Reevaluating Our Direction

This is something that happens now and then. It’s part of what keeps me in line as a homeschooling parent and also a part of what keeps me aware of what is going on the wider homeschooling world: reevaluating.

For several years now we’ve been dedicated to Waldorf. I love the flow, the way the curriculum appeals to not only the 3R’s of education but also to educating a child’s body and spirit, the art and the creative ways of approaching what can be very dry, academic subjects. But now I must reevaluate our educational direction or send the child to school (which I will never do!)

I love working with my daughter, spending time going over her lessons, *teaching* her and not simply giving her work to do on her own but that’s exactly what has happened over the past few months. I’ve spent my time working on various things, things from actual money-making work to zoning out on Facebook. Waldorf isn’t going to be more than a reference point on our map from now on, it probably will not serve as our compass.

Here’s the thing: it takes a LOT of planning, lesson writing, figuring out to teach from a Waldorf stance. It’s really not possible, living the life I live, to spend the time necessary to make a good educational go of it. It’s time to find curriculum materials to fill in the gaps that I can’t fill in myself. These ‘gaps’ are really more like canyons and crevasses as we move from the easy teaching involved in elementary education and into the more difficult things in middle school and beyond.

What will we do? Goal setting first, then materials research. We’re not suddenly going to be doing drills and bookwork 8 hours per day but maybe more reading and writing independently and a stronger focus on daily math drills, along with the textbooks. Charlotte Mason and Oak Meadow, most specifically, are appealing because materials can be easily found, often used and at low prices and these are still arts-fartsy (something we like) while also being laid out for us.

Let me know if you have recommendations.

 

The Marine Science Consortium’s Homeschool Family Camp

We just returned from one of the best homeschooling experiences we have ever had. Three days at Wallops Island, VA, sleeping in a noisy dorm, eating awful cafeteria food and being shuttled from activity to activity. Sounds like hell, doesn’t it? It wasn’t, not even for my quiet-loving, introverted self.

The MSC’s activities were not the boring fluff many school-oriented activities are made of, not in any way. The children were drawn right into collecting scientific samples, testing water quality, identifying the samples in a laboratory setting, team work and various safety considerations when in a lab, using chemicals or on a boat.

You can check out the MSC here. One word of advice: take your camera on the wet, soggy, marsh walk unless it’s raining.

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The Monotheme

Yep, you’ve got it, I am completely hyperfocused on ponies lately. Well, pony. Because I’m suffering from lack of desire to blog compounded by lots of time at the barn.
Pictures:

 

4H

My daughter has discovered 4H. Obviously this required my complicity, maybe even a little shove from behind, but as of right now she loves it. Who knew a kid could be over-the-moon about a CPR demo? That’s what the speaker at her first meeting did and she is certain that she can now save lives. What could be cooler than that?

Well, Italian Night for one thing. This is, from what I understand, the big annual fund raiser for the group. The kids are supposed to seek out donations from local businesses, artists and artisans. They also sell tickets. The tickets were F$7 and I think that’s a deal for all you can eat supper! The moms, and the older teens, bake cakes for the cake walk and make piles of pasta, salad and other Italian foods for dinner.

Our 4H group has come up with an ingenious plan which involved a point system for awarding the funds raised. The children get points for things like items donated to the Silent Auction, bringing a dish, selling 10 tickets and such. Each point is worth a set dollar value at the end of the year and may be used toward camps and other 4H sponsored events. This way the biggest rewards go to those who work the hardest. A great plan, in my opinion.

We spent the day working on the cake pictured above and it was M’s fondest wish to win it back in the cake walk and you know what? She did! And just this minute she came and told me she had eaten a banana and an orange for breakfast and I just looked at her and said, “Yes.” She’s slicing the cake now.

 

Norse Mythology I

We have begun our study of Norse Myths even though we’re in the 3rd grade because we will be traveling in the Baltic Sea come early summer and I think that having this connection will make Minerva’s understanding of the place deeper. We are using two books: D’Aulaire’s Norse Myths and In the Days of Giants by Abbie Farwell Brown.

We began our studies by exploring the World Tree which Minerva drew in her MLB.

The next story was of Ysir and the yellow cow. Minerva reads the story in D’Aulaires and then I read the version from In the Days of Giants. The two books don’t always correspond perfectly but we also have The Children of Odin and another book about Norse Gods on hand for research or back up. She reads her story on Monday and we let it sit for a few days. She retells the story later in the week and on Friday I read to her. Then she draws and writes in her MLB.

Here are my chalkboard drawing and rhyme:

The MLB (I don’t think Iphoto turns the pic back around! She actually doesn’t write backwards, just in case it looks that way.)

The ice giant, Ymir, and the cow were challenging for both of us to draw but we tried and did a reasonably decent job of it, I think.

 

Spring Work

Well…it hasn’t sprung yet but this is still the beginning of our Spring school semester. What are we up to besides freezing our bums off at the barn? Well…it’s not so Waldorfy but it’s what we have to do for now.

Mavis Beacon typing program. M does this each morning first thing and then moves on to History at Our House’s free art program. Next week she will begin the Music History course.

At home we’ll be covering measurement, this time volume and weight, as well as continuing the +, -, X, / worksheets for practice. We will also be doing MLBs on Norse mythology and Magic. Magic you ask? Yep. Today we begin study of the four pagan quarter festivals. I think it will be great fun!

At co-op, where I’m teaching a class for the 6-8 year olds, she will take Journalism, Choir, Drama and Chess.

Away from home M will take piano lessons, riding lessons and will begin meetings with a local 4H equestrian group.

Busy, busy and excited about it! The decision to do so much outschooling and the online classes was based in my own need for more time to manage the several smaller and one fairly demanding business I’m running from home.

It may be cold outside but looking forward to this semester, we definitely have a ‘Spring’ in our step!

 

Salt Shaker Menorah

Just in time to be too late, here’s our salt shaker menorah. It cost $5 for the salt shakers at the dollar store. We painted them with glass paint which was already in the house. The tapers were 2 for $1 and we cut out shapes from our modeling beeswax using very small cookie cutters. I think the end result is pretty cool.

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Stories of Light: Week 1

This month I am taking a break from lesson planning and following Marsha Johnson’s ‘Stories of Light,’ lesson plan. What a joyous outline this is!

Week 1 was a study of Chanukah traditions. We made a menorah out of salt shakers from the dollar store. Minerva painted them all, including the one for the shamash which is a different color and shape than the others. We’ve been lighting this each night and saying our prayer as best we can when we really don’t know what we’re doing.

Our form for the week was a crossing-the-midline form in the shape of a menorah or chanukiah. Minerva copied it into her lesson book as part of her border for her rewriting the Story of Chanukah. The story includes all but two of her spelling words for week. I think that’s quite impressive!

To keep up with math she is doing worksheets from a book I bought at TAPS. Each day her worksheet focuses on a different process which works wonderfully with our 4 day school week. We’ve put the gnomes away for now and are just doing practice and solidifying the skills, no active math block is going on now.

We’re learning a lot by exploring the festivals celebrated by other cultures this year, especially the Jewish festivals which we are focusing on.

 

Waxed Leaves and Fire Starters

Finally a calm, sunny day when we could get outside and melt wax for a fun fall craft. We walked around and picked up the prettiest of the leaves from our yard (we have PLENTY of them!), grabbed our bucket of nicely dried pine cones and got busy.

First I put about 4″ of water into an enamel pot that is a sacrificial craft pot. Then we grabbed our beeswax, a small coffee can and a fondue fork and started melting the wax. The coffee can and pot work as a double boiler. We could have a better set-up but we don’t, so we just go with what we’ve got.

Once the wax was melted we started dunking the leaves into the wax. We held the leaves by the stems which is easy with the maples because they have nice, long stems. The oaks I did because they have short, stubby stems. We dunked, shook gently over the can then more briskly over the grass and then laid the leaves out on a piece of plywood so that the wax could harden.

The pine cones came last. I took the coffee can out of the pot and sat it down on the plywood. Minerva dunked each cone into the wax and put it down. When all had been dunked, I poured the last of the wax over the tops of the cones which needed it most. I’ve never tried these before as fire starters and am curious to see how they work. I am hoping that the wax will slow the burn down a little bit and that will give our logs more time to light.

While we were working a big, bald eagle flew up and roosted in the pine tree just above our heads. It was being harassed by a bunch of crows. We stared at it until it flew away again. Beautiful bird but sadly I did not yet the camera outside.

We’re going to use the leaves to decorate our Thanksgiving Day tables. We’re having a house full and are excited to cook and decorate and feed everyone.

Here are the rest of the photos:

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Our Waldorf Week

This week we’re back on our math block rotation with measurement. Using a variety of resources, most of which are listed in the side bar but also including the awesome math information at Our Little Nature Nest, we have learned about the cubit, digit, hand and span.

On Monday we measured out the ark using a piece of hemp cord onto which we had tied knots measuring one cubit each into a ten cubit length. Because I’m lazy, I then tied sticks to either end so we didn’t have to crawl around to accomplish our measuring. Minerva was amazed at how long the ark was.

I'm at the start point with the camera, she is almost invisible!

The width and height were a little less exciting. In fact, it reminded me of a river barge like those we’ve seen in Holland and England.

We measured two of our horses and one of our goats using a Minerva Hand. My horse, who normally stands 15 hands was a whopping 21.2 and our 13.2 hand pony? He was a horse at 15 hands. Sarah, the goat, was 8 hands high.

We are reading Farmer Boy and Minerva is writing about that, but not every day. This is our autumn ‘farming’ block. We garden heavily and recently gave up raising sheep, chickens and the occasional steer in order to move to a happier place. My daughter has grown up living a farming block, so I don’t feel overly called to go way into it in the autumn. We will do another, longer, farming block come spring planting time.

Here are a few pages from her MLBs for the week. I did not have her draw anything for the Farmer Boy MLB but we are still drawing a lot. She enjoys this very much now and will take her time and really work on her drawings one she has clear idea of what my expectations are. I draw the lines for her to write on with the mama bear side of her block crayons.