It's been a long time since I've posted. Our year is in full swing and there are not many moments to sit and write, much less upload dozens of pictures. We have been in school now for five weeks, and there is already much water under the bridge--two weeks of math review for Dallin, one week of botany, two weeks of form drawing and math review for Sariah, and a 4-week alphabet block is almost complete. I will have to blog about those adventures some other time, because I am here to talk about INDIA! We are halfway through Dallin's 4-week lesson block on ancient civilizations; we just spent two weeks delving into ancient India, and I simply could not wait to blog about it!
Part of it is that Dallin has just been so darned enjoyable to teach so far this year. I can see HUGE changes in this boy. So many of the things that caused us both angst in years past seem to be almost gone this year. He is eager and excited to learn, takes far more responsibility for his own time and efforts, and has even made amazing strides in some of his former least-favorite-subjects, like painting.
Dallin has loved, loved, LOVED India!
In fact, he has informed me that Norse mythology is no longer his favorite topic ever studied in school, India is.
I think he secretly (or not-so-secretly) wishes he could be Hindu. He tells me that they have better stories that our religion does.
Our first order of business was for Dallin to draw a map of India.
Next, we started on the first of many, many stories. I even had to read to him most nights at bedtime just to fit in all the stories. The biggies that we read were the Mahabharata and the Ramayana (excerpted versions, of course). We also read numerous other shorter stories and as well as historical and geographical background information.
My main sources for this block were:
The Christopherus Ancient Mythology book by Donna Simmons
Ancient Mythologies by Charles Kovacs
Chapters from Ancient History by Dorothy Harrer
and I got some ideas from the Waldorf Essentials grade five curriculum
Dallin also read a novel set in ancient India, The Iron Ring by Lloyd Alexander
We read Dorothy Harrer's retelling of the myth of Manu and the Flood. Then I had Dallin write his own flood myth. (This idea came from Waldorf Essentials.) Then I committed a huge Waldorf no-no... I typed up the story for him rather than making him re-copy it in cursive. He is getting to the point where he will purposely shorten things so he doesn't have to re-copy as much. I just want him to write, write, write.
We both did paintings from the Manu story, Manu holding up the great fish. We were exploring how to use almost nothing but blue, how to make the color fade out over the page, and how to leave white space for effect. I love how we each did the same painting so differently. Mine is on the left, and Dallin's is on the right. This painting idea came from the book Painting and Drawing in Waldorf schools.
We did quite a bit of dictation, which is a heavy part of the writing program, BraveWriter, that I am using to supplement our regular fare. Dallin wrote down these dictations that came from our readings about the Hindu gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. We also learned about the sound "aum" and wrote the symbol for it in Sanskrit.
We also experimented with Indian forms through Rangoli designs, which are traditionally made on the ground with ground rice that has been dyed bright colors, but we just drew ours with colored pencil. This was Dallin's.
At the end of the block, we touched on Buddha, even though Buddha is from a different cultural epoch than the rest of our block.
We had so much fun doing these paintings of Buddha sitting under the fig tree. The idea came from the painting e-book sold at the A Waldorf Journey website. Mine is on top, and Dallin's on the bottom, and once again I am so thrilled with how he created a completely different painting than I did, even with the same basic assignment. I actually love Dallin's painting a lot more than my own.
Another fun project came from Marsha Johnson's files: I bought inexpensive wooden boxes at the craft store, and we woodburned symbols on the lids: the "aum" symbol, Dallin's initial in Sanskrit, and then he wanted to add the Indian flag. Then we rubbed the boxes with walnut oil to create a beautiful finish.
We ended this block with several very fun and enlightening activities. First, we all went to dinner at an Indian restaurant with Preston's birth family. Dallin was in absolute heaven the entire time; it was such fun to watch his face and see how much he was enjoying the experience. When they brought him his food, his eyes got big as it was chicken cooked in a green sauce that looked rather on the slimy side. Dallin is the pickiest eater on the planet, and I was not sure he would like it. But he ate it and loved it. He says he wants to go back to this restaurant for his birthday next year.
The next night, I had the opportunity to take Dallin to a town a ways away from us for their local Krishna temple's Festival of India. Dallin did not know quite what to expect and was pretty excited once the temple came into view.
Our main reason for going was that they were going to perform the story of Rama and Sita, which we had read that past week. Here is Dallin standing next to the effigy of Ravana, the demon king, which would be burned later that evening at the end of the pageant.
Here is the scene after Rama has shot flaming arrows (fireworks) at the effigy:
Here are Rama and Sita and Lakshmana at the end of the pageant in all their finery:
Here is the temple lit up in the darkness; I didn't manage to get a picture of it while it was still light.
And here is Dallin standing outside the steps.
Our final project was to do henna tattoos for the kids:
And last, but not least, is just an adorable picture of Preston insisting on having his "school" with big brother.
Now I have outdone myself with India, so we will be scaling way back for Persia and Mesopotamia the next few weeks.
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