Our Week of Work

This has been a great week for me. Our rhythm is starting to flow through our days. Even though we still start later than I had hoped, I have relaxed into the fact that we have plenty of time to get everything done. Thursday was a great day where we started our day, had circle time, did our mental math, drumming, reciting poems...both funny and serious....had our main lesson and worked hard on word families and long and short vowel sounds. We did some wonderful drawing and paintings. Jack has come to expect us to paint on Mondays, go to the park on Tuesdays, do form drawing on Wednesdays and knit on Thursdays.....now we have to get the baking/cooking in on Fridays, although he helps me prepare dinner in the crock pot many day

For those who enjoy all the academic work, here is our culmination of a block of work on long and short vowels as well as some other vowel sounds.....you probably can't read the blackboard but I listed all the vowels, short and long, and Jack came up with words that had those sounds in them. Working on word families and recognizing those sounds. Also to the right of the board are our 6 magic words. These were given to Jack by the fairy.....they are sight words for him to learn. He's doing a great job!

s.

These are our filo clay lion and bull for the fable about the Lion and Four Bulls. Pretty good, even if I do say so myself!

We also read the Frogs and the Mice and so Jack made a frog for the nature table.

On Monday we painted. I painted a forest with evergreen trees and am quite proud of it!

Jack painted an owl. And it's an amazing owl. I am continually amazed at his art work.

One day while I was waiting on Jack to finish his picture, I used block and stick crayons to make this picture of sunrise, noon, sunset and night time.

Here's Jack picking out a picture from our new book about animals. We read some wonderful stories from the book the week like "Why Mountain Lion Has The Longest Tail" and "How Skunk got His Stink and White Stripe". Beautiful stories!

One of our stories was about how the squirrel could fly. Here are 3 squirrels on a branch, by me.

And here are Jack's squirrels.

Jack loves to draw! He has become quite the artist for his age. He takes great care and makes sure it's just the way he wants he. He usually has a picture in his head of what he wants to draw for our story.

Today we worked on long vowels a, e and i. We are using word families to hear the sounds vowels make in a word. Jack is getting the hang of it. Each day I notice that he understands more and more what we are doing. We finished up our fable work for the week and listened to The Ant and the Grasshopper for our work on Monday. Aesop's version of Bug's Life!

The picture above is a mad face Jack made with nuts. I was quite impressed by his creativity. He sees things that will work together much better than I do. I guess he's more creative? Or just young enough not to have his ability to see more than is there jaundiced yet. Here's to being 8 years old and seeing so much in your surroundings!

Have a very nutty day!

The Blue Birds

We have a lot of Scrub Jays.....which are blue, in our yard. In the winter we feed them and keep them well. We noticed the other day that we hadn't seen them in a while (it has been summer after all). So I had this idea that we paint pictures of the birds, hang them in the window facing out so the birds could see them. So we did!

Here is Jack's picture. If it looks like an elephant instead of a blue bird, well, you are right. He started out on the bird but it messed up and the blessing of painting is that you can fix any mistake! So as he worked on it he decided it looked like an elephant! He added some legs and viola' there you go. There is a blue bird above the elephant. And notice the lovely red sun!

Here's mine. I'm quite proud of it. I first painted a yellow wash on the paper and then began painting the birds. One by one they improved! Then I used some red and blue to make the branches and then came back in and added blue around the yellow to make the green leaves of the tree. I really like it and I think the birds will too!

So, we painted our pictures and they are now hanging facing out to the birds. We also went outside and filled the two bird feeders to entice the birds back to our trees. We have lovely trees just outside the school room window, and nothing is more fun than stopping in the middle of a lesson to watch a big scrub jay eating his lunch!

Enjoy your day!

Drumming

We have two Remo Children's Gathering Drums. We love to play them during circle time! It's such fun just to bang away. Lots of times what we do is one of us plays a rhythm and the other plays it back. I have seen such improvement in Jack's rhythm since we started this.

Another thing we do is play the rhythm of a poem on the drum. Here we are working on the poem:

Brave and true
will I be
Each good deed
Sets me free
Each kind word
Makes me strong
I will fight
For the right
I will con- quer the wrong.

The rhythm of this poem is short, short, long.....it's a precursor to learning the 3's times table. Once you get the rhythm going then you can use that rhythm to count by 3's, emphasizing the number in the 3's times table.

So here is Jack playing the drums!

The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.

This week we worked on more fables. One of my favorites, The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing was enjoyed by Jack a lot. In fact, you'll see in his drawing he made a tomb stone for that old wolf!

The Sheperd hung the wolf in sheep clothing.

Ahhhh. let's hang that old wolf from a tree. See the Sheperd, the wolf hanging, the tomb stone? And a sheep in the lower right corner. A kettle cooking for???

Our First Two Watercolor Pictures

These are the first two wet-on-wet watercolor pictures we did our first week of school, yes...I'm behind. We were just playing with colors. I think they turned out wonderfully. One thing I have to say about this year, I have been trying to keep us painting weekly. Both Jack and I love to paint and in the past I have let it go because it's so much work to get everything out and clean it all up. But the end results and the enjoyment of painting are well worth the trouble. And now Jack is old enough to help me get everything out! So I have help!

Here is my picture, I was so pleased to see it looked even better dry than it did wet!

It's hard to tell with Jack's but he did a lovely job with colors, he used yellow and blue to make green and then added in red and blue for purple!

Fables

Here are pictures from our fable Juno and the Peacock:

My peacock with the nightingale the tree singing, poor peacock, can't be happy with what he has.....just like many others I know!

Jack's peacock, his is much more colorful and so beautiful!!!

A New Day!

It's been a slow week to get going. Labor day off. Tuesday we had school, Wednesday I was sick.....so today we had a great day of school!

We worked on our fable, the Fox and the Stork. We also worked on word families, short a and short e.....somewhat successful. Jack is just going to be a sight reader. But he likes doing Explode the Code too.....can't figure him out!

Our friends came over to finish up their knitting needles, we made clay ends for the needles and baked them in the oven. Jack and I played Mozart's Sonata in A......Jack is so proud of himself and his recorder.

Labor Day...what is it?

My son asked last night if we were having school today. I told him no, it is a holiday. He was happy but said he thought it was a holiday for adults! Cute.

When we mentioned labor day today, he wanted to know what it was for and I said it was to celebrate all the women who have been in labor to have beautiful children. My husband said "Now that's a day I can celebrate!" How sweet.

So a day off from school, a day off from work......a day off. No one to report to, no one to be responsible to, no work to be done.......

Enjoy!

Monopoly for Fun and Learning!

Don't forget to play! I grew up playing Monopoly with my family. I started when they had to say "give me a green one and a pink one" ($25 in Monopoly money)!

Yes, that's me, the little blond one rolling the dice. My two brothers and my mom, I guess dad was taking the picture. My question......why doesn't anyone have money except my brother?

Anyway, board games are a great way to learn! Monopoly teaches great math skills from counting to money, to adding, subtracting, etc. And no one even knows they are learning something, everyone is just having fun.

First Week of School

I have spent the last few years blogging and working on my website (www.therapeutichomeschooling.org). These sites have been devoted to homeschooling my daughter who is either bipolar, has attachment disorder or both. She is now in a residential treatment center, doing great by the way! We miss her being at home, but she is finally getting the help none of us could provide.

So now I am homeschooling my 8 year old son the Waldorf Way....the only way to school for us. And I decided I want to delve into our days....share them with friends and family, and like minded people. Share OUR homeschooling.....not trying to help anyone else with their difficult child, not trying to help anyone (unless you want to learn about Waldorf Education). Just want to put down our days for our own enjoyment.

We just finished our first week of school. It was an exciting start and the week went well. Had a few glitches but we are on the right track. I think I have planning and executing down after 5 years (this is my 6th). So it's easier for me, I feel confident about what I am doing.

The glitches, well a daughter in a residential treatment center requires attention to the staff, her therapist, her, etc. and this week was unusual in that we had our monthly phone conference and we had to deal with an unresolved issue between my daughter and myself. But it's all done now and I survived the week! We missed school one day due to all the phone calls and tension, but all is back to "normal" (whatever that is) now.

Our circle times were fun, we are learning my favorite poem:

Brave and true
Will I be
Each kind word
Sets me free
Each good deed
Makes me strong
I will fight
For the right
I will con- quer the wrong!

This poem is for learning the three's times table. It's a short, short, long rhythm and we walk around the house in that rhythm as we say the poem. Soon we will start counting by threes to the rhythm. But above all, who wouldn't want to memorize this poem? What a wonderful message for any and all of us!

Right now we are working on reviewing....counting, letters, sounds of letters, addition, etc. Just to see what he remembers. He's remembers so much, but there are little things he doesn't remember......but he's getting those things back quickly.

I didn't take any pictures this week, but I will! I want to document this year for all of us. My chalk drawings, Jack's work in his main lesson book, circle time, bean bags, gardening, going for a walk.......all of it. I hope you will enjoy sharing it with us.