What a week! We spend A LOT of time outside this week making the most of the amazing fall weather. Between sports class, the art gallery program and swim lessons, plus a lot of outdoor learning and fun we managed to squeeze in some fun indoor learning as well.

I LOVE collages (and apparently using all caps right about now) and L’s Millipede Fair is so fun! Every art gallery program which happens once a month gives the boys a chance to create something similar to that of an artist at the gallery or from a group exhibition. I think this collage had some inspiration from out time outside and our visit to the fair earlier in the week.

L explained that the bottom left image shows a millipede playing a water shooter game to try and win the stuffed ‘Milkshake” cow hanging above. His water needs to fill up the tube first to win. Yes, we played this at the county fair this summer and they loved it (oops – just realized that I haven’t blogged about that one yet!). The millipede on the other side is going down a waterslide  and loving it! Aaahh!!!

This is Xman’s piece entitled Deep Forest. I have to say I love his use of positive/negative space to illustrate how deep this forrest is. Love it.

This collage is X’s as well. I see a tree theme here. We are big fans of the moon especially in it’s full phase. It’s mesmerizing and so beautiful! He made a point of letting me know that the craters on the moon were made with a silver colour pencil – very important. Love again.

It’s definitely okay to love your own child’s work I believe! I find it to be a window into their minds and what a wonderful land they may share!

As you may recall in the last HA post we were exploring the number three. Well, I found a fun poem about threes in our Waldorf notes and L had a great time with it. Below is a 30 leaf clover which is really ten clovers placed together because that is so much better for luck than one four leaf clover! Obviously!

X went a different direction or a tangent you could say. He started drawing out Margot Multiply gnome we had made for this year in an attempt to continue illustrating multiples of three. He went on to draw Plusil Plus, Minihat Minus and Daisy Divide in a nature walk. Well, what could be better?

This next week is all about fours in so many ways! I have never had so much fun with numbers, have you?

This was a busy week with programs starting up and visiting friends plus friends visiting which made for a fast yet fun week.

The boys have been learning grammar for a while using First Language Lessons, part of the classical teaching we had been using. It’s wonderful and has some great poems in it for memorizing and some of them (many!) we use for our circle time. It also introduces grammar beginning with nouns and verbs and the different types. I think I may still use it from time to time as I find it so valuable.

In grade 3 grammar is introduced in the Waldorf lessons.  Since Xman is familiar with some of the parts of a sentence from our grammar book it made it easy for both boys to do this lesson. This copy work is from a wonderful poem in the Watercolour Stories called Blessings of Fall. We read the poem together and then the boys copied the work using blue for the nouns and red for verbs. Xman switched ‘scarlet’ for ‘red’ poppies as he loves this colour. I can’t blame him – it’s a pretty awesome colour!

Xman’s is first and L’s is below.

I found it interesting the way L spaced his work out into verses as shown in the poem and X just focused on copying.

Math. Geez. Who’d a thunk I’d love math? Wish I had learned it the way the boys do. It was wonderful starting off with MathUSee and now using Waldorf is amazing. We have started with grade one for both. It’s not that they don’t get it. They know how to add, subtract and multiply and even divide a bit but I decided to start here because it gives a new understanding and a new way to look at numbers and how they relate to each other and the real world.

I love the number three. It’s just wonderful and so I was excited to introduce it in a new way:

•physical three such as a shamrock with three leaves; a triceratops with three horns; three colour receptors in our eyes.

•mental three such as trigonometry – measuring triangles (3 sides!); others threes like ‘trio’, ‘triad’, ‘triplet’.

•spiritual three such as the Holy Trinity; three divisions of self – physical, mental, spiritual.

We made a vine of leaves where each had three points and these points we numbered. The boys ended up with ten leaves of three points. I asked Xman (as I knew L would get this right away), ‘If there are 30 points of 3 then how may leaves have you drawn?’ He said, ‘ten’. And so we have learned some division. 🙂

The boys were thrilled to see their drawings as a way to count by threes. Much more fun for us than a workbook.

L went further and added all of the numbers you use to count by three’s up to number twenty-four to see if the sum would be a multiple of three (see lower right). We talked about how all these numbers are multiples of three and did a bit of division as well to see how many times three could go into 108.

This bit of work proved promising for me for it taught me that even though L is learning Waldorf grade one math he is using another level of thinking to go further with the basics. I need not worry that this is too elementary as it gives him room to explore and discover numbers in a new way. I have found that even with X it has opened his eyes to the relation of numbers that he wouldn’t experience with a workbook.

We read a story called How the Corn Came to Be. To continue the theme of three’s we thought of what we could make with triangles and Xman came up with some pretty fun drawings such as gems and a rocket!

He then went on to draw arrows and bows which he decided to price. If you can see the paper clearly he made a list of prices with the type of arrow that coincided. The arrow drawings at this point weren’t complete arrows but the parts of an arrow. You had to mentally combine the lines with the other shapes to figure out which arrow was which for each price.

This brought about more ideas with L and arrows being sold with his new currency called Qwaddel. Xman decided his were Quibble. L said one Qwaddel was worth five Canadian dollars so he did the conversion for the price of his arrows. These boys sell some pretty pricy stuff! 🙂

The fun didn’t stop here. The boys wanted to make their own currency. I found a recipe for air dry clay that was easy to make and for which we already had the ingredients. (We used recipe number four.)

The boys shaped their coins and once dry added value to them. Xman has red and blue for his Quibbel and L has yellow and green for his Qwaddel.

Now that the coins are dry the boys have started trading them. Tomorrow we add shellac to them to prolong their life. I think they will see a lot of use!

The more Waldorf we do the more I find their minds expanding to include other ideas and ways of thinking. Creating a new currency was so much fun. I can’t wait to see what week four brings!

Waldorf is big into nature and that is great for us because we have a trail near our home where we always make awesome discoveries.

Perfect camouflage. What do you see?

We love moths!

Hmmm…dualities? Before and after? Life and rebirth? Math in nature.

I don’t know what it is about grasshoppers lately but they love sitting on the boys’ hands!

We collected leaves and went home to do some printing.

L had the idea of printing both sides at once.

This is a most interesting leaf – it is soft and fuzzy on one side and smooth on the other. A wonderful discovery.

Fuzzy side printed.

Smooth side.

I think we may be doing more leaf printing! Do you recognize any of the leaves from these prints?

Today we decided to go for a walk after dinner. Xman wanted to follow the Earth Adventures trail we had done previously and write out the directions for which way to go. L went ahead with Steve and had some great one on one time while X walked and wrote…

and walked again and wrote…

It got pretty dark near the end and we missed the blue heron that a couple had mentioned spotting but we did see a mink with a mouse (or some other furry fellow) in it’s grasp but he was too fast for my little camera.

L and Daddy were happy to spend the time together.

Xman was very proud of all of the writing he did and eager to share once he was finished.

He was very determined to walk the whole adventure trail and write it all down and L and Daddy were very interested in listening to him share it with them.

When X didn’t know how to spell a word we sounded it out together and for those tricky ones I told him how to spell them. In turn, he looked back on his work when he came upon the word again in order to spell it correctly. I told him to not worry about spelling for now but he was determined to spell the words correctly from the get go. I find both boys are picky when it comes to spelling, that’s part of the writing experience for them.

This next pic? It sums up the week and my effort to steer clear of things. (It worked).

Here comes Monday and Week 3! I will try to keep the pics to a minimum but I cannot guarantee anything! 😉

What did you do this last week? We’d love to hear about it!