As you all know, I decided to add some Waldorf components to our homeschool plans this year. We have lived a Waldorf-inspired kind of life since the littles were born, so I'm very excited to do this. I will repeat that we are Waldorf-inspired, so if you're expecting to see things done perfectly to the letter you will be disappointed! Purists beware - you will be horrified by the mashup of styles that will take place here this year. ;) I firmly believe that both Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner had some wonderful ideas about both child development and education, so I'm very happy we chose homeschooling because we are able to take advantage of both methods.
Because our school sessions will take place at different times due to play dates, etc. I created a daily rhythm that the littles can look at as soon as they get up in the morning. It hangs right below our calendar in the hallway:
I have laminated signs for everything from library storytime/play dates/going to the Y to picking up Bean and Boba every other Friday afternoon. By looking at the rhythm chart Short Pants is also able to tell if we'll be working on a main lesson (Waldorf) that day or working downstairs in our Montessori studio:
Also hanging up in the hallway is our new poem for August. We recite this every morning after changing our calendar and checking the rhythm chart:
Our first Waldorf activity last week was to decorate the beeswax candle that gets lit during our circle time. I found tiny star-shaped fondant cutters at the craft store, and the boys used these to cut stars out of decorating wax:
Here is my basket all stocked up for a week of Waldorf homeschooling:
The rhythm sticks and dolphin were used during circle time, as well as the bean bags. Short Pants and I threw a bean bag back and forth while skip counting by 10s. Pita Pocket just had fun tossing them everywhere!
I'd been wanting to order the Brambly Hedge books for some time, so when I saw the idea over at The Parenting Passageway to use them with form drawing I seized the opportunity! We read the "summer" tale over two days this week and used the pictures in it to look for straight and curved lines. Afterwards we had fun walking and hopping on straight lines taped on the floor:
We also traced straight and curved lines on each other's backs and later used white boards to draw some more. After we had practiced enough we drew some in our main lesson books. Short Pants was SO excited about his new crayon roll and main lesson book! Of course, he didn't want a picture of his work taken, so you'll have to do with a shot of mine:
Besides form drawing we also had our first weekly wet-on-wet watercoloring session. Though we've done wet-on-wet many times before, I took the boys all the way back to the beginning by starting with only the color red. I was VERY nervous about coming up with a color story as I had never done it before, but it proved to be not only easy but really enjoyable as well. First we talked about the qualities of the color red - fiery, brave, excited, etc. Next I pulled out my paper and told the boys a story about "Little Red" a wee red squirrel who woke up one morning high up in his tree and gobbled up some acorns because he was so hungry for breakfast. The acorns gave him so much energy that he ran down the tree and back and forth across the meadow over and over (while telling this part I used my brush to spread red paint across the paper). Then Little Red climbed up and down all the trees in the meadow (here I used my brush to paint red vertically on the paper). After much running, jumping, and hopping, Little Red was hungry for lunch but the only acorn left was way up in the highest tree, so he had to use all of his bravery to climb up and reach the acorn. After that he laid down for his afternoon nap.
When I finished the story my paper was filled with red and the boys were ready to start. I told them the story again while they painted, and it was so much fun to watch them giggling over what Little Red was doing on their paper. This was the first time we'd ever painted with a story, and something about doing so especially spoke to Pita Pocket. He had a huge smile on his face the whole time and painted till his sheet was completely full - something he'd never had the patience for previously:
We also had our baking day on Thursday. Every week this will correspond in some way with a lesson we've had that same week. Since Brambly Hedge is about a town of mice, I told the boys that we would make something that a mice would think especially yummy - peanut butter balls! We ended up dipping them in chocolate; I don't know if a mouse would like that or not but all the people who tried them thought they were delicious. I didn't even attempt to take pictures during our cooking time, but I did snap this shot of my two little chefs before we began:
I'd love to know what those of you who use Waldorf to homeschool with do during your schooling time, so I'm creating a weekly linky like Montessori Monday. So, if you have some Waldorf homeschooling stuff to share please link up below! Please also make sure to either place the Waldorf Wednesday button from the sidebar in your post or put a link back to this blog in your post so that your readers get the chance to see everyone's links. Thanks for reading and participating!