Tuesday, September 29, 2009

first day of home learning!!

Hurray! We had our first official lessons of the 2009-2010 home learning year!

I felt a little weird starting at the end of September instead of the beginning, but we had so much fun! I have a good feeling about our lesson work for this year. Clover is doing fourth grade work, and the boys are doing more Kindergarten this year. It is very typical for Waldorf students to stay in Kindergarten for a couple of years instead of advancing to first grade after only one year of K.

So, I am planning on taking a much more purist Waldorf approach this year. We are doing blocks of study instead of mixed subjects, and the boys will be waiting to start on reading skills until next year.

Clover's first block is on Norse Myths. We are doing some fraction review in the afternoons because I don't feel that we need to devote an entire block to that. Her fraction skills are really good.

This morning, (after morning Circle time and yoga) I told the creation story from Norse mythology. The boys listened as well, and were intrigued by all of the interesting parts of the story. Clover loved it. She is always ready for new stories! While we worked on her spelling lesson, the boys cut paper and colored. Willow stapled some pages together and I helped him with "writing a book" and Indigo made a beautiful book of colored pages.

The Kindergarten story for the week is Stone Soup. My kids have heard it before, but the best part of all for them was when I pulled out my special Soup Stone and offered to help make our own pot of stone soup. We put it into the boiling water, threw in some diced tomatoes, garlic, potatoes, carrots, garbanzo and black beans, and chicken broth. They all helped with cutting the vegetables and sprinkling spices. After an hour of outdoor play, we came inside, ate our (delicious) soup, and laughed like crazy when little Nova got the stone. He was so surprised!!!




Clover's fraction work this afternoon involved one of her favorite activities - baking. We harvested butternut squash from our garden about a little over a month ago, so we still have plenty sitting around waiting to be used. Clover made butternut squash muffins. Yum! They were so good, and fraction skills were used throughout the entire process. And they were delicious with dinner! Hurray! Eat your math!

3 comments:

Tan Family said...

What a perfect first day of homelearning! Good luck planning blocks this year. I look forward to seeing your blog and hearing more about the blocks. :)

Carrie said...

How exciting to start the year. I'm also looking to seeing how your day is structured. I feel that we are lucky to just get morning Circle done around here! :)

SarahKate said...

We started our school year late too, and I love the flexibility of homeschooling. We have listened to our story of Stone Soup countless times but actually made it.... there's an idea! Cracks me up how surprised Nova was.