to a real building site. Maybe someday. So we looked at a couple of picture books about building a house, and we looked around our house. Where is the foundation? What did the house look like before it had drywall and bricks? Where is the plumbing? “DAD! Where is the plumbing”? Electricity?

The drawing was a challenge. Well, most drawings are a challenge for my son, since he is usually quite resistant to the idea. This was particularly difficult because of the perspective. Perspective drawing is not taught in the Waldorf curriculum until the seventh grade, so after a false start, I drew the basic shape of the foundation and wall with a lemon yellow crayon, and he finished the picture. The digger was fun… he particularly enjoyed pointing out inaccuracies in my digger. The drawing was from Eugene Schwartz’s third grade (again).

This picture is a little difficult to see, but I allowed my son to take a couple of days “off’” from school to help Daddy build a new deck. We counted it towards house building and measurement studies. The song on the page is from the wonderful book by Diane Ingraham Barnes called Music Through the Grades.

Wonderful Houses Around the World

I wanted a book to help us learn more about Yurts, but I could not find any in our local libraries, so I bought a book called Wonderful Houses Around the World. It is a fun book, with photographs of the outside of the homes, and fabulously detailed drawings of the interiors. Both of my children enjoyed the book, but we had done a lot of drawing of many different types of homes, so we did not draw any of the homes from this book. However, it was a good opportunity to see modern homes around that world that are so very different than our own.

Here are some of my shelter drawings:

  

  

  

 

My son enjoyed The Igloo so much, that he wanted to hear more about native shelters even after the block was finished. So, we read the rest of the series. We were still reading The Pueblo well into summer vacation!

Wigwam and the Longhouse

The Pueblo

The Tipi

Halloween Paintings

Since we spend every other Friday at our nature program, we usually paint on our Fridays at home. Our paintings are either curriculum-related or seasonal. On the rare occasion that I do not have a painting in mind, we have a free-painting day!

My son (4th grader) wanted to paint a ghost for Halloween:

This particular painting was guided. We did a little experimenting, and tried our hand at dry painting. First, we taped the 140lb painting paper to the board with masking tape. Then we used a very pale blue to paint the ghost. Next, we painted the blue sky and orange pumpkins with strong watercolors. Then we painted the green grass, waited for the painting to dry for a bit, and then painted the indigo tree and added the vines and shadows to the pumpkins. The paper bubbled a little bit since it was not stretched (I think), but we left it taped to the painting board overnight and it flattened out again. I want to try stretching it with butcher paper tape next time.

This is my painting, done the night before in preparation. Well, except for the owl… he was added later.

This is the painting that I did with my son. I decided to add the moon this time.

And finally, here is a painting that I did last week, just for me! Not for a lesson, but just for me! Me, me, me! That was fun to write. Anyway, I saw this painting at the lovely blog: teachinghandwork.blogspot, and I wanted to paint it too. For this dry painting, I put on layers of very pale blue, green, and yellow for the sky, grass, and pumpkins. I slowly added layer upon layer to darken the colors. Then I added the scarecrow and fence, in medium-light layered colors. I added many layers of shading of the pumpkins and such, then the deep indigo tree, and a little purple in the sky. I completed this painting over several days, just working on it for 10 or 15 minutes… whenever I found the time and inclination, and to allow the paper to dry in between applications.

Happy Halloween!

Grade 3–Clothing and Fiber

I was sorting through our main lesson books, and I came across our Clothing, Fiber and Shelter work from last year. These blocks were great because we could include stories, writing, drawing, hand work, projects, and field trips!

For the clothing block, I believe I used some guidelines from Marsha Johnson’s free files: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/waldorfhomeeducators/.

  

We began by talking about common fibers and discussing their origins. I told a few stories from this book by Emilie Poulsson:

In the Child’s World; Morning Talks and Stories for Kindergartens, Primary Schools and Homes

Most of this lovely book is available for free online: In the Child’s World.

First… cotton! We are fortunate to live near a restored historical farm that grows cotton, and we have picked it many times. I made sure to take the children last fall, and we saved some bolls for drawing during this block. We used pencil shavings to make the beautifully soft colors:

Next, we talked about wool. Again, this included a field trip. We went to a sheep farm and bought some clean, raw wool. We had a great time meeting the sheep and exploring the farm. I am sorry that I didn’t take many pictures of the process, but we dyed the wool, carded it with hand carders, spun the wool, then knitted he knitted his own hat! My 5th grade daughter did this process too, even though she had done it in the past. Of all of the Waldorf crafts we have done, I feel like this is one of the most important. I believe that if a child can do something as useful and ancient as taking raw wool and creating a piece of clothing, the possibilities are endless for that child. This speaks to the child on such a deep level… this tells the child at age 9, that he can take care of himself. In addition, it gives him a sense of what goes into creating basic items that we take for granted. It is a MUCH different process simply knitting a hat with store-bought yarn. Of course we have those too!

 

I had prepared in advance for studying linen by planting flax in the garden in the spring. We harvested during the summer and we hung it in the garage to dry just before leaving for an extended vacation. Upon our return, I found out that my husband had thrown out most of it, since it had fallen to the floor and he thought it was the children’s “junk”. I was devastated! I had hoped to at least weave a little basket or something. Anyway, we took a dried bit of the linen and taped it into the book. It probably would have looked better had I laminated it. At least we got to grow the little blue flowers ourselves, and we visited a fair where we were able to watch the process of making linen from flax. I also told a story about linen from In the Child’s World.

  

I should mention that although we were able to go on many field trips, such as the cotton farm, sheep farm, craft fair, etc., most of these trips did not happen during the block. Over the years I have learned to try to keep an eye out for activities that may be prevalent to lessons in the coming months, or we may revisit lessons with activities that come our way after we have covered a subject during a main lesson.

Finally, we studied silk. I told a legend about a Chinese empress who discovered that silk cocoons could be unwound and woven into cloth. We drew a picture of her in her garden, along with a description of how silk is made.

I found the title to this book in my notes, although I never read it, but maybe it is worth a peek:

The Weaving of a Dream

For a project, we cut (actually tore, which is an easier way to get a straight cut with silk), and hand-painted little silk squares. We wet the squares, smoothed them out on our painting boards, and painted with watercolors. We glued my son’s fish into his book:

 

Here are some pages from my daughter’s clothing and fibers main lesson book from a couple of years ago. We tried to do a craft with each fabric. She made a leather pouch, a wool oven mitt, and a cotton dress for her doll. This was a great opportunity to get serious about handwork, which often gets cast aside as other pressing lessons and activities seem to take priority.