Our first lesson block is finished!

Sure, it was a short one--only 1.5 weeks long.  But somehow it still seems exciting to have one down, only about, oh, 11 more to go.

Many homeschoolers and Waldorf school teachers try to ease children gently into the year by having a short beginning block focused on form drawing.  That's pretty much what we did, adding experiences with beeswax modelling (something we didn't do much of last year), painting, and block-crayon drawing.  This was especially good for me this year because I didn't feel quite ready to start school.  My last month was not the vacation I hoped for, and I needed this first week and a half to both get back into things and also have a shorter day so that I could spend the afternoons regrouping. 

 

 The first couple of days we tried walks... but it's been SO hot, that didn't last long!

On our first day of school, I made a special breakfast of waffles, strawberries, and whipped cream.  We talked about the "Three R's": Reverence for homeschooling, Responsibility for one's self, and Respect for others.  (I got these from Melisa Nielsen's yahoo group.)

I intend to draw them on paper and post it on the wall to see the entire year.

For a special activity, I planned to roll candles, and then they could each use their candle for our special daily times this year.  Dallin's would be to light during our family scripture study, and Sariah's would be to light during her circle and story time.  When I ordered the beeswax sheets, I didn't realize it was just the beeswax and no wicks.  Then, I made the mistake of assuming that I could get wicks at our local JoAnn craft store.  After all, all craft stores sell candle-making supplies, right?  Well, I found out at ten minutes before closing on the night before we were supposed to make the candles that no, not all craft stores sell candle-making supplies.  There went the activity that was supposed to be the focus of our first morning of school!

We ended up just decorating the sheets and saving them to roll when I could get wicks.

Which meant that we finally finished them today!

Form Drawing

Form drawing is such a nice way to start out the school year.  Dallin likes it, but it does require focus in order for him to do the forms correctly.  Which is the purpose of form drawing--it works in the child's will.  It also helps develop the coordination and skills needed for handwriting--in our case, cursive.  Since Dallin started about a year late with form drawing last year, we've been trying to "catch up", and I think we're almost there!  We reviewed running forms by imposing one form on top of another (mine above, Dallin's on the paper below):

This one was REALLY hard for him.  We spent two days on it.  You would think it would be the loopy form that would be tricky, but actually it was the one in blue.

 You can see Dallin's on the second line below.

 

We also did a number of mirrored forms.  A mirrored form is one where I draw half of it for him, and he has to complete the form by making the mirror image of what I've drawn.  (Then he has to be able to draw both halves.)  This one below was probably the most complicated:  (Say, for example, I drew the part you see if purple, then he would have to know how to complete it by drawing the part you see in orange.  When I first presented this to him, I only drew the purple.)

He had a GREAT time drawing the form in peanut butter.  This was one of those on-the-spot, "how can we make this more interesting" bursts of thought.  I was afraid he would hate it because he usually hates textures like this.  But he loved it, and said, "This is why I like homeschooling!  Can we do this every day?"

Here you can see his finished product on the bottom, along with several other mirrored forms on top.  What a huge amount of concentration this takes!

And then, just today, we started metamorphosing forms.  For example, the one we did today starts with a straight line at the bottom.  Then the next line is a bit curvy.  The next line is much more curvy, and the top on is very curvy.

And Dallin's.  See how his middle two lines are really exactly the same?... he didn't quite get the difference there.  To the left is a mirrored form he did without having a line drawn down the middle.

And this post is only halfway done, but the baby calls.  So part two will hopefully come later!