I have lots of topics for prospective blog posts. I need to blog about Sariah's upcoming kindergarten experience, about my new favorite book (only I can't find the book at the moment to quote from it or I would be writing that post tonight), about how on earth I came to be the Primary president. I could write about how Preston and Sariah are both in the exact same stage of childhood--the "get into everything and see how big a mess you can make" stage. Even though Sariah is five and Preston is only 9 months old. Or about how my sweet, mellow baby that was taking every milestone two months behind what his older brother and sister did (which was FINE with me) suddenly decided to catch up and hit about 10 milestones all at one time, and hence is now crawling and pulling himself up. But I guess since we start school in just over a week, I'll write about what Dallin is going to be doing this next year in homeschool.
Waldorf philosophy teaches that the child turning nine is going through a spiritual and psychological process of separation. Throughout their earlier childhood, they have been more "one" with the spirit world, with their parents. But around age 9, they begin to feel a sense of separation, and this can be traumatic for them. The child may not be able to verbalize this experience, but it will come through in their behavior and attitudes. The Waldorf curriculum is designed to speak to this inner need. The focus is on the Old Testament and it's stories, which tell of the Israelite people's relationship to God and His authority. And we know that their relationship is often rocky. Just as the child's relationship to parents and "authority" might be rocky during this "nine year change".
We are going to begin our year by doing two weeks of form drawing. This two weeks will kind of be a gentle transition back into the work of school. In addition to form drawing, we will be doing lots of painting, coloring, and beeswax modelling. We will be working through watercolor and modelling exercises from two sources: one is a painting book by Rauld Russell that I got through Marsha Johnson's Waldorf Home Educator's website. The other is the book Learning About the World Through Modelling. I can't remember the author's name, and I'm too lazy to go look it up at the moment. Our theme for this block will be Native American creation myths. These stories will set the stage for our next block, in which we will be starting out the Old Testament with the seven days of creation from Genesis.
So we will have a three week long language arts block focused on the creation story and then the garden and fall of Adam. We will be painting each of the seven days of creation using wet-on-wet watercolor techniques and carefully copying the words from the scriptures to accompany each painting. Probably at least partially in cursive. Then we will move on to the story of Adam in the garden (reviewing nouns and verbs as he names the animals). We will cover the Fall and the story of Cain and Abel. The story of the Fall will lead us into some of the other themes we'll cover this year. Once Adam was cast out of Eden, he and Eve had to do three things, three things which all humans throughout time have had to do. They had to find shelter, they had to find food, and they had to clothe themselves. So a huge focus of this year will be learning about how humans throughout history have managed to do those three things. This brings in our social studies for the year! And alot of our science too.
This will lead us into a two week block focused on farming and harvest. We will be doing practical, hands on activities related to harvesting and preserving food. We will be doing things like grinding grain and making bread, making pickles (hopefully, if cucumbers are still on that late), making apple butter, picking raspberries and making freezer jam and fruit leather, and grinding corn for polenta. Of course we will be writing and drawing to record our activities and tell what we have learned. We will also be working outside to get the garden ready for winter. Some potential field trips will include visiting the farmer's market, possibly the state fair, hopefully visiting a working farm, and visiting a nearby historical gristmill. There are a plethora of possible field trips, I just have to decide how many I personally can handle! If I remember right, I'll be introducing adjectives, adverbs, and articles around this time for grammar.
Starting with the Harvest Moon in September, we will be learning about the phases of the moon and recording the moonrise each night for an entire month. We will also be having three "weather weeks" throughout the year. In October we will learn about wind, in January we will learn about snow and ice, and in May we will learn about clouds. This will mostly be observation of the natural phenomena and charting it, or simple things like making a weather vane or rain gauge. We will not be using a lot of fancy technology. The idea is to keep it as close to nature as possible. Luckily this fits in very well with some of Dallin's Cub Scout requirements too!
One other thing we will be doing this year, as part of our Old Testament study, is observing some of the major Jewish festivals. The five I have chosen are Rosh Hoshanah (the Jewish new year, in September), Sukkot (harvest festival), Hannukah, Purim (about the story of Esther), and Passover. I think this will be fun for the whole family and will give Dallin a new perspective on all the stories he's heard so many times.
So once our two weeks of harvest are finished, we'll return for two more weeks of Old Testament. This will bring us the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their wives. We'll be doing some fun things like painting scenes from the stories and creating the scene of Rebekah at the well out of beeswax. Otherwise this will be a typical language arts block with lots of writing of summaries of the stories, spelling, and grammar work.
November will bring us our first math block, though we'll be doing a little daily math all along. In September we'll be reviewing the times tables, and in October we'll be adding the practice of basic mental math facts and review of the four processes from last year. In November we'll be continuing onward with more complicated problems in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and our theme will be the book Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. One reason this book is often done in this grade in Waldorf schools, besides the fact that it's about farming, is because Almanzo is nine years old in the story. The book is divided into four sections, each one focused on a season of the year. So each week we'll focus on one of the four processes and I'll create story problems about each season and the chapters that correspond to it. Of course we have to keep it fun and creative, after all this is Waldorf, and the philosophy teaches that children between the ages of 7 and 14 need lots of artistic activities to keep them emotionally connected to what they are learning. So we're going to be doing some simple woodworking, some wool-dyeing, making ice cream, and other activities that are actually described in the book. As kind of a culmination of the block, we're going to prepare a meal using dishes mentioned in the book. I used the book The Little House Cookbook to plan this.
In December we'll keep it a bit lighter, but return to language arts using another block created by Marsha Johnson. (Many of my lesson blocks come from her files!) This block is called "Stories of Light", and we'll be spending a week on each of three light-centered holidays. The first week we'll explore Hanukkah, the second week we'll be talking about the Three Wisemen and the star, and the third week will be all about the Winter solstice. In grammar, we'll be introducing the four kinds of sentences: the statement, the question, the command, and the exclamation.
January will be the beginning of a six-week math block on measurement. During the first two weeks we'll explore the measurement of time, all the way from years, seasons, months, weeks, and days down to hours, minutes, and seconds. After that we'll get into linear measurement, then weight and volume. I also used ideas from Marsha Johnson and from Melisa Nielsen's book A Journey Through Waldorf Math. We will be bringing the Old Testament back in with the stories of Noah and the Ark and The Tower of Babel. Noah is a great story for exploring measurement! Just how long was that ark anyway? We'll be find out out! And water is the perfect medium for measuring volume! Well be making the Tower of Babel out of clay.
In February we will be looking at the concept of shelter and how it relates to climate. First we'll be talking about our home and the homes in our neighborhood. But then I really intend to bring back our learning about Native Americans and their houses. So we'll look at how Native American houses differed according the the region, the weather and climate, etc. We should be able to tell some great stories from the different tribes as well. And some other fun projects might include making pottery and making a model tipi. I've thought of some possible field trips such as visiting a quarry or gravel pit, a lumber store, a museum focused on Native American culture and lifestyle, a log cabin, and maybe a home under construction. I also used Our Little Nature Nest as a great resource for planning this block. We'll be doing lots of writing and illustrating as well.
March will bring us a two week block on fibers and clothing. We'll be mainly focusing on natural fibers such as cotton, wool, flax, leather, and silk. We're really talking, with all these blocks, about man's relationship to the earth, how man cares for the earth and the earth provides man with what he needs to survive. We'll be using the Old Testament story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel in this block too, as a jumping-off point. (After all, Jacob had sheep, and sheep provide wool.) I'm hoping we can get a simple drop spindle and learn to spin, and perhaps also do some simple weaving. We'll also get to the story of Joseph and his coat, and maybe even dye some yarn and knit a simple, multi-colored belt.
April is back to math. We'll continue in the Old Testament, covering a lot of ground this month. Joseph being sold into Egypt, all the stories of Moses, Joshua, Samson, Ruth, Hannah, Samuel, Saul, David, and Solomon. We'll be practicing addition, subtraction, and multiplication, and, hopefully, introducing long division, using the stories as jumping-off points for creating story problems. We'll be learning to speak and write a bit of Hebrew this month too!
At the end of April, we'll have a short, two-week long block on building. This will also help for Cub Scouts. We'll be talking about common tools, their names, and how they're used. We'll have one or two woodworking projects, maybe a toolbox or simple shelf, and then starting a project in the yard such as building garden boxes. I forgot to mention that all throughout late March, April, and May we'll be trying to fit some spring farming-related activities into our Fridays and weekends. I hope to start many of our seeds indoors next spring, so the kids will be helping me with that huge project! Dallin will be working on his first book report during this block too. I forgot to mention that earlier in the fall we will be learning how to write both personal and business letters and how to address envelopes.
Our last block will be in May, and it is a block from Marsha Johnson's files called Beauty of Community. It's kind of a prelude to the local geography that Waldorf students do in the next grade. During the month of May, we'll spend a week learing about our selves (our body is our first "home" for our spirit), our own homes, and our immediate neighborhood.. The next week we'll branch out to our community. We'll talk about where we live and relate it to geography. We'll also learn about our county and take a field trip or two to somewhere in our city or county. During the third week we'll learn a bit about our state, doing things like learning the state song and copying it in his main lesson book, perhaps working on a map of Utah wit the major features, cities, landforms, etc. I plan to do a cooking project using honey, since we live in the Beehive State. I also thought this would be a fun time to go on a field trip to the state capitol or to the Beehive House, since we'll probably be talking about Brigham Young. Next year we'll be doing alot more with local geography, this is only a taste. If Dallin weren't going to be so close to ten years old (only two months away), I'd probably save this block.
This will be a busy year! It is very hands-on, with lots of field trips and practical work. I think it will be very fun!
Waldorf philosophy teaches that the child turning nine is going through a spiritual and psychological process of separation. Throughout their earlier childhood, they have been more "one" with the spirit world, with their parents. But around age 9, they begin to feel a sense of separation, and this can be traumatic for them. The child may not be able to verbalize this experience, but it will come through in their behavior and attitudes. The Waldorf curriculum is designed to speak to this inner need. The focus is on the Old Testament and it's stories, which tell of the Israelite people's relationship to God and His authority. And we know that their relationship is often rocky. Just as the child's relationship to parents and "authority" might be rocky during this "nine year change".
We are going to begin our year by doing two weeks of form drawing. This two weeks will kind of be a gentle transition back into the work of school. In addition to form drawing, we will be doing lots of painting, coloring, and beeswax modelling. We will be working through watercolor and modelling exercises from two sources: one is a painting book by Rauld Russell that I got through Marsha Johnson's Waldorf Home Educator's website. The other is the book Learning About the World Through Modelling. I can't remember the author's name, and I'm too lazy to go look it up at the moment. Our theme for this block will be Native American creation myths. These stories will set the stage for our next block, in which we will be starting out the Old Testament with the seven days of creation from Genesis.
So we will have a three week long language arts block focused on the creation story and then the garden and fall of Adam. We will be painting each of the seven days of creation using wet-on-wet watercolor techniques and carefully copying the words from the scriptures to accompany each painting. Probably at least partially in cursive. Then we will move on to the story of Adam in the garden (reviewing nouns and verbs as he names the animals). We will cover the Fall and the story of Cain and Abel. The story of the Fall will lead us into some of the other themes we'll cover this year. Once Adam was cast out of Eden, he and Eve had to do three things, three things which all humans throughout time have had to do. They had to find shelter, they had to find food, and they had to clothe themselves. So a huge focus of this year will be learning about how humans throughout history have managed to do those three things. This brings in our social studies for the year! And alot of our science too.
This will lead us into a two week block focused on farming and harvest. We will be doing practical, hands on activities related to harvesting and preserving food. We will be doing things like grinding grain and making bread, making pickles (hopefully, if cucumbers are still on that late), making apple butter, picking raspberries and making freezer jam and fruit leather, and grinding corn for polenta. Of course we will be writing and drawing to record our activities and tell what we have learned. We will also be working outside to get the garden ready for winter. Some potential field trips will include visiting the farmer's market, possibly the state fair, hopefully visiting a working farm, and visiting a nearby historical gristmill. There are a plethora of possible field trips, I just have to decide how many I personally can handle! If I remember right, I'll be introducing adjectives, adverbs, and articles around this time for grammar.
Starting with the Harvest Moon in September, we will be learning about the phases of the moon and recording the moonrise each night for an entire month. We will also be having three "weather weeks" throughout the year. In October we will learn about wind, in January we will learn about snow and ice, and in May we will learn about clouds. This will mostly be observation of the natural phenomena and charting it, or simple things like making a weather vane or rain gauge. We will not be using a lot of fancy technology. The idea is to keep it as close to nature as possible. Luckily this fits in very well with some of Dallin's Cub Scout requirements too!
One other thing we will be doing this year, as part of our Old Testament study, is observing some of the major Jewish festivals. The five I have chosen are Rosh Hoshanah (the Jewish new year, in September), Sukkot (harvest festival), Hannukah, Purim (about the story of Esther), and Passover. I think this will be fun for the whole family and will give Dallin a new perspective on all the stories he's heard so many times.
So once our two weeks of harvest are finished, we'll return for two more weeks of Old Testament. This will bring us the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their wives. We'll be doing some fun things like painting scenes from the stories and creating the scene of Rebekah at the well out of beeswax. Otherwise this will be a typical language arts block with lots of writing of summaries of the stories, spelling, and grammar work.
November will bring us our first math block, though we'll be doing a little daily math all along. In September we'll be reviewing the times tables, and in October we'll be adding the practice of basic mental math facts and review of the four processes from last year. In November we'll be continuing onward with more complicated problems in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and our theme will be the book Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. One reason this book is often done in this grade in Waldorf schools, besides the fact that it's about farming, is because Almanzo is nine years old in the story. The book is divided into four sections, each one focused on a season of the year. So each week we'll focus on one of the four processes and I'll create story problems about each season and the chapters that correspond to it. Of course we have to keep it fun and creative, after all this is Waldorf, and the philosophy teaches that children between the ages of 7 and 14 need lots of artistic activities to keep them emotionally connected to what they are learning. So we're going to be doing some simple woodworking, some wool-dyeing, making ice cream, and other activities that are actually described in the book. As kind of a culmination of the block, we're going to prepare a meal using dishes mentioned in the book. I used the book The Little House Cookbook to plan this.
In December we'll keep it a bit lighter, but return to language arts using another block created by Marsha Johnson. (Many of my lesson blocks come from her files!) This block is called "Stories of Light", and we'll be spending a week on each of three light-centered holidays. The first week we'll explore Hanukkah, the second week we'll be talking about the Three Wisemen and the star, and the third week will be all about the Winter solstice. In grammar, we'll be introducing the four kinds of sentences: the statement, the question, the command, and the exclamation.
January will be the beginning of a six-week math block on measurement. During the first two weeks we'll explore the measurement of time, all the way from years, seasons, months, weeks, and days down to hours, minutes, and seconds. After that we'll get into linear measurement, then weight and volume. I also used ideas from Marsha Johnson and from Melisa Nielsen's book A Journey Through Waldorf Math. We will be bringing the Old Testament back in with the stories of Noah and the Ark and The Tower of Babel. Noah is a great story for exploring measurement! Just how long was that ark anyway? We'll be find out out! And water is the perfect medium for measuring volume! Well be making the Tower of Babel out of clay.
In February we will be looking at the concept of shelter and how it relates to climate. First we'll be talking about our home and the homes in our neighborhood. But then I really intend to bring back our learning about Native Americans and their houses. So we'll look at how Native American houses differed according the the region, the weather and climate, etc. We should be able to tell some great stories from the different tribes as well. And some other fun projects might include making pottery and making a model tipi. I've thought of some possible field trips such as visiting a quarry or gravel pit, a lumber store, a museum focused on Native American culture and lifestyle, a log cabin, and maybe a home under construction. I also used Our Little Nature Nest as a great resource for planning this block. We'll be doing lots of writing and illustrating as well.
March will bring us a two week block on fibers and clothing. We'll be mainly focusing on natural fibers such as cotton, wool, flax, leather, and silk. We're really talking, with all these blocks, about man's relationship to the earth, how man cares for the earth and the earth provides man with what he needs to survive. We'll be using the Old Testament story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel in this block too, as a jumping-off point. (After all, Jacob had sheep, and sheep provide wool.) I'm hoping we can get a simple drop spindle and learn to spin, and perhaps also do some simple weaving. We'll also get to the story of Joseph and his coat, and maybe even dye some yarn and knit a simple, multi-colored belt.
April is back to math. We'll continue in the Old Testament, covering a lot of ground this month. Joseph being sold into Egypt, all the stories of Moses, Joshua, Samson, Ruth, Hannah, Samuel, Saul, David, and Solomon. We'll be practicing addition, subtraction, and multiplication, and, hopefully, introducing long division, using the stories as jumping-off points for creating story problems. We'll be learning to speak and write a bit of Hebrew this month too!
At the end of April, we'll have a short, two-week long block on building. This will also help for Cub Scouts. We'll be talking about common tools, their names, and how they're used. We'll have one or two woodworking projects, maybe a toolbox or simple shelf, and then starting a project in the yard such as building garden boxes. I forgot to mention that all throughout late March, April, and May we'll be trying to fit some spring farming-related activities into our Fridays and weekends. I hope to start many of our seeds indoors next spring, so the kids will be helping me with that huge project! Dallin will be working on his first book report during this block too. I forgot to mention that earlier in the fall we will be learning how to write both personal and business letters and how to address envelopes.
Our last block will be in May, and it is a block from Marsha Johnson's files called Beauty of Community. It's kind of a prelude to the local geography that Waldorf students do in the next grade. During the month of May, we'll spend a week learing about our selves (our body is our first "home" for our spirit), our own homes, and our immediate neighborhood.. The next week we'll branch out to our community. We'll talk about where we live and relate it to geography. We'll also learn about our county and take a field trip or two to somewhere in our city or county. During the third week we'll learn a bit about our state, doing things like learning the state song and copying it in his main lesson book, perhaps working on a map of Utah wit the major features, cities, landforms, etc. I plan to do a cooking project using honey, since we live in the Beehive State. I also thought this would be a fun time to go on a field trip to the state capitol or to the Beehive House, since we'll probably be talking about Brigham Young. Next year we'll be doing alot more with local geography, this is only a taste. If Dallin weren't going to be so close to ten years old (only two months away), I'd probably save this block.
This will be a busy year! It is very hands-on, with lots of field trips and practical work. I think it will be very fun!
Comments