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!

Happy Monday! Today is my wonderful husband’s birthday and all my boys are down and out with a wicked cold. So here I site with stylus in mouth, hands at keyboard and wine at my side.

I’ve decided that I will be posting every week our ‘happenings’, ‘learnings’ and ‘creations’ during the course of this school year. It’s a great way for those friends and family who do not live close to be a part of our lives and learning as a great way for us to record what’s been going on with The Shards in homeschool land.

This is my fifth, yes fifth year homeschooling. And this year I have decided to forgo the Classical teaching method which for me was The Well-Trained Mind. Although this classic method was amazing and there is much that has been learned I find that it is not the best route for me and my boys. Earlier this year we mixed in a little unschooling and PBHS with our classical and I found the boys were much happier than they were with their workbooks and rote learning. So was I. Totally.

Now we say Hello! to a new way of learning with an entirely new curriculum which I find is more organic and the hands-on side is essential to us all. So far so good! I do still have some changes to make to fit in our writing program and PBHS but for the first week I’d say it was pretty successful, mostly because the boys say they enjoy it much more than the way we did things previously. If they enjoy it they will learn more, this I know.

A great portion of our work will now be hands-on creating which also means more time-based meaning once the ‘work’ is done it’s recorded then discarded/destroyed to make room for more. We use chalk for instance to illustrate stories as we learn, as well as clay and beeswax, paints and other mediums. There is a huge emphasis placed on the earth and nature which was a big draw for me toward this curriculum. The boys learn woodworking, housebuilding (and history of), weaving, knitting, cooking and farming for instance along with math and language arts, history and science.

Here are some samples of what they boys have produced this week.

The boys learned to hand-knit and they were so excited to see how quickly the results came. The green pouches were hand sewn last year and this year we added them to the fronts of their nature bags with their hand-knitted straps. Then we immediately went out for a walk and collected some nature samples for another project. Can you tell who’s bag is who’s?

They did a pretty good job with the knitting and X even made himself a bracelet after he finished his strap.

We read a story titled, “Why evergreens keep their leaves” and the boys created these chalk drawing illustrations. I am going to take pictures of work we cannot keep and at the end of the year print up albums as keepsakes of our schooling year.

I had purchased a Martha Stewart kit for knitting and weaving. I had taught the boys to knit but they were getting frustrated with the time it took and all the stitches they would drop. We started with weaving and Xman made this little blanket and pillow for his Pikachu.

L is making a blanket for his beloved cow stuffy, Milkshake. He is almost done. He just needs to finish off the ends! Not once were the boys frustrated with the work of weaving with this kit. I think it is a kinder introduction to the art of yarn!

I may have to make this now that I have seen what can be done because one cannot have too many projects on the go! Haha!

So for a first week of schooling I’d say we are going pretty well. Goodbye Week #1, hello Week #2!

Any new projects you’d like to share? Be careful! I may have to add them to my list! 😉