The last two weeks

Fables and heroes - finishing up second grade work with Moonshine:

Hiawatha




The Peacock and the Nightingale/Peacock and the Crow -- I combined the two, and they went together very nicely:




We all painted peacocks together, but Moonshine's came out the best.




The Sun and the Wind:






Studying the Greek gods and goddesses with Sunburst:

Oh, what a joy Ancient Greek mythology is! The timing really seems to be perfect for her-- I'm so glad we waited for fall and didn't try to cram it in before summer holidays.





We covered the whole set of Greek gods/goddesses. Not all of them made it on the chalkboard. All of them did make it onto paper. Here's just a little taste. The first one is mine, the next two are Sunburst's drawings. The poems were a joint effort.









Sometimes Kitty Bill comes and copies my drawings off the chalkboard. He's almost five. Here are his renderings of Hiawatha and Apollo... notice he didn't draw Artemis?!





With thoughts of a bow and arrow he made a short leap to Robin Hood. He made sure to write the name on the chalkboard because I had written Apollo's name. Sunburst wrote the letters down for him, as he requested, and then he copied them onto the board. Very cute.





We have these lovely, very simple Robin Hood readers from Rosie Earnshaw that we picked up for Moonshine in Sherwood Forest last summer. Can you see the striking resemblance to Kitty Bill's drawing?



With bows and arrows on his mind, Kitty Bill went outside and promptly made a set from branches he pulled off the tree. It worked, somewhat, so Sunburst rushed in and showed him how to make a proper bow and arrow set. Apparently you have to bend the branch as you tie the string on so it will stay taut. Between the two of them I have seen enough "arrows" whizzing through the house to last me a very long time. The phrase "not in the house" doesn't seem to register... I'm starting to think they don't speak English anymore. Perhaps they only speak warrior now?

Week of lions... and Greece!

Last week, to meet Moonshine's request of more "boy saints," I presented her with a story about St. Jerome and the lion. I wrote her a flute song based on this story, and I was so glad that it was such a hit because I had planned a whole week of lions.



I also mentioned last week that Moonshine is trying out some new behavioral territory. Could it be the nine-year-change approaching already? I'm hesitant to label it as such, but I do know that it's making us all crazy, herself included. She's being antagonistic to everyone and she's not sleeping well. It's a dangerous combination... and well, she rather is like a lion.

I carried over the heart theme from last week, and challenged Moonshine with a poem I wrote just for her. She copied it into her copy book, memorized it, and recited it--- all with great joy! And because she's insisting to write things phonetically and without help, I pulled some words from the poem and challenged her to her very first spelling quiz. She was so excited!! She remembered every single word, and she can't wait for her next quiz.

The poem was very simple, but the message is also very clear:

Fill my heart
with gladness.
Fill my heart
with joy.
Fill my heart
with love
For every girl and boy.

Fill my heart
with kindness.
Fill my heart
with care.
Fill my heart
with tender thoughts
For creatures everywhere.

To extend the heart theme, I invited the kids to watercolor-paint some hearts. Then to extend our lion theme, I went ahead and pulled from my second grade materials and told the story of the Lion and the Mouse. It was a good reminder of kindness as well. --Those of you who have Teaching With the Fables by Sieglinde de Francesca will recognize my attempt to recreate the picture from the cover of her lovely, lovely book.








Sunburst and I worked on Greece, Greece, and more Greece. And math, of course. I also tossed another wondrous geometrical form her way, shown at the top of this post. She is lapping it up.

This is our rendition of Helios and the sun chariot with Prometheus stealing fire to give to the humans:





We also worked together to copy out the amazing family tree from the front of D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths. It was a challenge, for sure, but we worked at it little by little over the last two weeks, and it's already helping us to keep all the Greek mythological gods and goddesses sorted. Greece is definitely a lot of fun!