Last week we wrapped up our short form drawing block. After circle time on our first day I uncovered our new chalkboard drawing for the boys to see:
It was a drawing for the story "The Star Children" which is a sweet little story about star children hiding from their parents Father Sun and Mother Moon. Our forms for the week were hidden in the drawing for Short Pants to find - circle, square, rectangle, triangle, 4-leaf clover, crescent moon, and a star. I saw this idea over at the wonderful blog Ancient Hearth.
After I told the story and Short Pants found our forms for the first day (circle/square/rectangle) he worked at tracing these shapes using our Montessori metal insets - see - I told you there would be mash-ups!:
Afterwards he handed them off to Pita Pocket to color:
We also drew the forms with chalk:
Then we put them in our main lesson books:
For our wet-on-wet watercolor session this week I told the boys a story about shy and gentle blue heron. Shy blue heron spent her time flying back and forth gracefully over the river below and wading in the shallows on her long legs. While we painted we talked about how the color blue differed from red:
As you can see in the picture below, I strung a line in our dining room so that the boys can admire and reflect on their paintings from each week:
Our next Waldorf schooling day was just as fun, but I didn't take any photos. We started our day with a nature walk at a nearby park. We fed the ducks and admired the lily pads and yellow lotus flowers at the edge of the lake. After some time on the playground, Short Pants and I drew the forms for the day (triangle and 4-leaf clover) with sidewalk chalk on the pavement. He had fun walking the forms and then drawing some by himself. Once home we practiced again by using the quatrefoil and triangle Montessori metal insets and then put the shapes into our main lesson books.
On our last day for the week we worked on the crescent moon and star forms. Both boys really loved the "Star Children" story and I ended up telling it many times throughout the week. First they walked the forms I'd taped to our living room floor:
Short Pants was very silly and somersaulted the star form!
Next we used our window crayons to draw the forms on our sliding glass doors. The boys were very excited about using the crayons as we hadn't done it in so long:
The star form was pretty difficult for Short Pants. He was able to do it step-by-step along with me but had more trouble drawing it completely on his own. He was so proud every time he drew one though - whether it was by my direction or by himself:
Afterwards we put them in our main lesson books. We skipped our baking session last week as we were leaving the next day for a backpacking trip. The plan had been to bake star-shaped cookies but I didn't want to leave them sitting while we were gone.
We did our first week beeswax modeling session, which both littles thoroughly enjoyed. While the boys held bits of green beeswax modeling wax in their hands to warm it I read them a nature story from this little book:
Since Short Pants will hear so many fairy tales as part of learning to write his numbers and letters, I decided it would be nice to focus on nature stories for our beeswax sessions. The advice I got for beeswax modeling with littles was to start very slowly and simply. Since at one point in our story a frog sat on a lily pad we worked on making lily pads for tiny frogs. The boys loved feeling the softened beeswax in their hands and gently molding it into a circular form. We put them on our nature table once they were completed:
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