End of the year

We survived! We finished our third year of homeschooling! I'm exhausted but grateful for what was generally a really wonderful year.

I planned this last month around the mythical Four Elements of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. This allowed me to do a nature-focused block for Sariah and a very gentle physics-focused block for Dallin.  (Real physics will come in sixth grade.)

For Sariah, I used stories from the book Verses and Poems and Stories to Tell by Dorothy Harrer. I told imaginative stories that illustrated scientific concepts. (Well, true confessions, some of them I just read. I know, I know, that's completely against Waldorf ideals. But hey, it was the end of the school year and my brain was fried. So I read them instead of telling them in my own words. It was either that or no stories at all.)

The first story was called "The Lazy Gnome" and told how earth, fire (sun/heat), air, and water all contribute to the growth of a plant. The second story was called "The Rainbow" and incorporated the elements of wind, fire/sun/heat, and water. It illustrated what would happen if either sun or rain were taken away from plants and showed the effects of either drought or flooding. The third story was "The Snowflake" and was a wonderful illustration of the water cycle. The last story was "The Four Seasons". Each season was portrayed in the form of a king fighting with his brothers for control of the earth, and at the end they each decide to take turns being the ruler. I loved how at the end of this story, Sariah said "You know, we could just start this all over and it would go on forever." She got the concept!

Acting out "The Snowflake":

Here are our beeswax water droplets and sun fairies.

 The high mountain where the water droplets turned into snowflakes and rested till spring.

In addition to telling these stories, we spent time daily reviewing letters and sounds as well as numbers. We did some fun games and activities, but honestly, I can't remember what any of them were at this point. See, I told you my brain was fried!

Dallin spent these weeks reviewing grammar, finishing his fractions workbook, and reviewing long division. Then, each afternoon, we worked on fun projects that gently introduced him to various physics concepts. When he is 12 we will have our first "official" physics lesson block.

I have to say that in many ways this block didn't go so well. We used the book Earth, Water, Fire and Air: Playful Explorations in the Four Elements by Walter Kraul. This little book has been translated from the original German, and I think some aspects of the instructions were lost in translation, because about half or more of our projects were duds. Also, with it being the end of the year, I was a day late and a dollar short on preparing for this block. I really should have done each project ahead of time to see if they worked, but that didn't happen, so we generally found out about their failure mid-activity.

However, we still had fun!

For Earth, we looked not at the soil, but at the concept of gravity. We built a marble run out of carboard and card stock, which Dallin really loved.

When studying Air, we made parachutes and flew them out the upstairs windows.

We also blew dandelions and talked about how the seeds are kind of like little parachutes.

We made beautiful kites that both were ripped and broken within 10 minutes of taking them outside to fly. In this case I think the project itself worked fine, but the children just were not careful about not flying the kites into obstacles.

For Fire, we did some candle-flame experiments. Some of them worked and some of them didn't. This one below was pretty cool. The picture doesn't do it justice, but if you have one candle lit and the other not yet lit, the second candle can be lighted just by bringing the first one near. The flame doesn't even have to touch the second wick, just come within half an inch or so of it. The concept at work was that the candle flame gives off gasses that you can't see that are still flammable.



We tried to hard on the second candle project! I think the general concept works, but our specific project had some flaws that got in the way. We made a roundabout out of foil with a tripod base made from a wire coat hanger. The idea was that the heat from the candles below would make the roundabout turn in a circular motion. We could never get the roundabout to turn more than a tiny bit. I think the issue was that the foil wouldn't hold it's shape and kept getting stuck on the wire. But the challenge was that everything had to be made out of metal in order to avoid starting a fire. So foil was our only option. The book had some more complex roundabouts made from wood, but that was not in our budget of time or money.

 

We had lots of fun with Water, and it was actually the most successful part of our block. On the last day of school, we went up a nearby canyon to a stream to test out the projects we had made.

 

 This water wheel was SO easy to make, and it actually worked! The idea was to find two forked sticks in which to set the long nails poking out from either side of the wheel. We had trouble finding forked sticks, and then we couldn't get them to stay in the ground underneath the water. Later I remembered that I had brought a hammer and could have used it to get them in the ground, but I didn't think of it at the time. Oh well, the kids held the nails and were able to see the wheel turn and churn up the water, so all in all I considered this one a success.

 

 Here is another easy project from the book that worked well. We made a balloon powered boat. When the balloon fills up with air (blown through a straw into the balloon), the boat will travel across the water until the air is gone.

Other highlights of the day included eating a picnic lunch, finding a snail, finding a bee tree (or, more accurately, a "wasp tree"), and playing in the water.

 

This was the perfect "last day" to our school year, and the perfect "first day" of summer vacation.