A few photos from our Block on the Norse Myths...

 

One of our favorite blocks from Grade 4 was the Norse Mythology Block.

 

There are a lot of wonderful blogs and websites to help inspire creativity, but my favorite books are listed below.  Padraic Colum's book is a fine read to fluff out more details for when you are telling one of the myths to your child.  But for drawing inspiration, the D’Auelaires book was fantastic!

 

Here are some of my chalk drawings.  I have yet to find the other stories we did - they are buried in my photo log somewhere - but here is something to get you started!  I used the D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths for the drawings.  They are just stunning and even more so when you get them on the chalkboard.  The cover world is a nice starting point before you being the tales so you and your child can familiarize yourselves for further enjoyment.

Here is from Yggdrasil, the World Tree...

 

 

Some wonderful more thorough coverage of this block can be found at these links:

 

Waldorf Homeschoolers: http://www.waldorfhomeschoolers.com/norse-myths

 

Sure as the World: http://sureastheworld.com/2012/04/11/norse-mythology-block-2/

 

Homeschooling Waldorf has some beautiful wet on wet watercolor paintings that may inspire you: http://homeschoolingwaldorf.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/watercolor-painting/

 

Sorry I have such little time as of late to showcase more of what we are doing, but I am happy if you can find even a little inspiration from our journey! 

 



The King of Ireland's Son

The King of Ireland's Son by

Padraic Colum

What a fun month March was for us - Springtime and Irish legends, along with some Language Arts tied into the block. We had such fun!

We're have been preparing a nature project and found some old stumps from a Christmas tree farm that we collected. You can contact one by you and ask them if you can pick up a bunch and they usually will welcome the clean-up and you get some free nature supplies for various craft and school projects! We clean ours off and then bake at a low setting to be sure we're not bringing termites and things into the house.

I apologize that this post will be somewhat short, but we are restructuring things in our home and I have been so busy that I haven't taken the time to document as much or share, but I'm goint to start back as soon as I can and until then, wanted to share this for the month of March and Grade 2!

Our monthly book was "The King of Ireland's Son" and we wove it into our homeschooling, as well. Here are a few pictures of some drawings and MLB's that we did that were tied into the story. Following Eric Fairman's suggestion of color coding grammar, we put our nouns in one color and our verbs in another and formed short sentences. Here are a couple more pictures that we tied into the story. I also wanted to share one of my favorite resources for Irish Legends and it is this book by Yvonne Carroll. Irish Legends for Children contains several wonderful stories to tie into this March Irish block! We also enjoyed stories of St. Patrick and some great legends using some of our favorite Tomie dePaola books! I have been working on various Saint stories that I was hoping to put in one big post and will do so eventually, even if it ends up being summer - lol! Great time to get caught up, right?

Also, I'm really excited because we have decided to move our school back into the old school room upstairs, which had been used recently as a play room. So we emptied it out and prepped it and I just primed it yesterday. I have big plans for this room that I will be sharing as soon as it is finished! Can't wait!

Hope you are all having a wonderful spring and enjoying your little elves and pixies grow!

LA Block: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

"Where the Mountain Meets the Moon"

by Grace Lin

Carrie from The Parenting Passageway tipped me off to this great book this summer. As usual, she was right. It's a wonderful mix of fairy tales wrapped into a lovely cultural story about a young poor girl in China who wants to change her family's fortune. After hearing inspiring stories told by her Ba (father), she follows her heart on a magical journey complete with talking goldfish and a lovable dragon on her way to find The Old Man of the Moon who will hopefully tell her how to help save her family from their difficult reality.

The chapters are short, but don't kid yourself, your children will not want you to put this book down - lol! We are more than half way through it and I ended up changing gears and have been planning our whole Jan block around this book.

I am drawing a picture from the book twice a week that the girls will then copy into their MLB's. They have been helping me write sentences/summaries that they are placing in their book, on the page next to their drawing. Above the drawing, is also a very short sentence in which the nouns are identified in blue (and the verbs will be identified in red starting this week as we are covering a part of speech each week). Here is an example:

.

We are writing down words to keep on a large piece of paper that pertain to the book that they are learning. These words are helping them to form sentences of their summaries and are helping reading, writing, and spelling. They are also learning the beginnings of punctuation.

Along with beeswax modeling, a traditional Chinese meal, and a little lesson on the Chinese New Year (Feb 3rd this year), we are enjoying painting.

Elena is the type of child who is more comfortable following a model. When she feels satisfied, she then takes little steps to branch out to make something her own.

Charley, on the other hand, has always marched to the beat of her own drum. Even though we've discussed why we lay down the background first and then remove paint to add an element, she was very insistent on trying it this way - putting the dragon down and then painting around it. It was a good way for her to see that it does not layer the picture well, though I admit, it does have a pretty neat effect. It is also more challenging if the paint runs a bit, as wet on wet tends to do. Her picture took a lot longer than the others.

Elena's is listed below...

Setting them out to dry...

The girls are happily preparing to make their First Reconciliation at the end of this month, so we've been heavy into religious education, which fits beautifully in with the studies of the Saints this year. Here Charley is with our long term foster pup, Stanley (10 years old). He's helping her prepare :) Stanley had a dental whereby he lost most of his teeth, so his little tongue hangs out to the side permanently. Once in a while he pulls it all the way in his mouth, but we think it just adds to his charm! He doesn't see well, but he is a total sweetheart. I have fallen really hard for this little senior. We've had him a month now, but he's been in the rescue since August and no interest in him yet (good for me, right?!?! :D)

Another part of the 2nd grade curriculum is learning the basic parts of speech. We have started learning about nouns and verbs. The first week, we tackled nouns. I found some fun books to enhance our understanding. Brian P. Cleary has written some simple books which rhyme and add to the fun. The other selection of books are more advanced, so I cover the first few pages, but then when it goes off on specifics that we are not yet ready for (branching off into more detail than we are ready for at this moment "Imperative", "tenses", "helping verbs") then I am just stopping there. These books (by Ruth Heller) will be great as we progress, but I am finding the Cleary books to be more on our current level.

We always allow lots of time for freeplay and the Ostheimers are still favorites!

This week's saint was St. Antony of Egypt. His feast day was on January 17th, the day after the girls daddy (who is also an Anthony) had a very special b-day!

For this St. Antony, I gleaned inspiration from "Stories of the Saints", as well as the Catholic teachings found online. EWTN has more extensive explanations, like St. Antony of Egypt's found here. Not sure how much I like this book yet, but we'll see over time. We are doing St. Agnes tomorrow for her feast day and a lot of liberties have been taken in the "Stories of the Saints" book. My question is - how true do we need to make them to be historically accurate, especially as a Roman Catholic who wants to respect that history of the church - versus making the story speak to the child with fantastical liberties, ya know? I am trying my very best to do both so I'm finding that pulling some elements from the prewritten stories, coupled with the accounts from the church is probably the best way to tailor it to our little ones.

It was Daddy's birthday on Sunday...

Charley is holding little Ralph - our one week foster

as we help out the head of our rescue.

And finally - some delicious homemade granola!

Charley loves her granola so I decided it's about time I make my own organic granola. I asked the awesome mamas at the Green Tara Mama Yahoo Group and got several great recipes to try. This one came in first and so we gave it a whirl - very good (and easy)!

This recipe came from Leslie K. from the Green Tara Mama Yahoo Group:

Slow Cooker granola (A friend sent this recipe to me, she said it came from "Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker" by Robin Robertson).

5 cups oats
1 cup sliced almonds
3/4 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup sesame seeds
2/3 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup canola
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Mix all of the ingredients in a crockpot. Do NOT cover with the lid. Cook for 1.5 hours on high, then turn to low and cook for 2 more hours. Stir occasionally. Spread on cookie sheets to cool and dry until crispy. Yields about 8 cups.

Catching Up...Math Block - Math Factor Tree

Math Block: Math Factor Tree by Marsha Johnson

of the Waldorf Home Educators Yahoo Group

Math was so bland when I learned it in a traditional school, so I'm thrilled that waldorf focuses on not only multi-sensory learning, but also a true deep understanding of the concepts of math. One of the best recommendations I have for all you waldorf inspired homeschooling mamas out there is to join Marsha Johnson's waldorf group. Even if you never read an email posted to the group, you can access her free files, which are wonderful! She is so generous to share them with us for no charge. I found the pdf file for the Math Factor Tree by going into:

- Files
- Age Specific Curriculum
- Grade 2
- factortrees.pdf

Since I worked mainly with gnomes last year with the 4 processes, yet it was fall and we had plenty of acorns and nuts to count, I decided to combine the two to add to Marsha's skeleton. We were also reading the story of King Arthur, so I made up a story of Merlin (and baby Arthur) who traveled through the forest one day and came upon two little squirrels who had no home to call their own. They were also very hungry as all the acorns had disappeared from the forest. Merlin conjured up a magic acorn and placed it in the soil. The acorn grew right before their very eyes into a Magic Math Factor Tree...

The one trunk of the tree became a One Tree...


The girls copied it into their MLB's.


We have been practicing form drawing and have been using the forms to decorate the edges of their MLB's. This form was very hard, but they both wanted to attempt it, so they did!


As our week continued, we embellished the story and the girls retold and added to it. Soon, the deer and wolves came into the forest to share in the bounty.


The girls took this picture of their crayons after school - creativity abounds!


We also added a lot of baking to this block. This is our homemade zucchini bread using a gigantic organic zucchini from my sister's prolific garden in Colorado! Mmmmmm....


Soon the Magic Math Factor Tree split into two and became a Two Tree...


Then a Three Tree... (this tree is drawn in several ways - 3= 1+1+1 and 3=2+1...)

More baking...we actually baked 10-12 different types of holiday cookies for a dog rescue fundraiser. We doubled the recipe and then cut it in half so they could each measure out the same amount - lol!

Meanwhile...the Magic Math Factor Tree split into Four... (4=1+1+1+1, 4=2+2, 4=3+1 or 1+3, etc)

And five...

And six...all the way up to twelve!

We stopped there - lol! This particular block in our math block took about a week and we had a lot of fun with it.

We started to read the King Arthur book by Roger Lancelyn Green, but it just didn't work for us at this age. It is a version we will return to when the girls are a bit older. However, I returned to a wonderful version of the story which was a great buy by my mother-in-law and is hard to find (it is printed in England for our friends across the sea and seems to be more available there).

If you can find it, it's called, "Knights of the Grail" by Linda Proud. It's published by St. James Publishing. I first read it to the girls when they were 5 years old and they enjoyed it immensely. Their daddy had been telling them stories of King Arthur and Sir Gawain and Sir Lancelot since they were very small. It is broken up into very short chapters, so makes a good night time read aloud.