Mad Scientists in Wonderland

Every so often during the "school" year, our local homeschool community hosts learning fairs. Obviously they don't fit into a rigid Waldorf curriculum for littles, but my kids love them. It's a chance to be a part of a larger, collective, learning community of their peers. It's a chance to find out what they're interested in, explore it for a bit, and then share it. Through writing. Via art. And of course to talk their heads off in front of a captive audience.

This time around it was the Biography Fair, and Sunburst knew just what she wanted to do. She had been reading the new Magic School Bus book that recently came out: Magic School Bus and the Science Fair Expedition. It contains biographies of scientists, and she had a hard time choosing between Gallileo and Madam Curie. In the end Madame Curie won out. We did some heavy researching online, and Sunburst came up with this:

The portrait is watercolor and ink. I like how her lips and eyes bled... it makes her seem a bit "mad" scientist-like. Anyone that sleeps with radioactive material on their bedside table is probably a bit mad, or well on their way, don'tcha think?

Moonshine had co-opted Sunburst's last three presentations, but this time she was completely unsatisfied with the idea of doing a bit part project to go with her sister's talk. Oh no. This time, she had to do her own thing. She insisted on her own topic, her own presentation board, and her own air-time. That's right, she presented. Fearlessly.

You've got to love homeschool groups. They don't even bat an eye when a four-year-old wants to join in with the bigger kids. The range of biographies went from Tinkerbell to Genghis Khan, and it was really very cool. That said, Moonshine didn't do Tinkerbell (though she was awestruck by the idea.) She did "The REAL Alice."

We have a great book called The Other Alice which talks about the creation of Alice in Wonderland and the friendship between Charles Dodgson (aka Carroll) and the child Alice Liddell. It's a book Moonshine has spent hours looking at on her own, and it was fun for her to pick which pictures she wanted me to copy for her presentation board. We also grabbed some off the internet for her to color, and she asked me to make a line drawing she could watercolor, just like Sunburst did. I helped her with the eyes and lips (to stave off any tantrums) but Moonshine felt she could handle the rosy cheeks on her own.

And Moonshine really knew what she was talking about. A few times I prompted her with some ideas she had expressed interest in while we were gluing pictures down. Some of these ideas she had me write on the board for the benefit of people who could read. "Did she have any brothers and sisters?" and "Why couldn't Alice marry the prince?" Even without prompting though, that girl can talk! And she was hillarious. "So she married somebody else... whooooo mom?" "Uh, Reginald," I told her. "Reginald," she told them. "Reginald whoooooo?" "Hargreaves?" I whispered. "She married Reginald Hargreaves and had only boy children. This many. Three. No girls at all. Just boys. Hahaha."

Preparing for this fair pretty much dominated our week, but it was worth it. The girls had a great time.

Everyday Forms

Two weeks ago we finished up our Clown of God form drawing block, and it was a success! Sunburst was pretty upset when Giovanni grew old and died, even though she thought that the statue catching the golden ball was really cool. After she made a title page for her book, I went ahead and presented her with Tomie de Paola's book, from whence I lifted the story. We read it together, and then we read the endnotes where it talks about this being a really, really old story passed down from generation to generation, and Sunburst looked at me with her mouth open.

"It's true?! It's really true?!!!"

"What, the story?"

"You mean the statue really did catch the ball?!!!" Her eyes were as big as her open mouth. I grinned at her and mirrored her amazement. And then she closed her mouth and sighed, contentedly. And that was that. Another seed was nurtured. (Miraculous things happen all the time. There's something more out there. There's a connection. Can you feel it?)

But that's not all. You see, I've noticed something really fantastic in the last few weeks of these lessons. The forms have begun to emerge in regular ol' everyday artwork. The artwork that I like best-- the kind with zero involvement from me. No hovering, no instruction, no rules whatsoever. The girls worked on these mainly during our quiet time, the time in which I beg, plead and bribe them with snacks, a ream of paper, coloring pages, Super Ferby pencils and Crayola markers to be quiet enough to allow Kitty Bill, their baby brother, to fall asleep. Whatever it takes, just let the boy sleep.

And they draw stuff like this:


See all the forms? The spiral from last year. All the circles --apples up high and down low, the apple tree, ornamentation on her dress. The mountains on her crown, also from last year. The stab at symmetry on the pine tree. The loops on the saddle. The pyramid of lines on the unicorn's horn. --I also love that the princess is riding side-saddle (because of her foot problem?) And I love the depth.

Sunburst drew this freehand in pencil, erased the lines she didn't want, and then went over it with an ink pen. She brought it to me to copy, as a coloring page for herself and her sister, Moonshine. I thought it was remarkable.

And then I uncovered a stack of drawings just like this, with different themes. In each one you can see at least one form working itself out. It blew my mind... and it wasn't just Sunburst's drawings, but Moonshine appears to have absorbed quite a bit of our lessons just from being in the same room. Spirals, circles, and lines.

I don't know what this all means, but it's neat to watch. I have to tell you though that when we did the pyramid of lines drawing (plates) Moonshine came over to the chalkboard and informed Sunburst that she wasn't drawing it correctly. I didn't know whether to cringe or to laugh.

There's no holding these younger siblings back. As much as I'd like that to be the case, it's a monkey-see, monkey-do scenario. She's going to pick this stuff up. All of it, and probably fairly quickly. Moonshine is finding her footing. Sinking her teeth into new ideas and trying them out. "C starts cat. And rhymes with rat. And rat has this letter (R) in it." But not to worry. It's not sinking in too deeply. She's still dreamy enough to walk into oncoming traffic. We've still got plenty of time yet...

Unfortunate Reading

I remember when I couldn't wait for Sunburst, my oldest, to start reading. Einstein and I read to her pretty much from birth. We'd snuggle up in the bed with her and take turns reading aloud from the books on our bedside tables. Einstein would drone on reading the long, passages from The Magic Mountain, I would murmur the timeline of strange tales from Russka, and Sunburst would wobble her newborn little head around, mess her drawers, and drop off to sleep on our chests. It was our grand literacy-from-birth, plan, back in the days when we were a one-child family and had the time to languish in bed all day, and our needs were few. Ogle the baby, read, nurse, change diapers, and read some more...

We both come from a long line of readers, Einstein and I, and when Sunburst started making her first attempts at deciphering text we were giddy with enthusiasm. We couldn't wait to share with her all of our favorite literary adventures. We were excited, all of us, to see her world opening up page by page. At 7 1/2 years, she's now voraciously reading over 100 pages a day, completely captivated by the power of the written word. Reading changes everything. It's amazing...

Except when it isn't.

You see, I entirely forgot there was a downside to reading. Aside from the magazines headlines at the check-out counters (as if the pictures weren't risque enough...) Aside from the local war protestors with their faux-blood spattered signs proclaiming things like "Stop KILLING CHILDREN in Iraq..." Aside from the fact that I will have to start hiding my Christmas lists, even in cursive... I forgot that there are books out there that are just plain drivel. Books that suck.

Today Sunburst went to the library with Einstein and brought home some books that were just plain awful. Usually we're very commited to sifting through her library loot before we reach the check-out counter, but this time two books slipped through the cracks on a very busy Saturday afternoon. They came home with her and those books and I passed like ships in the night when I slipped out of the house to get some very needed "ME" time.

While I was out, she read them. Both.

They are so opposite of the lives we live, of the values we're trying so hard to instill in our children, that they made me sick. For one, they're "schooly" books, reeking of peer pressure and "fashion disasters," cliques, cheerleaders, and ridicule. But they also promote lying, materialism, and disobedience --as in, my parents said no, but I'm going to anyway. They're just absolute, over-the-top crap, hand-picked for her by the children's librarian.

I realize that I can't protect her forever. Slowly but surely she'll be exposed to the excrement that permeates our outside world... it's happening already. And though it pains me, I can't stop it. All I can hope for is to impede the flow.

Grand adventures!

A blogless two weeks has somehow passed me by... Admittedly, I've been in some kind of an emotional funk, but let it not be said that grass grew under my feet. Oh no!

For starters, we went apple picking! On a cold and frosty morning, no less. The girls had a grand time, and it proved to be quite a learning experience for all of us.

Mom learned: MapQuest will get you within TEN miles of your destination. Which is close... but c'mon mapmakers! Ten miles is a good stretch off.

The girls learned that the term "hayride" is completely open to interpretation, but that apple trees are much shorter than they imagined. They got to tour the apple processing plant and watch the apples move through the production line getting washed, polished and picked over. They saw the oldest tree in the orchard, still putting out despite the inside of the trunk having rotted out. Then they got to pick a few apples.

We all played the game, "What's that smell?" as we toured the facilities. It was unbearably awful! One child suggested vomit, though the tour guide said it was a mix of apples, wood, and insulation. Chemicals and rotting apples, maybe? It was bad. But we soldiered on, and made it through the building without adding to the smell.

Once we cleared the back door of the plant, I was startled to see a cemetary bordering the orchard. Now I don't know a heck of a lot about water tables and casket permeability, but it gave me a sudden case of the Soylent Green heebie jeebies. Nonetheless, the girls were determined to bring home some apples to make pie...



Next up, we co-hosted our co-op get together. We hiked around in the forest on another cold and frosty morning and collected leaves with the few families that were daring enough to brave the near-freezing temperatures.

The kids had a great time, and I got to put my poison ivy knowledge to use. I made up some posionous plant identification necklaces for the the kids to wear, and we were able to identify both poison ivy and poison oak on the walk.



Then we took another early-morning, FREEZING COLD, field trip to a local farm. The kids got to ride a donkey, feed some goats, hold baby chicks, pet a cow and a horse, and go on a hayride... complete with actual hay! The bumpy hayride took us through a shallow creek and to a huge corn maze. The girls ran ahead and Einstein raced along to keep track of them.

Meanwhile, I bumbled my way through with Kitty Bill, who after several twists and turns decided corn mazes weren't his thing. And he fussed, and kicked, and screamed, and inadvertently kicked the digital camera out of my coat pocket.... somewhere... along the way... in the maze of corn....

I didn't notice right away, of course. It's some kind of Murphy's Law. We walked a good way ahead of it, trying new paths and twisting ourselves around. It wasn't until I gave up and sat down amidst the corn and nursed him that I realized I didn't have the camera. Of course Kitty Bill and I had to turn back at that point. Luckily, we met up with Einstein and the girls just then and I let him know about our camera misfortune before winding my way back through the field, trying to retrace my steps through the maze. I kept asking Kitty Bill, "Does any of this corn look familiar?" But he wasn't having any of it. He only wanted to nurse, again.

Amazingly enough, I finally found the camera. But it took me a bit longer than Einstein expected, so while I was coming out of the maze entrance, he had gone back in the exit trying to find me. He shouted my name and worked his way deeper into the maze. I walked around to the exit and shouted his name to no avail. It was absurd, and awfully cold, and we still had a pumpkin patch to wade through.

After collecting Einstein, we headed over to the great pumpkin hunt, where in a large field of pumpkins and bramble there was ONE pumpkin marked with an X. The finder of said pumpkin was promised great treasure. So several families looked along with us, but after an hour we finally gave up thinking it must be some kind of a joke. Then to prove us wrong, the farmer drags Einstein back out into the field to show him... but he can't find it either. Finally, he wades through a thick patch of bramble and there it is, a wee little thing, marked up just like he said. The treasure? Blowpops. We talked him into letting us take home a small pumpkin instead, and made our way home. Whew!

And the adventure continues...

Eating our young

When I started this blog up months ago, it was my hope that Einstein (the central father, husband, and mad-scientist force in our lives) would feel free to contribute. We're a team after all, or at least that's the goal. Homeschooling is a family endeavor, and the dad in this house has plenty to say about it, as well. Here's Einstein's take, sort of a Natural Science lesson, wouldn't you say?

Sunburst is always wanting to play animal games where she is a horse or a dog and I'm the owner, or the other way around. It gets repetitive after a while and I'm always looking for ways to mix things up. So yesterday I thought, what if we read some little
snippet from the Becoming a Tiger book, and then act it out.

The first snippet I read was about the sharp-shinned hawk, which apparently isn't born knowing what size food it should be hunting. So when some ecologists went out and watched what sharp-shinned hawks tried to catch they found out that baby sharp-shinned hawks tend to go after food that is too big or difficult to catch (like pigeons). Adult sharp-shinned hawks know better and only hunt little guys like sparrows.

Perfect. First we got out the bird book and I showed Sunburst what a sharp-shinned hawk looks like.

"You be a young sharp-shinned hawk," I said, "and I'll be a pigeon."

WHAM!

Peck, peck, peck!!!

Lots of pigeon and hawk shrieks, and then the pigeon has some sharp-shinned hawk for lunch.

"That's not how it goes, Dad. Pigeon's don't eat hawks."

"Okay. Now I'll be an adult sharp-shinned hawk and you be a sparrow."

SWOOOSH. WHAM!!!

I pick her up and fly her up on to the couch, where I eat her. Yum.

And so it goes back and forth like this for a while and somehow
never gets boring.

How cursive saved the piano

Yesterday Sunburst hauled out her McGuffey Reader* and wanted to play "school." Basically what that entails is her setting up a makeshift desk space on the end table and reading a lesson to me. She starts by pronouncing the new vocabulary words and then reads through the lesson. Sometimes she does only one, sometimes several lessons, in one sitting. It's her call.

This is unschooling in action. Buying and using these books were entirely her idea. She taught herself to read using these books and is determined to work her way through the entire set, knowing full well that it will take a long time. She's near the end of the third book now (Second Reader.) These books are from the 1800's and she equates them with Mary and Laura Ingalls-- hence they are her passion.

The lessons in these books are mostly done in a serif typeface, similar to Times Roman font. But some of the lessons, here and there, are written in script. These script lessons are meant to be copied out on your slate board to practice your handwriting. We haven't been doing that at all. Instead, Sunburst has wanted me to copy them over in print so that she could read them. She tried copying my print, but it proved to be too tedious at the time, and she was happy enough just to read them rather than write. Her reading skills have far exceeded her capacity for copywork.

Yesterday was different though. She wanted to do some slate work. She wanted to copy something out. Certainly not the whole lesson though... this need coupled with two letters she recently received from friends in Texas with curious cursive signatures seemed to lead us down an obvious path. So I showed her her name in cursive. I so remember longing to write in cursive at seven or eight. I would fill page after page with loops upon loops, pretending that I too could write in this mysterious language.

One name quickly led to another... herself, her sister, Mom, Dad, and three of her friends. She was giddy and completely satisfied with this and practiced them over and over and over.

This morning she headed straight over to the piano and starting plinking out songs... something she hasn't done in a while. She lost her fervor for the piano and I let it sit while we focused instead on the pentatonic flute for the last three weeks. But today she plinked out three new melodies, and we wrote them down. Then we pulled out her piano books and looked through them trying to remember where she left off after that hairy sticker business. I marked a few pages for her to try, and suggested that when she had played them to her satisfaction she could initial them. And if she liked she could do it in cursive.

She upped the ante and chose to write her first name in cursive on each page she mastered, and started going back through the entire book signing her name on each page she had played... even surpassing what I had earmarked for her to do. It was like watching a fire reignite. She was thrilled with this new prospect of putting her name down in such beautiful letters. And even more so, thrilled with the idea of taking on the piano again.

After this she picked up her Reader and noticed that she could actually read most of the script lesson easily. Just by practicing a few names the day before she could now read cursive!

*You can view other examples of McGuffey Reader lessons here.

Senora Rosa

It seems we have a freeloader in our midst.

By day, Senora Rosa has been hiding out in my office closet. By night, the children are sure she has been having run of the house --scattering paper and yarn and small wooly toys all over the place. (Between you and me, I think it's the cat,) but maybe it could be Senora Rosa. She does look a bit devious if you ask me... like something you'd find in one of those voodoo shops in New Orleans.* Ah, but how the children LOVE her. She's one of the family!

Ultimately we decided it was high time she earn her keep. While our beloved Poppy is recuperating from a "very bad accident," (i.e. Sunburst stepped on her,) Senora Rosa will take over language lessons. She's got a good selection of songs going thus far:

From Cante, Cante, Elephante - Mary Thienes-Schunemann
Buenos Dias/Good morning
Uno, dos, tres.../One, two, three...
Pito, pito, colorito/Good morning, early bird (my absolute favorite thus far)

From Teach Me... Spanish - Judy Mahoney
Los mas que nos reunimos/The more we get together

From The Wind is Telling Secrets - Sarah Pirtle
Mi cuerpo hace musica/There's music inside me (a kicky tune, indeed!)


*Senora Rosa is a bit of Sara voodoo, inspired by the amazing work of my favorite puppeteer and dear friend, Ellen.
Stuff a medium paper sack (the kind w/o a bottom) with crumpled newspaper and a large dowel rod. Tie securely. Add strips of gooey newspaper to make facial features. Let dry. Paint with tempera or acrylic paint. Add hair, fabric, and voila! Your own homeschool mascot/voodoo doll comes to life. Be sure to put them to work!

Deviating from the plan

Remember The Clown of God form drawing lesson? Things are not going according to plan.

We got to form #3, the arch of rainbows over a horizontal line. We struggled with the mirror form, and it proved to be a bit harder than I had anticipated. Although she completed the form well enough to put in her book, the next form I had planned were those tricky circle forms. I looked at them, sighed, and decided to give the girl a break.

We deviated from the plan. Just a little. After all Giovanni doesn't just juggle circular items. As per the story by Tomie dePaola:

"First the sticks, then the plates, then the clubs,
rings, and burning torches.

Finally the rainbow of colored balls."

I'm not reading the story, just retelling it, so of course I messed it up a bit. First we did the plates.

Phew! Plates were challenging for her, but much easier to draw bottom to top, than top to bottom.

Next we did sticks. This one proved to be the simplest form yet.

Then the rings, or ring, singular. A simple circle. Very plain and round. We did this last year in our Robin Red form drawing block, but it was one of those forms she just had to accept as her best work and move ahead. It was terribly hard. A circle of dread. So of course we came back to it. That's what you do with circles, you circle back around.

She did pretty well in practice the first day. We worked together drawing circles, trying to see how many perfect circles we could fit on our chalkboards. When we messed up, we erased them. But each perfect one we saved. I think we ended up with 20 apiece. Then we tried to see how many near perfect ones we could draw in a row. It was perhaps the most fun we have had yet drawing forms.

Circles aren't easy. As you can see Sunburst had some good ones. She got to choose which ones we kept, both hers and mine. I think she was a bit tougher with my drawings than with her own. Her efforts are in pink, mine are in cream.

Then we took a day off from forms for our homeschool friends co-op... and then recovery from said co-op. Today when we returned back to our lesson her circle drawing was falling off on the end. She seemed to be racing back to the top, making deformed eggs or shaving the edges off as shown below.

So we went at it from a different angle.

"It looks like you're racing home," I said. "You don't have to hurry, you have plenty of time to see everything in the garden. Out here on the right are the lovely roses. Can you visit them on your way home? They do smell so wonderful just now."

Sometimes it surprises me that she doesn't look at me like I have three heads. She said something akin to, "Oh yes. I'd love to see the roses. I'll try to go over there next time." And then she slowed down and tried to round out that right side. Extend it a bit more rather than racing to an angular finish. While she practiced I sang a little song,"

"Oh~ go the lovely way...
Oh~ go the lovely way...
Oh~ go the lovely way back home."

Sometimes her circle still turned out wonky, but more and more she started going the lovely way and making a beautiful arch on that side. She even sang along with me! Once in awhile her circle went really awry, and we laughed about her visiting the garbage dump instead of the roses. Then we talked about how sometimes you might want to visit the garbage dump. Sometimes you might want that particular shape. You never know. But right now, we're making lovely round circles instead.

And she did great until we got out her book. And the circle she drew was perhaps her worst yet. I brought out her book from last year and we compared the two circles. I called this "information," and she called it, "Proof that she'll never, ever be able to draw circles." But she knew this wasn't true. When this happens in her book, as it has before, she gets to draw it on a new paper and we glue it in over top of the less than desirable form. Which is what we finally did. It's still not perfect, but it's better than last year and she's satisfied with it. That's what really matters to me. Acceptance reigns rather than defeat.

However, I think we'll be returning to this form again until it can work itself out. We must, since there are a lot of circular forms we haven't even hit upon yet.

We moved right along and approached the burning torches, or just the flame end, circles within circles. She made an even better circle in her book and worked the repetitions of smaller circles inside of it. We have one more circle to make, "the golden sun in the heavens" before we move on to some different forms.

I'm ready for something more linear, myself.

Piles!

Lately I've been committed to tackling one thing a day in my house. There are certain jobs that I avoid at all costs, like the linen cupboard, that far corner of my kitchen counter, my sewing table, anything that lives under the couch... I could come up with plenty of excuses, and usually do, about why I avoid these things like the plague. But really I just haven't had the fortitude to deal with it... until now.

Today, during Kitty Bill's nap, I set the girls up at the table with some drawing materials and drinks and dove head first into the pile formerly known as my desk. It is the main dumping ground for lost art and broken toys. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, or something like that. It was really a mess, but I won't get into that. It's better now. Not perfect, not finished, but I can see relative deskness. Hurrah! Hurrah!

In doing this great task, I feel like I can also see the surface of my brain. Very therapeutic this desk-cleaning business. But now I seem to have uncovered this enormous amount of artwork created by my wonderfully artistic and prolific children. Piles and piles and piles of it. A forest worth of paper in all shapes, hues, and sizes.

What do you do with this stuff? Do you throw it away when they're asleep? Do you scan it all in? Do you faithfully bind it up in booklets? Do you box it up and stick it in the attic? Do you wallpaper the entire house, including ceilings? Do you date it, and press it, and coddle it for the rest of their lives?

What do YOU do with your piles?

Welcoming Autumn

We totally and completely missed the Autumnal equinox last year. We were still living in Austin, Texas, snuggling in a new baby while simultaneously up to our elbows in moving boxes as we geared up for our move to the Midwest. It was sweltering hot then, and Autumn just never occurred to any of us.

Fast forward one year, and it's chilly out. The leaves are turning rainbow hues and dropping all around us. Slowly, but surely, one by one. We've been collecting them on our walks and noticing the quiet but steady drift into Autumn. We're singing lovely songs like "The Leaves are Green," and "Yellow the Bracken," rejoicing in all the crisp apples and fresh winter squash, and harvesting the last of our own summer garden. Drying and freezing and packing it all away for the cooler months.

It's a busy time, Autumn is. We snuck in a small harvest celebration to welcome the turning of the season. A few stories around the lantern*, warm food, and a familiar old song, "My Roots Go Down," one that we learned with some friends in Texas. It was our small way of honoring the good times we spent there and marking our journey here. This weekend it will be one year since our move, and Einstein is already applying for jobs for next Fall when his research grant expires. We're doggedly trying to put down our roots... to feel solid in the earth, even if we have to pull them back up again.

"My Roots Go Down" - by Sarah Pirtle

Chorus:
My roots go down, down to the earth.
My roots go down, down to the earth.
My roots go down, down to the earth.
My roots go down.

Every verse is different, made up on the spot. You sing a line, repeat it twice, and end it with "My roots go down." Then follow with the chorus.

The girls LOVED making up their own verses:

I am a dogwood shimmering in the starlight.

I am a climbing tree letting someone climb.

And our roots go down...

*We were inspired to make our own leaf lantern by our dear friend Aleisha. Not only did she turn us on to the wonderful book Exploring the Forest with Grandforest Tree, she's got a beautiful Autumn lantern up on her site as well. She's just full of cool ideas.

The Royal Ball

This morning Sunburst wanted to do "school" which is different than the schule we normally do. She wanted to do "proper school" where she dresses up as the character of the day/week/month and pulls up a chair to the end table and says, "Teacher! Teacher! I'm ready for school."

Today she was Samantha.

Anyway, it seemed like a good time to pull out an idea that I had been thinking about but hadn't completely thought through yet: Math through paper folding. I totally winged it, and it turned out swell.

We started out each with a square of paper. It was the Royal Cake. How shall we cut it? Can we divide it into two slices? What about four? What if we fold it this way? Oh my, 8 pieces! Let's do that again! Wow, 16 pieces! Sunburst folded it in half and in half and in half until she couldn't crease the paper any longer.

It was a lot of counting, but Einstein helped out by writing our totals down on the chalkboard.

1
2
4
8
16
32

Hmmm... was there some sort of pattern emerging? Oh yes! 1+1 is 2. 4 is 2+2. 8 is 4+4. Sunburst noticed that every time you fold it in half again, you double the number of cake slices. "Splendid, just splendid dear," said the Queen. "Now keep folding, I say! Keep folding!"

She ended up with 128 slices of cake. Minus the King and Queen, how many guests could they serve?

But boy, were they puny slices! "This will never do!" Cried the Queen in her haughtiest voice. "Our guests are not mere mice! They shall starve on such a niblet! We shall have to cut larger pieces!" (Being a haughty queen is quite fun!)

So Sunburst looked over all the options and decided that the division of 16 made adequate pieces. Not too large, "We don't want them to start vomiting into their crystal goblets!" And not too small. "Our guests are not mice!" So then we started subtracting the King and Queen and the two Royal Princesses to see how many guests we could invite.

Of those 12, we mused how many invitations we would need to write. Twelve? What if some of them live together? What if they are families? Yes, what if there were two people in each family? Or three? Or four?...

When we finally figured it all out, then we had to decide how we would deliver these invitations. The Royal Horses all had the flu. Whatever shall we do? Of course, we'll send out the Royal Bird! We put all that paper folding practice just then to use making our own origami birds. They flew around the room and finally nested in the well of Einstein's banjo.

Moonshine also wanted a princess origami doll. So we folded one up and decorated it with stamps and such.

It was a Rollicking, Royal Good Time. And I dare say, we may have learned something.

Forms A'hoy!

We're chugging along with our form drawing. So far so good, though it's a bit premature to tell really. However, just two days into the lesson I'm already struck by how this form drawing stuff never ceases to surprise me. It's like some kind of magic.

I thought the first form I came up with, good old Giovanni juggling, would prove to be a bit more challenging. But no. We warmed up with some forms we did last year. Then we took our new form in parts, drew it in the air with our fingers, with our feet on the floor, used the chalkboard and finally pulled out those huge sheets of newsprint and went to town. Sunburst figured it out fairly quickly:

I like to let each form sit overnight before we draw it in the main lesson book. The forms seem to fix themselves overnight and just flow the next day. This is how it came out in her book:

Then I presented the crowd form. Whew! She said to me, "It's only the second form, shouldn't it be the second easiest?" Well, you never can tell which ones will be hard. Everyone is different. To her credit, Sunburst worked on it pretty steadily for quite awhile. I could tell right away though that it was a tricky one for her.

We worked inside for a bit then took it outside on the front porch. I drew it really large so that she could trace over it a few times and we could walk it with our feet.

While we were doing that, Moonshine (age 4) was busy at work drawing chalk bunnies. She came and pulled me away to show me that she had made Giovanni all on her own.

Obviously I let little sister listen in on our stories and lessons. I give her paper and crayons and she goes to town drawing her own things. Once in awhile she will draw an image from a story, but for the most part she is happily lost in her little dreamy world. Oddly enough, Moonshine drew the first form from Sunburst's first grade lessons, too. My curiousity piqued, I pulled out the newsprint Moonshine was working on while we practiced Giovanni.

Two females. Normal 4-year-old stufff, I think. Can you see them? See all the horizontal lines on that dress? Now check out the hair. Little spirals on the ends, like curls. She has started making these little spirals lately, as well as decorating dresses with layers upon layers of frill-- or running curves. I can't help but wonder what it will be like to teach her in two years.

Meanwhile, Sunburst was still having fits with this "crowd" form. "It's too hard! I'm trying, but I can't do it!" And then came the tears... not a bunch, but they welled up in her frustration. I've figured out that's my cue that I've selected the right form for her. And also, that it's time to shift gears and change the presentation.

I ushered her back in the house for a cup of warm tea and a snack. While the tea was brewing I asked her to practice it on newsprint again, just once more. I stood there looking at the form I had drawn on the chalkboard, and suddenly it occured to me that it was International Talk Like a Pirate Day. And oddly enough, that crowd form also looked like the edge of a pirate ship. All it needed was some help. Sunburst got so sidetracked watching me morph my form into a picture that she forgot she was "done," turned her paper over and started again.

This time she just looked at me and grinned. "Arrrr! Ship a'hoy!"

Juggling some new forms

Our school supplies finally arrived, so last night I stayed up long after I should have and finalized my plans for our next lesson. I'm presenting a 3 week block on Form Drawing using the story of The Clown of God. It's a fairly intense story that circles the seasons of one man's, or clown's, life. It touches upon religion and purpose and a sense of something more. It's not a light story, but it seems to fit, and I feel good about it.

Sunburst has never heard this story before. I picked it up on a whim at the bookstore earlier this summer. It spoke to me when I read it and seemed to mirror the spirit world connection that's present in the Saint Stories for Grade 2. The more I looked at it, the more I realized how it was just brimming with forms. And voila!

I read through my pile* of form drawing books and printouts late last night and started sketching the possibilities. I came up with twelve forms that I'm really happy with. My plan is to retell the story in bits as we go along. The ending is really surprising and magical (ok, and kind of freaky,) so I want to leave that for later. The rest of the story is rich enough that it will sustain her as we go along.

I would love to see what forms other Waldorf homeschoolers are covering with their children, so in the spirit of sharing, here are the twelve forms I came up with, roughly sketched/crammed onto the chalkboard. I've tried to incorporate some metamorphosing forms (where you add onto them/change them,) running forms, vertical and horizontal symmetry, lemniscates, growing forms, inward/centering forms, invisible lines, and circles upon circles. A story about juggling really works for all these circular forms!

What's really crazy is how symbolic these forms turned out to be. #1 (top left) is a simple metamorphosing form of a young Giovanni juggling. Though it kind of also looks like a cross emanating rays of light. Our last form, #12 (bottom right) shows a simple lemniscate (numeral 8) and then working a lemniscate inside a lemniscate. It represents the statue of Mary holding the Christ child holding Giovanni's golden ball. But it's also this very solidly infinite thing... and really gives the sense of holding or being held. And yet, it's really not an overly religious story. The only thing that's really in your face is the magic, the mystery, the possibility...

Though you don't have to tell these long, drawn-out stories to do Form Drawing, it's a good idea to make sure the lines on the page represent something tangible that a child can grasp and roll around in their imagination.

The forms I've chosen will represent:
1. Giovanni juggling (Spring)
2. Crowd (young and old)
3. juggling the rainbow balls
4-5. different balls?
6. I think I'll shift this to #11, and make it be the balls rising higher than ever before
7. crowd applauding (Summer)
8. Little Brothers
9. Giovanni old and defeated (Autumn)
10. city scape
11. candle light (Winter)
12. Mary, Christ, and the golden ball

*For those genuinely interested, my pile of Form Drawing Resources includes:
Form Drawing Grades One through Four - Laura Embrey-Stein & Ernst Schuberth
Form Drawing - Hans Niederhauser & Margaret Frohlich
Form Drawing for the Homeschooling Parent - Barbara Dewey
MillenialChild.com - Eugene Schwartz
Form Drawing for Young Children: Grades 1 to 3 - Marsha Johnson (WaldorfHomeEducators)
Journey to Numeria - Alan Whitehead, Spiritual Syllabus