We spent the month of March with the legendary King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. I'm embarrassed to admit that I knew nothing of these stories! I had no clue that The Sword and the Stone was a King Arthur tale. This block was a mix. The subject matter was definitely a hit--but as I said in my last post, we were all just a bit off this month. It was kind of a rough one.
I based my plans on the King Arthur lesson block for 2nd/3rd grade from Marsha Johnson's fabulous files at the Waldorf Home Educator's yahoogroup. I also borrowed lots of inspiration from
this blog, particularly in creating my drawings. To tell the tales, I used this wonderful FREE resource,
http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=warren&book=arthur&story=_contents , where I found a fantastic version of the stories by Maud Radford Warren. We also read this book, which tells the fictional story of a young boy and his journey from page to squire to knight:
This first post will basically detail Dallin's work in his main lesson book, both writing and drawing. I'll do another post later with all the special projects we did, as well as what we worked on for spelling and grammar.
Drawing for the main lesson book is typically taught through modelling, therefore, I create a drawing and Dallin copies it. I am fine if he varies it, but we are working really hard on having him learn some drawing techniques that will help him branch out from just doing stick figures. If I leave him to his own devices, that's what we'll end up with.
 |
| Here is Dallin's drawing from Week 1--The Sword in the Stone. |
 |
| This particular week, instead of writing his own summary of the story, we varied things by having him copy a really cool poem by Tennyson. (After he was done, I discovered he missed and transposed a few lines...) |
Week 2 was Excalibur and the Lady of the Lake:
 |
| Here is Dallin's rendition. |
 |
| And his summary. |
 |
| Week 3, the Knights of the Round Table. Dallin's very excellent drawing, one of his best so far. |
 |
| This page lists, at the top, several of Dallin's favorite knights and why he liked them. Underneath is his summary of the next week's story, Sir Lancelot of the Lake. I encourage him to decorate his text pages with forms that we've practiced in form drawing, so that's why the drawings are there. |
 |
| I did not model this drawing. I was so tired and burned out the day before this lesson, I just didn't get it done. Dallin wanted to draw Lancelot defeating a Giant, so that's what he drew. |
 |
| Just got a kick out of this! Lately Sariah has been wanting to draw what Dallin draws, so she also drew Lancelot slaying a giant. You can see how well she copied Dallin's picture. (In fact, hers looks better than his... shh! Don't tell him I said that!) She put a tree in hers because I had been urging Dallin to put some scenery in his drawing and he refused. |
My goal for this second half of the school year has been to get Dallin to produce quality work. Not perfect work--but his personal best effort in his main lesson book. I want him to do neat work and not be sloppy. This month? Mostly we succeeded, occasionally not so much.
Comments