Monthly Archives: September 2011

autumn approaching

Posted on September 25, 2011 | 2 Comments

I love summer. I love running outside in bare feet and summer dresses. I love going to the beach and the pool and soaking in the sunshine. I love lemonade and mojitos. I love dinners of fresh fruit and yogurt. However,  I am beginning to realize that I am learning to welcome the change of seasons too and that I enjoy living seasonally.

At the first signs of spring I rush out to the garden and prepare it for summer- pruning, planting, planning. For the first few months of summer I am an avid, bordering on compulsive, weeder.  I spend hours tending and caring for the garden and it looks beautiful and neat and tidy. Then, as the summer progresses, my enthusiasm wanes a bit. The days are hot and I am not quite as excited to spend hours nurturing our garden. I’d rather sit in the shade and knit and enjoy the garden in its glory. Every so often I go on a weeding rampage but for the most part I just leave it alone. By the time fall comes, I’ve completely given up on it, and what I’ve realized is that is when the garden is most glorious. All the summer annuals that we set are big and mature and still full of blossoms. The fall flowers- sedum, holly, and mums, are starting to show their colors too. The flowers and plant have gotten big enough that they out compete the weeds. It still looks well-kept, but has a kind of wildness to it that I love.

I have been trying to make the most of these weeks of early fall by letting the kids play outside as much as possible, even if that means cutting into a little bit of the school day. We will have plenty of long winter months when we are forced inside to make up any work that I feel like we have missed. The leaves are just starting to change and I don’t want to miss out on that. Too many years I’ve mourned the end of summer and completely missed the beauty of the fall. I don’t want that to happen this year.

Ila learning how to whittle

Kairav mowing the lawn

In the coming weeks, after the hard frosts arrive, we will have to bed the garden down for winter. I will split and cut back the peonies, pull out the dead plants, take down the fence around the vegetable garden,  harvest the last of the potatoes and swill chard, and rake and rake and rake. I look forward to that too.

We went around and picked some flowers to bring inside. The little roses are blooming for a second time this summer- I suppose all that pruning in July paid off.  We also picked some for pressing so on those cold and dreary winter days, when we’ve forgotten what summer is like, we can pull them out and remember and look forward to next summer.

flower pressing

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Posted in Homeschooling, Kids, Summer

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First week a success

Posted on September 18, 2011 | 2 Comments

The first week of school could not have been better.  Admittedly we only had two and a half days of ‘real’ school work and I kept my expectations pretty low, but still, we had a great week.

We started the week and the year off with a trip to Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts.  It is set up  like a village from the 1880′s which I thought was very nicely done and authentic feeling. The buildings are old buildings that have been transplanted from other sites. There is a potter’s studio, a blacksmith shop, a school-house, a church etc.  A couple of times a year they hold a home school day and there are workshops for the kids to do. Ish did a workshop on textiles and one on herbal remedies. Ulka did cooking and farm life. They were pretty neat classes, at least the kids seemed to enjoy them.  Andy generously offered to keep Ila and Kairav so that we could drive out with our friends Sarah, Jack and Lucy and have a day with the big kids.

This one just cracks me up

Goofy fun at the museum

Learning about training oxen

On Tuesday we jumped right into our school routine.  I was skeptical about circle time, but to my surprise everyone, including Ishaan, loves it. Kairav is hilarious to watch as he marches around trying to keep up with the finger plays and movements. Pretty cute.

Ishaan’s first big project is to make a clay oven that we will use to bake bread outside. I found the idea on this fantastic website called Pyrites.org. There are all kinds of super great ideas and some fascinating articles on the value of handwork and crafts in education. A few weeks ago  Irene took down many trees in our neighborhood (including 5 on our property 2 of which landed on our house, but that’s another story). One of the trees that came down just down the street was a large willow. The kids and I collected lots of branches to make the basket which is to be the dome part of the oven.  The basket will get covered in many layers of leaves and clay to make the clay oven.  This week we got to work on the basket.  Once we assembled the framework, which was very frustrating, the weaving went quickly and was rewarding. We used forsythia for the frame because it was straight and easier to work with and used willow for the weaving. The next step is to located some clay and to get some straw from a farmer we know.

Beginning the weaving on the framework.

The finished basket

As part of Ishaan’s math review I want him to master his times tables, so I had him make a multiplication wheel. It was a fun project for him, especially since he doesn’t love math. I think it is really pretty and we can hang it on the wall where it is easy for him to see all the multiplication tables.

Working on the multiplication wheel

Finished wheel

We spent a lot of time coloring with block crayons and doing wet on wet water-color. I want to focus on art this year with the kids. I’ve always left this to Andy since he is an actual artist and I can barely draw a stick figure, but honestly after he is finished working all day he is not really up for an art class and I’m really bad about making that happen.  So, I figured I would teach the kids and myself as well.  It’s been neat experimenting with crayon drawing and am beginning to see how those beautiful waldorfy crayon drawings are done.  We are still working on blending clouds of color, but it’s still pretty cool.  I’m using a great book  by  Sieglinde De Francesca. It’s hard to believe that her pictures are done entirely with block crayons. Check them out at Coloring with Block Crayons  if you get a chance.

watercolors

We’ve been trying to get all the lessons done in the morning and saving the afternoons for art and handwork. So far it’s been working out. Our general schedule goes something like this:

9:00 circle time

9:30-12:00 main lessons, spelling, math, and music practice

12-1:30 lunch and outside time

1:30-2:30 art and handwork

2:30 day ends.

We don’t do school on Wednesday because Ishaan has his wilderness class and on Fridays we just do a half day and save the afternoon of outings and getting together with friends. This Friday was a perfect day for apple picking- the Honeycrisps are amazing!

Ila enjoying a honeycrisp

Kairav meeting the goat.

As I said, this was a short week and everyone was fresh and excited but hopefully that excitement will carry us through for at least a few weeks while we get a rhythm.

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Posted in 1st grade, 3rd grade, Homeschooling, Kids, Summer

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School Planning

Posted on September 14, 2011 | 4 Comments

My school planning is all done, finally. It’s a good thing too since we started school this week.  I finished up on Friday, and while I am sure it will be a constant adjusting and tweaking process, the whole year is laid out. Planning school is such an overwhelming task for me.  I think this year  having to plan in 15-20 minute chunks over the whole summer was good for me. It gave me a chance to really think about ideas, mull them over, talk to people, and finally decide what I wanted to do with the children.

I went through so many different ideas and methods in my head.  Charlotte Mason inspired, Waldorf inspired, my own mish-mash of things, 4th grade or 3rd grade for Ishaan, 2nd grade or 1st grade for Ulka? So many questions to work out. In the end, I came back to what always feels right and what resonates best with the children and our family life, and that is a pretty straight up Waldorf style home school.  We all love the rhythm, pace and beauty of it. I haven’t read a ton of Steiner and sometimes I think he’s kind of wacko, but a lot of what I’ve read makes a lot of sense for us and I like how it plays out in the way we do school.

Technically Ishaan is in 4th grade and Ulka is in 2nd grade. By technically I mean that according to their age those are the grades they would be in if they went to traditional school and that is what they are registered as with the school system.  However we believe in “delayed” academics, or letting the kids be kids and just play for as long as possible, so we wait an extra year before starting “real school”.  The whole grade level thing seems arbitrary to me anyway. If I teach Ishaan about Native Americans and shelters around the world instead of Norse mythology and map making,  his year is he not learning what he should be? So in the end, Ishaan is doing 3rd grade and Ulka is doing 1st grade, for whatever that even means.

Making Math Meaningful 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Ishaan I’ve broken down the year into 4-week blocks with a few 1 or 2-week blocks thrown in to break things up a bit. We are going to focus on Hebrew stories, Native Americans, Fibers and Textiles, Shelters and homes, and Farming and Gardening.  Math and poetry are ongoing and don’t get dedicated blocks. Our main focus will be on hands on projects done outside as much as possible and writing fluency.  This seems reasonable since the projects bit is what Ishaan loves best and is good at and the writing bit is what he hates, struggles with and needs to work on most.

Last year Ulka sat down and the table with us for a short time in the morning  and did some work, but mostly just to get into the routine and rhythm of doing school. When Ishaan first started we found the transition to school a bit difficult so I wanted Ulka to get a taste of it before she really had to. So since it is her first real school year and it is hard to know what will work best for her, Ulka’s blocks are much more loosely planned and will be solidified as we go along.  What I do know is that it will entail lots of fairy tales and animal stories including the Burgess Animal Book for Children which I love for this age. Our focus for her this year is definitely reading and she is super excited about it.

Burgess Animal Book for Children 

 

 

 

The trickiest part of school for me really, is figuring out what to do with the little guys. Kairav naps in the morning so I just have Ila to keep busy. Our afternoon session is fairly short and mostly handwork and art so it is easy for them to participate and for me to be with them. I think it will actually be easier when they are all  in school doing their own work, but that is a long time from now- and it will probably be Ishaan teaching Kairav to read!

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Posted in 1st grade, 3rd grade, Art, Homeschooling, Kids