Aesop's Fables, the creative side

As I've mentioned before, in Waldorf education, main subjects are taught in blocks.  Ours are monthly blocks, and this month we are in a language arts/science/nature block using Aesop's Fables as our theme.  We have a four-day school week, with the fifth day being for field trips and other larger projects.  This is proving to be a very wise way of doing school.  By Friday, I'm done--definitely ready for a change of pace!  The other four school days are grouped in pairs.  Day one of each pair focuses on introducing the story and doing something creative/artistic related to it.  Day two focuses on the academic piece.  This rhythm is considered to be extremely important--it is supposed to have a positive impact on learning.  It is supposed to be more beneficial than just hammering out academics every day.  It is considered to be important to give subjects time to rest, to sleep on things.  Actual Waldorf schools I think do things in a 3-day rhythm, but lots of homeschoolers find that a 2-day rhythm works well.

Anyway, this post will showcase some of the fun projects we've done on our "Day One" days.



We made origami frogs to go with the fable, "The Frog and the Ox".  This was a HUGE hit!  The frogs actually jumped, and the kids thought that was the best.  We'll definitely be doing origami again!

When we did the fable "The Wind and the Sun" we made sun bread.  Dallin actually had quite the reaction to this story.  I chose all the stories based on his temperment.  Each fable had a character with some similar personality characteristics to Dallin, or a character showcasing some foible that I wanted Dallin to learn from.  Dallin very much identified with the wind in this story (and was quite perturbed, to put it mildly, when the sun won the contest between the two.  If you are not familiar with this story, the sun and the wind have a contest to see who is stronger.  They agree that whoever can get a traveler to take off his cloak, that is the stronger.  So the wind blows and blows and blows, but of course the traveler pulls the cloak tighter around himself.  And the sun comes out and shines beautifully on the traveler, and the cloak comes off.  Dallin did not like this ending!  He thought the sun had cheated and that the contest had not been fair.  It was pretty amusing to watch his reaction.  When I pointed out to him that his bread sun had a fat lip, he retorted, "Of course it does--it was in a fight with the wind!"

Dallin made this really cool wolf out of beeswax to go with the story "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing".  His wolf was much better than mine, which looked more like a cow.  He also loved this story and thought the wolf was great.  He had no empathy whatsoever for the poor little lamb who got eaten.

This is my drawing to go along with the story of "The Crow and the Pitcher".  I'm learning to draw, and it's kicking my behind!  I have to produce either a chalkboard drawing or one on paper to accompany each story.  I'm quite proud of this one!  (By the way, it's done completely out of the three primary colors, red, yellow, and blue.)