Grade 3: Creation paintings

A couple of months ago I made a promise to Cathy, who leaves some of the nicest comments, that I would show some of our Grade 3 work on the blog.  It has taken me longer than I anticipated to go through the books and get pictures taken, but I hope they're helpful.

I'd like to start with our work from the Old Testament, specifically the Creation.

When I originally did this block with Sunburst several years ago, I didn't have any images to go on, just this vague idea that one should paint it.  There weren't as many beautiful resources then, so it was really a work of labor (and love!) to bring a pictorial quality to the days of Creation.

Nowadays, I can think of at least three resources that have examples for this work: Thomas Wildgruber's Painting and Drawing in Waldorf Schools, Elizabeth Auer's Creative Pathways, and the Grade 3 files at Millennial Child.  I had recently purchased a German copy of Wildgruber's book when I brought this lesson to Moonshine, so it was kind of neat to finally see what kinds of paintings one "should" do for this lesson. --- These are not those paintings.

Of course being the kind of homeschooling parent I am, as I presented each new day of creation, I showed Moonshine both Sunburst's image and the one from the book and let her choose.  Most of the time she was drawn to the ones I had created for Sunburst, but other times she had her own ideas about what she wanted to paint.  Of course she did!

I used the wonderful telling of the creation from Jakob Streit's And There Was Light.  I absolutely adored this book, and the girls did, too.  The accompanying writing came from their own summaries, something I think homeschooling allows us to encourage from them at an early age.  Most of them are different, but with a few, Moonshine fell in love with the words her sister used to summarize it, and Sunburst was happy to share her words.

In looking back over their work as a whole, I think it's a good example of not only how one child can inspire another, but how things can change from one child to another, even in the homeschool setting.  Each child is different and has something new to bring to the table, so why shouldn't the homeschooling reflect that?!

In the beginning:

 

Day One:

  

Day Two:

Day Three:

Day Four:

Day Five:

Day Six:

None of the resources I listed at the beginning of this post have images for day seven.  Coincidentally, Sunburst and I didn't do a painting for this day either because it was the day of rest, but Moonshine insisted on it.  So we brainstormed and came up with the following painting, and BOTH girls then wanted to paint it for their books.

Day Seven:

  

 

 

Both girls are so proud of this work.  It really speaks to the beauty and magic of Grade Three, don't you think?