Autumn: beauty and botany

Autumn has been dragging its crimson and golden feet this year.  The colors have been gorgeous for an entire month, and I have been awestruck, mostly without camera in hand.

Moonshine and I started her botany study this month.  There is no more perfect a time to begin botany than in the autumn when the mushrooms just can't help but burst from the ground at every turn.  This is especially true in England.  For some of us, the mushrooms want to also grow inside the house... but I digress.

Botany is perfect for ten and eleven-year-olds.  At a time when they're turning inward again, feeling a bit off-balance, plant study turns their attention outward to the growth of nature around them.  It's almost as if you can hear them saying, "Hey, I'm not the only thing that's growing around here."

My resource books for this block include Charles Kovacs' Botany, Gerbert Grohmann's The Living World of Plants, Comstock's The Handbook of Nature Study, and Klocek's Drawing from the Book of Nature.  What I love about both Kovacs and Grohmann's books is that they both approach plant growth in parallel with a child's growth.  In my opinion, Kovacs is the better story-teller, but they are both giving the message that growth and knowledge go hand in hand.  Embrace them.  Be proud of how far you've come!

It's exactly what children at this age need to hear.

Moonshine went for a little walk in the garden to look for mushrooms.  Even I was surprised at how many different kinds she found!

We harvested five kinds and tried to do some spore prints on the back steps.  The wind had other ideas, and both mushrooms and paper were scattered in all directions within an hour.  The wind came up so fierce that afternoon that it cracked our eucalyptus tree in half.

We'll try it again in a couple of weeks when we have a nice sheltered place from the weather.  For now though, it's fun just to look.  Isn't the purple mushroom stunning?

 

Her heart is really into this lesson, and already her main lesson book is turning out beautifully.

Book review: Painting and Drawing in Waldorf Schools

Painting and Drawing in Waldorf Schools: Classes 1-8 by Thomas Wildgruber

This is a book I've been wanting to write a review on for a couple of years.  I first stumbled upon it at the Goetheanum bookstore in Switzerland with my good friend Cari.  One look inside the book and we were both immediately smitten.  It didn't matter that the text was in German or that its purchase price was enough to choke a horse-- we both HAD to have it.

Early this summer it was released in English, and I hemmed and hawed about whether or not I needed a copy of it that I didn't have to translate.  The pre-order price at The Book Depository made it worthwhile though-- a mere pittance compared to what my German copy cost me.  So I winced only slightly before clicking the order button, and I'm so happy that I did, because while most of it is exactly the same, some things and images are different.  Plus, it saves me the time and effort of translating.

Let me repeat myself.  This book is so good that I bought it TWICE.

It's a wonderful guide to every type of painting and drawing experienced within Waldorf education.  Almost every section contains step-by-step guides and thoughtful commentary.  The pictures alone are so inspiring.  This is the book I had wished for when I started homeschooling Sunburst so many years ago and had only the vaguest idea what main lesson artwork should look like.

This is the book we've been waiting for.

Included in this masterpiece are the beginning painting lessons-- the ones that leave most of us homeschoolers with our heads spinning.  It goes on to give a wealth of painting examples for the main lessons in grades 2-5.  As a busy homeschooler teaching three grades, there are not enough hours in the day to do this many paintings.  But I love that they exist.  I love being able to flip though the book and pick and choose a few ideas to bring here and there.  Some ideas I change because that's the nature of art, and others I bring as is because they are just that good.

One major thing this book has done for us is to re-enliven our form drawing.  Form drawing is actually presented very differently in Europe than in the United States.  Okay, I don't know if I can honestly say "all of Europe," but I can definitively say that the main lesson books I saw when I toured the Steiner schools in Switzerland were filled with very colorful form drawings, not much different from the ones in Wildgruber's book.

Here's an example from our own form drawing lessons so you can see what I mean.

It's the same drawing, and yet it looks so much more impressive, inviting, and exciting.  Shaded with rich contrasting colors it becomes this palpable thing.  For those of us who were introduced to form drawing as practiced in the states, this is like a free pass.  There is no need to wait for freehand geometry in fifth grade to make form drawing look this beautiful.  And it helps my children to fill in the enclosed spaces so they can really grasp the feeling-- did they create balance?

Other sections of this book that I particularly love for the lower grades are the botany paintings and the drawing section with inspired artwork to display in the classroom.  If only I could draw this well!  The author goes so far as to recommend that children will learn more from our guided drawing examples on paper than from our use of blackboards.  I have noticed this to be true with my own children, and it is so nice to hear someone say this.

For the middle grades, I love that there are several wonderful explorations of light and shadow using different mediums.  And as if the book wasn't already useful enough, the entire section on perspective drawing is priceless.

But you shouldn't take my word for it.  To see all that's on offer here, you should have a look at the Table of Contents which is available as a pdf download HERE.  And then take a look at some of the images included in the book gallery HERE.  (Note, some of these images have been replaced by even better ones in the English translation.)

I absolutely adore this book.  I could go on and on.  There is one series of exercises that Sunburst and I attempted over the summer that really lifted our work in so many ways.  I look forward to sharing some of our drawings with you in the next few days, so I hope you'll come back for that.

Now if only we had a book like this for the high school grades...  Yes, I can dream!

Sunday woodworking

This past spring we seemed to have gotten into a groove of doing woodworking on Sundays.  I don't know why-- well, actually, I do.  All bursts of inspiration seem to come on Sundays at our house.  And woodworking is one of those things, for me anyway, that requires every bit of gumption I've got.

I'm not actually very good with a knife.  I have this inborn fear that I'm going to chop my fingers off.  I don't know where this fear came from, but it's probably not unwarranted.  I'm a bit of a klutz when it comes to pocket knives.  If I don't cut myself using them, I cut myself cleaning them.

The kids are undaunted though.  Both Sunburst and Moonshine have been well-schooled in the use of knives, thanks to Einstein.  That doesn't mean they don't have accidents-- they do.  But while the girls have been happily whittling sticks for years, we haven't done a ton of actual woodworking projects with them.  You know what I mean, the kind where you start with a block of wood and have a clear goal in mind.  It's something I've been meaning to rectify this year.

The first thing we did a few months back was to make simple cardholders.

The kids each selected a good width branch from the woodpile in the garden, at least 1.5 inches in diameter.  They used a small plane to remove the bark; planing is such satisfying work, they could happily do it for hours.  Once they were happy with the planing job, they took a larger plane and made a flat surface on one side.

They used a miter box to saw the end off at a right angle.  We let them decide how long to make it, which for them was anywhere from 4-6 inches.  Then we clamped the wood down very carefully, and they sawed the slit through the top.  This required some checking with a card to make sure the cut was even.

Here's the slit sawing work in action.  As you can see, we have only the most advanced facilities and equipment for this kind of work.  All joking aside, if you're like us, you just jump in and try things out without getting bogged down by the details, like decent clamps and flat surfaces.  Here you can see that we've got it clamped onto a slate bench in our garden.  It worked!

After the sawing was complete, the kids sanded and oiled their holders.  Even Kitty Bill, age 6, was able to complete this task without too much assistance.  I think they turned out so lovely!  I just love to see the grain of the wood coming through.

Another project we tackled was wooden strawberries.  We used the brilliant tutorial from the fabulous Katie Startzman of Duo Fiberworks; I just adore her work.

Because we didn't have the suggested wood, we opted to use green wooden branches from the garden.  This was great fun for us girls!  It definitely required a lot more focus and skill than the cardholders.  Both Moonshine and I managed to cut ourselves, but we didn't give up easily.  In the end, we managed to make eight strawberries between us girls.  Then Einstein gave it a try and ended up making ten of them, in less than half the time it took us.  His cuts looked nicer, too --of course they did.

Nonetheless, the girls and I were pretty proud of ourselves.

We left them to dry and promptly forgot about them for over a month.  Thanks to Kitty Bill, we finally got half of them painted with watercolors.  We improvised some green felt tops, and rather than drilling, we used knotted yarn for the stems.

Because we used wood from the garden, ours turned out smaller than the ones in the tutorial.  Chokingly small, for anyone age 3 and under.  Realistically, they are the size of Swiss strawberries, which is a tad smaller than the standard US or British variety.  Nonetheless, they are incredibly cute.

The kids couldn't wait to add them to their play kitchen/store/cafe.  I love that all three children still adore this kind of imaginative play.  And to make your own toys from branches in the garden-- is there anything more magical than that?

First day back

Today was our first day back to lessons, and the shining faces of my children said it all.  They were so ecstatic to begin another learning adventure.

We started the day with a little ceremony outside in the sun.  I led the children into the back garden with a little follow-the-leader movement song.  It was mostly for Kitty Bill's benefit, but all of them were happy to participate and take up the wonder of the moment.

Tip-toe, tip, tip-toe
Tip-toe, tip, tip-toe
Gallop, gallop, gallop, tip-toe
Gallop, gallop, gallop, tip-toe
Hop, hop, hop, tip-toe,
Hop, hop, hop, tip-toe
Skip, skip, skip, tip-toe
Skip, skip, skip, tip-toe...
Stop!

It's actually a long path to the back garden, but when we finally arrived I welcomed the children with a little song that I made up on the fly-- I can't always manage to plan these things ahead of time.  I welcomed Sunburst into Grade 8 by waving the rainbow over her head, tying a silk around her shoulders, hugging her tightly, and giving her a little something to keep in her pocket.

She helped me wave the rainbow so I could call Moonshine forward to run under the rainbow into her Grade 5 year.  She has been counting down the days until lessons started again, and she was absolutely beaming!  She also had a silk cape, a warm hug, and a little something put in her hand to wonder over.

Then it was Kitty Bill's turn.  He was so happy!  I sang him a little song about growing up and being ready for first grade (again, something I made up on the spot), and then welcomed him under the rainbow with a silk, an extra large hug, and a little something.

The idea for the little somethings  came to me late last night.  I had been racking my brain trying to come up with something special to commemorate this year-- a really special time with all three children engaged in formal learning together.  In my planning over the week I realized that each of them were facing a different adventure this year.  I decided to represent that in symbols.

I went outside and found a suitable branch in our wood pile, sawed off three rounds, and gave them a minimal sanding.  Then I sketched out the symbols and took a woodburner to them.  Kitty Bill received a heart; it's a perfect representation of Grade 1 qualities.  Moonshine received a leaf which represents the new beginning in Grade 5.  We'll dip our toes into the creation stories and myths of several ancient civilizations this year, and we'll learn about the growth of plants in botany.  Sunburst received a compass as we begin our voyage into the discovery of new lands and new ideas, battles and rebellions, but it's also so she doesn't lose her way into the teenage years.  I purposely left the directions off the compass so that she could find her own north, her own way.

She seemed to get it.

The special somethings were a big hit.  Throughout the day I spied each one of them taking up their wooden symbols and caressing them, studying them, even smelling them.  Sunburst and Moonshine are already planning to independently knit special bags to keep them in.

And all that worry about how I was going to adjust our rhythm to teach three children was for naught. Somehow I managed to present three main lessons today.  I led Kitty Bill into the opening of his wondrous alphabet story, walked Moonshine into the realm of the mysterious, sinking Atlantis, and dove headlong into sea voyages of discovery with Sunburst.  It was a day of stories, singing, forms, bean bags, counting, balancing games, clay modeling, knitting, German, and mathematics.

Around four o'clock, after completing two pages of review on geometry and ratios, Sunburst asked me, "Is that it?  I feel like we haven't done enough today."  Silly girl.  As Moonshine was busy modeling her idea of Atlantis in clay, even Kitty Bill asked for more work.  In the end, he agreed to take up his new block crayons and draw a picture of his entrance into first grade.

I remember when the girls first tried out drawing pictures with their block crayons.  I vividly recall teaching each one to gently shape the forms instead of drawing with lines.  Neither of them thought it was easy.  They both struggled with holding the blocks in just the right way.  Sunburst used too much force; Moonshine didn't use enough.  Drawing with these crayons really is an art lesson in and of itself.

Since I wasn't having Kitty Bill draw in a lesson book, it didn't occur to me to guide him.  I wasn't even watching.  I didn't model anything for him to replicate.  I just said, "Why don't you draw something from today with the rainbow," and this is what he came up with.

The girls saw it first, and they were amazed.  How did he know to do it without lines?  How did he know to shape it?  How did he know to make the cape behind?  How did he get everything so perfect?

He shrugged his shoulders and told them that he had been watching them draw for a long time now.  As if it were that easy.

Each of them shared their hopes and dreams with me for learning and growing this year, and when I kissed each one of them goodnight, they all remarked at how excited they were for tomorrow.  It can't come soon enough.

I have a feeling this is going to be a really great year.

Greeced Out

 

Sunburst finished up her study of Ancient Greece in October.  My initial plan was to let it rest after our trip, but she refused to take a break.  This block was the most fun yet!

We ended up with more than we could fit in one main lesson book, so I showed Sunburst how to put together a small accordion-style book (similar to a Greek scroll, but folded-- maybe the blurry picture below helps?).  The smaller book ended up holding the bulk of Greek history (30 - 5x6 inch pages), from the early settlement to the famous battles and leaders.  She included form drawings, portraits, and relevant quotes.  She is really proud of this little book, and her work truly reflects that, both inside and out.

 

Her regular main lesson book is packed with the mythology and the wonderful stories.  Sunburst read Rosemary Sutcliff's retellings of both Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, then she copied out the beginning of the original Odyssey in Greek.  She also read Padraic Colum's book The Golden Fleece.  They all made it into her main lesson book, as well as the Greek alphabet, a study of Greek columns, a small subset of Greek words, a map, and her sketches from our trip to the Acropolis.  Her enthusiasm for the work and her focus continues to impress and amaze me.  Here's a little sampling:

 

 

Here are a few of my chalkboard drawings from The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Perseus, respectively:

We love, love, loved our study of Greece, but a person can only do so much before becoming Greeced out.  ;)  We took a break from history in November (with the minor exception of mathematical history), and we're feeling rested and ready for more.  We're hoping to ease our way into Ancient Roman history next!

Homeschooling at the Acropolis

If you were looking for us on Saturday, you would have found us here causing quite a spectacle.  I'm certain the Acropolis has seen homeschoolers before, but for some reason we attracted quite a bit of attention.  What were we doing that was so exciting??

Drawing.

We must have looked rather curious, as lots of people approached us, including the Acropolis staff.  They were horrified at the site of Kitty Bill, age 5, sitting with a tin of colored pencils and a notebook.  They were concerned that he might go wild and start drawing on the gazillion-year-old marble rocks.  After all, defacing the place is punishable by law... apparently, so is singing.... which we do a lot.  But we managed to restrain ourselves just this once.  And rest assured, Kitty Bill was completely engrossed in drawing a picture of Lykavittos Hill that he didn't even think about drawing on the marble.

It was a long walk up to the Acropolis.  First in surprising torrents of rain, and then just as quickly, melting in the glaring sun.  We stopped in the tiniest bit of shade cast by the Parthenon behind us, resting and sketching the caryatids of the Erechtheion.  One woman was so taken with the sight of us that she thought we needed pictures.  She grabbed our camera and started snapping away.

Our visit to Greece was absolutely fantastic.  More on that to come...

Baby knitting

We have finally finished knitting for the new baby across the street. The week he was born the sky filled with storks-- over 100 of them. We counted!!

 

I'm not pleased with how the sweater turned out. It's like one of those magic washcloths that grow exponentially when wet.  Seriously.  It started out life much, much smaller... it was only when I blocked it that things went terribly wrong.  Next time I won't be blocking anything on my birthday.  I'm sure that had something to do with it.  It was another good exercise in showing the children how to accept defeat.  On your birthday, no less.

But it's still cute.  I gifted it anyway, and despite its faults, the mom adored it.  Whew!  It's so hard when gifting goes awry.  The pattern is the very cute Duck Soup by Anny Purls.  I will be making it again, larger, with different yarn.  The kids are all insisting that they need one in their sizes, too.  Funny kids.  I think that top knot has them enchanted.

 

I also made the baby a blue berry hat, just because, with a leaf embellishment.  Though I have since been told it was a cultural faux pas to give a baby hat without straps.  I wonder is this really true?  In America it's pretty standard to have hats that don't tie.

Sunburst knit the baby a pair of socks.  She did a nice job with them, and she was very excited to see him wearing them yesterday!

The pattern is called Leftovers Baby Socks (or as the pdf link reads: Baby Socks - Turned Heel).  This was Sunburst's second time making baby socks-- though it has been a long time.  She found this pattern easy to follow on her own, and she has since made another pair for another baby.  I have to say that they are great newborn size, but for bigger babies they would run a bit small.

And Moonshine helped me knit the doll for the baby's big sister.  This little girl has been feeling a bit displaced by her baby brother, and she was very pleased to be receiving a gift, too.  It's just a tiny doll, but she pushes it around in her doll stroller just the same.  And she chews on the hat.  She's only two.  I find it fascinating that the texture of wool is something she finds comforting enough to mouth.

The girls are so pleased to see their gifts being used and loved... it's good incentive for them, since there are still two more babies to knit for.  I think it must have something to do with all those storks!

Wir schreiben Deutsch!

Yesterday I told you about the German lessons I created for my children.  Today I want to tell you about two books we're using for book work and how we're making them fun.

Moonshine, my 8.5 year old, is using "Fun with German" by Lee Cooper.  It's written for English speakers, and the point is to be able to pick it up and read in German from the very first page.  It's empowering, it's colorful, and it's fun.  It actually is.  It touches on pronunciation, starting with very small steps, and continuing on in such a simple manner that before long you are actually reading and understanding quite a bit of German.

Moonshine is LOVING it.  She can't get enough of it lately.  It's what I find her doing first thing in the morning and the last thing in the afternoon.  We're both hoping it will help her feel even more empowered.  She is already tickled by the fact that she can now read in German.

We're taking each page and turning it into a lesson-- reading it aloud many times, copying the writing and the picture, underlining whatever words she wants to underline-- those new to her or ones she thinks are new to her-- and sometimes adding in a new word that she might need help pronouncing.  We're using colored pencils to make it more fun.  And I'm doing it along with her in my own book.  My kids really enjoy embarking on a project together with mom, it feels special and important.  And she's so proud of herself already!

Here's what her first few lessons look like:






And then she noticed there were so many words that mean "the" -- so I explained and we made a page for them.  In Moonshine's drawing below, the gender neutral quality of das is illustrated by a "suitcase" she says.




The thing about this book is that you don't have to work hard to make it exciting.  The pages in the actual book look pretty much the same:



And 30-odd pages later you're able to read something of this length:

 

Doesn't it look like a fun book?  I can't say enough good things about Lee Cooper's books.  They are all like this-- Fun With Spanish (two books), Fun With Italian, Fun With French... They're old enough to be out of print, but there are still many cheap copies to be found in a quick Google search.



Sunburst, my 11.5 year old, is using the Das Sind Wir readers by Peter Oram.  He created these German readers for use in Waldorf schools in the UK, and they are very well done.  Each book (there are two) has fifteen lessons.  They're meant for Grades 5-6, I think, and they assume that the child has some grasp of the language already... which is perfect for Sunburst.

Each lesson has a theme (waking up, school, my city) and at the end of each lesson are the related vocabulary words and phrases for that lesson.  In the back of the book there are some questions pertaining to each lesson, meant for the teacher's use, as well as a lesson by lesson glossary.

My only problem with this book is that it assumes the teacher is fluent in German.  All the material directed at the instructor is also in German... and while I get the gist of some of it, I haven't had the time or the inclination to really sit down and fully grasp how I'm supposed to be using it.  So I'm making it up.

First we read the lesson together.  She likes to read it in German and then translate it aloud to the English equivalent.  Then we take this lesson and pretend it's a letter which we have to reply to-- at the end of each lesson, as part of the reading, are questions based on the reading (Where do you live?  What do you play?  Are you fully awake?) And so we use those as a jumping off point and write a letter to the boy in the lesson.  If he talks about his town, then we do, too.  And we make sure to answer his questions.  We keep our letters in simple little notebooks.

Just to give you an idea, here are a couple of Sunburst's (uncorrected)"letters."

 

This is really fun for Sunburst, and again, she loves that I'm doing it with her. We compare what we wrote, and it's really interesting to see how different our letters become. We're doing one lesson per week, and that seems like plenty. Her goal is to be able to check out books at the library and read to her heart's content. I think by the time she's finished with these books she'll have no problem. Certainly she will be able to check out German early readers after only a few more lessons.

You can find all of Peter Oram's books at the website Starborn Books.

(This is my first post with the new Blogger interface, and it's giving me fits.  So if it looks too wonky on your end, please let me know.  Thanks!)