Language Arts Block III: Lower Case Letters...Summary

For our last Language Arts Block, I had originally planned a fairytale block, but the girls were ready to cement their lower case learning, so we switched gears and I presented the lower case letters to them in a short two week block that was combined with our last nature studies block (which is actually four weeks long - two weeks with lower case letters and two weeks with form drawing review), as indicated in Eric Fairman's POD Volume I: Grade I book. In each post, I cover the books we used.

Week One can be found here.

Week Two can be found here.

Language Arts Block III: Lower Case Letters & Nature Stories (con't)...

Please Send Help And Soldiers!

Marsha Johnson has a very short document on teaching lower case letters in her files section (located in Curriculum/Grade 1 and Grade 2).

She has a wonderful story about a king who is engaging in a battle that they are quickly losing. He needs more soldiers, so he orders his scribe to chisel a message into a tablet. Not using vowels or lower case letters, what the scribe chisels is "PLSSNDHLPNDSLDRS". Of course, the people in the village can not figure out what the message means and misinterpret, until they finally figure it out. They send help in the nick of time and the battle is won!

Afterwards, the King decides they need to figure out a better way to communicate and henceforth, writing on scrolls and lower case letters (and vowels) are invented!

So after telling the story to the girls, I got a large roll of easel paper out and wrote giant letters with them watching - first the capital and then the lower case right next to it. When we were done, we took the scroll outside and unrolled it on the grass.

The girls would start at one end, read each letter and then once she got to the end, she'd run back to the start again!

They then rolled it up and tied the scroll with a finger knit chain.


I then wrote out more of the letters on more easel paper and gave them paints and a brush so they could practice the letters. We broke the alphabet up to three days worth, as suggested by Mrs. M, and practiced each day writing with different mediums.

Done at last with this scroll!


We did some handwork, making some fleece shirts
for our stuffed animals...

Day 2 of the alphabet project consisted of writing the letters with our sandscapes - using stones, sticks, noses, toes, acorns, etc...both in capitals and lower case...


After the lesson, I read them a lovely, lovely story by Mrs. Alfred Gatty called, "The Butterfly's Children". I got my version from "Wholesome Childhood", but found another lovely version here. It is about a butterfly who, realizing she is about to expire, asks a lowly caterpillar to care for her butterfly babies. Both assume they will be born as butterflies and when the butterfly dies, the caterpillar panics, seeking out the wisdom of a lark who tells her that the eggs will hatch caterpillars! And furthermore, she will one day be a butterfly herself! She doesn't believe him - sure enough, they are born as such and she learns a wonderful lesson about faith! The ending is really touching (I won't give it away here)...

The story was actually perfect timing as we are participating in the "Little Flowers Girls' Club" which is for Catholic girls who learn about the Saints and their virtues. I'm really thrilled that this also plays in beautifully with our Grade 2 focus next year, which is on Saints and Heroes (and Fables)! Anyway, last month we learned about St. Catherine of Siena and her virtue was faith! (will blog pictures of the club in the future) - but the story was wonderful! Don't ya love it when things naturally fall into place as such :D

We then drew pictures in our MLB's and wrote a short summary...


Day three, we worked the alphabet with our lap chalkboards. We would start at the beginning, to repractice, and then continue on to Z!

Our nature story on Day 3 was from Margaret Peckham's "Nature Stories" book, called "The Butterfly". It's a sweet story about a butterfly who hatches one spring day. The Sun Fairies help dry his wings and he searches for someone else to play with. He mistakes a toadstool for a butterfly and meets a grumpy gnome and then flies to some flowers, thinking they might be butterflies and he drinks their nectar. Finally, giving up hope, he hears another exclaim, "Here I am, I will play with you."

And doubting that, he sees the Sun Fairies drying the wings of a beautiful butterfly and they fly happily away together.

We are now off on a nature hunt this weekend, in search of butterfly eggs, chrysalises, caterpillars, and butterflies!

We will begin our last formal June lessons next week by incorporating form drawing and nature studies to wrap up our year!

Maths Block II: Gnome Plus (Add)

This past week, we introduced the Plus Gnome to the girls as we continued the story. Lucy and Phineas, led by the Ancient Wolf and Gnome Share, headed back over through the Pine Cone Forest (earth element) on the journey to get the children back home. Here are some of the activities we did this past week.

As they got deeper into the forest, they suddenly heard a voice shouting,

"Mine! Mine! Mine!

They're all Mine!"

And out came a chubby green gnome, his pockets bulging with gems.

He was rather friendly, but very suspicious that perhaps the children were going to want to take something that he found. He gathered his precious amethyst crystals and clung fast to them.

Gnome Share introduced the children to him and the girls told Gnome Plus the story of how the children came to this enchanted land.

We then were introduced to the process of adding through whole to parts, just placing gems in a container I had saved for math/sorting. We would start with a number and then divide it into the slots to see that it added up to the same number with which we began.

Gnome Share also convinced Gnome Plus to show us his treasure chest which was full of sparkling (glass) gems.

The girls were introduced to Gnome Plus' sign...

And we drew his picture in our Main Lesson Book.

In retrospect, I wish I would have bought larger MLB's for the younger years since it is hard for the children to space out their letters and make them small enough to fit in a space, so Elena ended up writing over her picture and at that point, I gave her a new page to write her verse on.

Since we only have one blackboard and they were copying it into their MLB's, I used my white board to show them some equations we did together. Charley then drew Gnome Plus & Gnome Share.

The story continued with the children showing Gnome Share and Gnome Plus the *runes* in Roman and Arabic numerals.

They each reached into the bag and took out a certain amount. They put them in numerical order and then counted out the appropriate number of gems to place underneath each number.

Again, I wrote out what they pulled out (later realizing five runes were quite a lot at this juncture so we scaled back to just three each)...

Soon, a donkey and two horses brought out more gems in bags from deep within Gnome Plus' mine so we had to count them.

We matched the numbers on the runes to the number of gems.

We then distributed them among the characters.

For a lot of fun (and I have to credit Marsha Johnson with this idea), we wrote our Plus sign in our sandscapes in all sorts of hilarious ways (chins, noses, elbows, feet, toes, etc) :D

We counted by twos again and jumped from beanbags up and down...

On our final day, I used inspiration from Ron Jarman's, "Teaching Mathematics in Rudolf Steiner Schools" and got down our well loved playscape that I made last year. Jarman has one problem that involves picking some apples off the tree and placing them into three piles that will add up to the number picked...

So we placed apples on the tree and two bunnies sat underneath. Some apples fell to the ground and the bunnies picked them up and counted them. They then placed them into piles for themselves and the other bunnies to share. We did several different exercises surrounding this.

And then we heard some noises and voices getting closer and closer as two gnomes (in Gnome Share & Gnome Plus) colors came out of their cave carrying piles of gold that they mined. (Gnomes were made by my wonderful sister and the gold was actually fish gravel spray painted with gold paint for a field trip we attended last year).

The gold was counted...

And we engaged in several more equations...

Afterwards, we drew in our MLB's - first the playscape scene and then the equations.

Over this week, we also continued our Grimm's number stories with 4,5,6:

4 - "The Four Skillful Brothers"

5 - "The Star Money"

6 - "How Six Men got on in the World"