Looking back on many of the images from my camera from this week, I realized that despite the boys having crazy colds, we managed to do a decent amount of discovering both inside and outside of the house. This was a lovely thing for me to notice and made me realize that perhaps I am sometimes too hard on myself in thinking that we haven’t done enough. Boy, I should have been recording in images what we do every week since I started home educating four years ago! I feel better now. 🙂

That being said, I have decided that I needed to break this week down into parts to make sense of it all for posting sake.

Early in the week we read a fable entitled Little Jackal and the Lion about how a jackal outsmarts the lion who wants to eat the jackals after eating all of the other animals. It reminded me a bit of the story The Gruffalo where the mouse tricks the beast into thinking there is a creature more ferocious and feared than itself. The beast is outsmarted. This is L’s version of the lion looking into a well with the jackals on the other side of the well watching. The lion is convinced that there is another lion bigger and more ferocious and is led to the well where he looks in and sees his reflection. Thinking it is the other lion is jumps into the well to attack. Well, we know how that ends. 🙂 There’s brawn and there’s brains. I like it when the ‘brains’ win in stories and it’s great encouragement for children.

L had fun with the play clay and made two almost identical sculptures.

I have to say that Mama K’s Play Clay is one of the many supplies we ordered this year and it not only natural but smells so wonderful as well. Love it!

Since we are on the subject of play clay I’ll share another creation of the boys’ from this week. I read another Waldorf story entitled Peasie and Beansie – a nature story. It’s about two sisters: Peasie who is thoughtful and generous and Beansie who only thinks of herself.

Xman drew the fire in the story that, upon Peasie cleaning out the ashes before they choked the fire, was given nice warm cakes as a gift. X drew a big pot cooking cakes on the fire.

L drew the buffalo that carried the gifts from Peasie’s father home on its back.

The boys used the block crayons for these drawings. It was the first time using them and I showed them that they could use the edges for fine lines or the wide areas for shading. They really enjoyed using the blocks and I must say they are very cool!

The next sculptures were a bit of a collaboration. I made the plum trees for the boys and they added the fruit.

The story goes that Peasie passed a plum tree whose thorns were all scattered about so she tidies them up. On her way home from her father’s house the tree thanks her by giving her ripe yellow plums which she carries home on the back of the buffalo (he is a very helpful creature!). One boy made the purple plums and the other the ripe yellow.

One things we found is due to the softness (?) of this clay it doesn’t hold well for some things. The tree tended to droop after a short while. I believe this was actually due to the weight of all those ripe fruit. 😉

After using the lovely smelling clay I went out and purchased some lemongrass essential oil this weekend and how wonderful our house smelled! Yes, one of the clay balls is scented with lemongrass, oh my!

I have to admit, having a fine art degree has been tough when it has come to home educating. I had a difficult time bringing art into our lives and now we do it everyday. (insert heart here)

Part 2 up next!