Notes for September
updated November 13, 2016
Preschool Co-op
Recommended Purchase:
Around the World with Finger Puppet Animals by Suzanne Down of Juniper Tree
56 color pure wool felt assortment from Magic Cabin
Story #1 (Sep 12 - Sep 22)
"The Little Wooden Mixing Bowl" from The Breathing Circle by Nell Smyth, page 124
Some nice follow-ups would be
gathering a collection of all types of bowls from your kitchen and feeling the texture of each one
making bread in a large wooden bowl
making playdough and pretending it is bread
(homemade playdough recipe, dyed with Kool-Aid)
hand washing your dishes together after a meal and drying them carefully and putting them away lovingly and with real gratitude to them for all
their hard work each day
filling a bowl with playsilks and pretending it is dough and mixing up a pretend meal for your dolls
bake anything together! oven pancakes, bread, cake...
"The Joy of Baking" - an old issue of my preschool newsletter from 2005
some fun story suggestions:
   
   
care for a wooden salad bowl by sanding it smooth and finishing it with beeswax salad bowl finish
 
Story #2 (Sep 26 - Oct 6)
"Mother Earth and the Leaves" from Tell Me a Story ed. Louise deForest, page 56
Some nice follow-ups would be
a nature walk to collect nuts which have fallen (here, the acorns are on the ground and the squirrels
are busy collecting them) and any leaves which have
begun to change color (here, the sassafras leaves are turning red and falling)
leaf crafts from Earthways: Leaf Banners p.26, Leaf Crowns p.30, Nature's People p.31
bird finger puppets from Around the World with Finger Puppet Animals, page 101
a bird nest for the nature table
a collection of needle felted leaves, green on one side and different autumn colors on the reverse
puppetry with brown wool glove (as the tree) and the felted leaves lightly attached, pull off and let fall as the story is told
make a simple wooden block puzzle by arranging four square wooden blocks together in the shape of a larger square, then taking an autumn leaf
cookie cutter and holding it over the place where all of the blocks touch, painting inside the cookie cutter to make the shape
of the leaf on the blocks, and then letting the paint dry
let the children take golden and orange and red and bronze silks and dance around as the falling leaves... when the music stops
they flutter gently down and curl up on the ground
Age-Appropriate Academics
Handout for Parents: "Math and Science in the Kindergarten" article by Lisa Gromicko (PDF)
Learning Basic Skills through Music (Hap Palmer)
 
Third Grade - General
A fantastic resource for chapter book and read aloud suggestions (your library will definitely
have this book) is The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease
Regarding the festivals of the Christian year, two books I think you would really enjoy are
Two more that are "maybes" (but I'm happy to lend them to you as well to see if you like them) are
Form Drawing & Handwork
You have Form Drawing in Grades One through Four and Painting and Drawing in Waldorf Schools
The first days of FD, as well as the entire sequence through 4th grade, are laid out VERY nicely in the first book and there's a section in the Wildgruber book (pp.69-78) on FD as well.
NO matter your child's age, you would begin at the beginning. I like window crayons, sand or salt trays, tracing the form in the air and tracing it on your partner's back with your finger, tracing it on the floor with your toe,
and finding the form in your environment (especially the straight line and curve) and tracing it with your finger. The form on the page is really not the end goal. The idea is for you to move it so much that you completely internalize it.
The form on the page is "movement made visible."
So even though it's sometimes called Freehand Geometric Drawing, it's more like "developing an internal sensitivity to the geometry inherent in our world." Obviously, this is too long of a title
for an academic subject.
FD is done intensively in the first three or four weeks of the school year (I would say figure 1 through figure 14e) and then is a once weekly special subject until they begin a formal study of Geometry.
For straight line and curve I also really like to roll beeswax candles (flat sheet of beeswax becomes a curve) and to begin finger knitting (flat piece of yarn becomes a curve).
My favorite story for introducing finger knitting is Red Berry Wool by Robyn Eversole.
Determining your child's temperament is important once you begin working with spirals. So you'll need to figure this out before you start week two.
My blog post on The Four Temperaments
may help!
Some notes on stories to accompany forms; I just write suggestions in the margins if I find a book I like.
There's no hard and fast science to choosing the story to accompany each form. It just needs to feel like a good fit to you. If it's authentic to you,
it will be authentic to your child. I used to tell my class that we were doing form drawing and then read them a story and then say, "What form do you think I'm going
to bring to you out of this story?" And they would delight in guessing what geometric shape we would be doing!
Form Drawing is done with stick beeswax crayons on large sheets of drawing paper or newsprint and I tape the paper up to a door or kitchen cabinet so that you are standing
in front of it. You get one chance to make the form once you are ready to draw it. Keep them in a large portfolio in date order so that you can look back at the entire progression at the end of the year.
 
Learning to finger knit comes before learning to knit with needles. When you are comfortable with finger knitting, let me know and I'll give you some suggestions for beginning knitting projects!
You can make wonderful round rugs with lots of colorful finger knitting and an old teeshirt and a hula hoop as the loom! We are doing this right now in homeschool.
When kids get into finger knitting they really get into it, and you'll have yards and yards of the stuff. I once had a phlegmatic student who literally finger knit a MILE long
piece of knitting. (P.S. Finger knitting is wonderful work to take in the car.)
Old Testament Stories
I'd like to do the lesson planning for this together. Please let me know if there's a time this weekend when we can talk for an hour or two.
Remember that it's quality, not quantity, when choosing the stories, and that you also get February for the Old Testament.
Usually you would have a story on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So for a month we are looking at 15 or 16. Add in February and it's approximately 30 stories in all (with 9 watercolor paintings for Creation).
It'll be such fun. There are so many stories we could choose!
*NEW* Genesis: Secrets of the Bible Story of Creation
by Rudolf Steiner
*NEW* Commentary on the Old Testament Stories
by Roy Wilkinson
Main Lesson Block - Overview
Tue Sep 13 start Old Testament Stories (Head)
hear story: Day One of Creation, paint void, paint light, candlemaking
start Form Drawing (Heart)
straight line & curve
start Knitting (Hands)
finger knitting
Wed Sep 14 - add yesterday's story to MLB, hear today's story: Day Two of Creation, paint the firmament
Thu Sep 15 - Form Drawing or Knitting only
Fri Sep 16 - add Day Two to MLB, hear story for Day Three, paint oak tree by stream
Sat Sep 17 - add Day Three to MLB, plant bulbs
Tue Sep 20 - hear today's story: Day Four of Creation, paint the first sunrise
Wed Sep 21 - add Day Four to MLB, paint the moon
Thu Sep 22 - FD or Handwork
Fri Sep 23 - hear today's story: Day Five of Creation, paint the birds & fishes
Sat Sep 24 - add Day Five to MLB
Tue Sep 27 - hear today's story: Day Six of Creation, paint the lion
Wed Sep 28 - add Day Six to MLB, paint Adam
Thu Sep 29 - FD or Handwork
Fri Sep 30 - hear today's story: Day Seven of Creation, paint the rainbow
Sat Oct 1 - add Day Seven to MLB, read Roy Wilkinson up to Noah's Ark
Thomas Wildgruber's painting book does give example paintings for
The garden of Eden (p.161), The Fall (p.162), Expulsion from the garden (p.163), The offerings of Cain and Abel (p.164),
The descendants of Cain (p.165), and Young Noah destroys the idol (p.166). I don't care for most of the paintings in this series. I do quite like the painting of young Noah and ancient Methuselah
standing before the gigantic idol made of clay, hammers in hand to smash it. This story is not in my Bible; it would likely be in a Jewish collection
of stories from Genesis.
Tue Oct 4 - hear today's story: Noah and the Ark, build Ark, start to make animals with modeling beeswax (continue throughout the week)
Noah's Ark in Paper and Card
Wed Oct 5 - add Noah and the Ark to MLB, hear today's story: Jacob and Esau, make lentil stew
Thu Oct 6 - FD or Handwork
Fri Oct 7 - add Jacob and Esau to MLB, hear today's story: Jacob's Ladder, paint Jacob's Ladder
Sat Oct 8 - add Jacob's Ladder to MLB
Mon Oct 10 - hear today's story: remainder of Roy Wilkinson book up to Israelites in Egypt (this will begin the 2nd OT block)
Tue Oct 11 - add yesterday's story to MLB, decorate front cover, number pages, create Table of Contents, add information to the back cover (name, 2016-2017, age, #1)
"OT September 2016," a PDF document which also includes images of the paintings A document I've compiled so that it is easy for you to have examples at your fingertips.
Please note that this is a LARGE file so it will take some time to download!
Recommended Purchase:
Stockmar Modeling Beeswax
Stockmar Block Beeswax Crayons
Stockmar Stick Beeswax Crayons
Stonex Self-Hardening Clay, White, 5 lb
For painting, you'll want to decide on paints, brushes, paper, and a painting board. My painting teacher recommended this book for
learning about watercolor painting and it gives excellent
painting exercises:
On page 14 there are a number of "technical remarks." The book recommends
1. painting wet on dry
2. painting at an easel or otherwise working with the painting board propped upright
3. stretching the paper by taping it on a board all around with masking tape
4. transparent watercolors such as
Windsor & Newton paints: my teacher paints with lemon yellow, carmine red, vermillion, ultramarine blue, Prussian blue, mauve, and black
5. good long-handled flat brushes of marten or sable hair, number 18 or 16
6. keeping small piece of test paper nearby to test the colors you are mixing for your child
At the painting school I attended, there were many small ceramic dishes with the undiluted paint squeezed into them and allowed to air dry. When mixing up
some color for painting with that day, we used other small dishes and wet the brush, scooped up some hardened concentrated paint, placed it in the new dishes
and thinned with water until we reached the desired color. Golden yellow can be mixed by using a lot of lemon and a bit of a warm red. Many greens can be made
by mixing yellow and blue depending on how much of each color and whether you use a warm yellow or a cool yellow, a warm blue or a cool blue. A tiny bit of black
can also be added to your green or red. Etc.
My painting teacher Gail McManus ("Painting with Children in Waldorf Schools" article)
STRONGLY recommends Arches watercolor paper. Specifically she recommends Arches bright white cold press 140 lb watercolor paper in the 22" x 30" size
which can be found here. She buys the pack of 5 sheets of paper and cuts each one into fourths, making
a sheet of 11" x 15" paper. The painting board you get (plexi for wet-on-wet, plywood or masonite for wet-on-dry) should be large enough to accommodate this with a little extra around it for the taping.
It's about $5 per sheet of paper, so $1.25 for a quarter sheet.
If you decide you're interested in putting on a play, I have scripts for the following stories:
from Plays for Grades One through Four by Michael Hedley Burton
from Let's Do a Play: Eleven Class Plays for Grades 1-5 by Colin Price
"Esther, Queen of Persia"
(this play takes place during the time of the Babylonian Captivity, when the Israelites were carried away by force to Persia, there to remain for many years... ever since then, the story of Esther is retold each year among the Jews, at the Feast of Purim)
"David and Saul"
from 25 Plays Inspired by Waldorf Teachers ed. by David Mitchell
available for download FREE at the Online Waldorf Library
"The Child of the Nile"
"Daniel, Servant of the Lord"
"Joseph, the Dreamer"
"The Twelve Sons of Jacob"
from Hawthorne Valley Harvest: A Collection of Plays for the Elementary Grades ed. by William Ward
Just one more note... I have some favorite picture books for stories from the Book of Genesis. Your library may have them:
Don't forget... I'm happy to lend any of these titles to you if you would like to preview them for a month.
08/31/16
2 hours - phone call
09/06/16
1 1/2 hours - update webpage
09/11/16
2 hours - phone call
09/11/16
4 1/2 hours - update webpage, write main lesson block (PDF)
PAID - THANK YOU
09/19/16
1/4 hour - preschool story suggestion
|
