It's back to school and this year, unlike last year, none of the young children in our neighborhood are going to public school. They are all homeschooling! (This is not as weird as it sounds, the truth of the matter is that there are only two other families with young children. But of the two families that moved out, even one of them is homeschooling!) I realize that we are living in a dream world, where homeschool is the norm; we will just enjoy it while it lasts.
This is my first year doing two different grades and I am also juggling a very busy toddler so laying down a workable schedule has been my number one priority this month. This is how it has been working:
7:30 am - The kids get up, begin their housework, have breakfast, finish their housework, and then have as much free time as is left before school starts (which they spend playing with legos).
9:00 am - Sven goes to play in his room and the older boys clean up their toys. We begin school with Morning Exercises, which I think is really the most productive and fun part of our routine. Morning Exercises starts with a song ("Calling Me Away" from Fraggle Rock!). We say a prayer and light a candle then Soren and Carl each recite a verse, Waldorf-style. I read a poem from A Child's Garden of Verses. Then we do some yoga to warm up our bodies and some rhythmical counting to warm up our minds. Sometimes we play a math game. Then we talk about the way our day will go and practice the hymn we are learning. After Morning Exercises, Carl goes to play with Sven and Soren practices piano for 15 minutes. After Soren's piano practice, we do his main lesson.
10:00 am - Kindergarten begins. Sven goes to play at my neighbors house. If I am teaching Kindergarten, Soren does seat work at the table. If Megan is teaching Kindergarten, I send Carl down and then have more time for Soren's main lesson.
10:20 am - We all go on the Kindergarten walk and eat a snack. Then the mom that is teaching Kindergarten does an art project with all the older kids and the mom that is not will corral the younger kids (Sven and Oliver).
11:00 am - Recess! All the kids go to play outside. For the first 10 minutes of recess, Soren does a read aloud, chosen from the Ambleside Online curriculum. On Mondays, Carl also has a read aloud from The Enchanter's Daughter, a Waldorf-inspired introduction to the alphabet.
12:00 pm - Back inside, Soren does a page of copywork, Sven begins to eat, and Carl helps me make lunch. After lunch, Sven takes a nap while the older boys do "One More Thing". This is a time for whatever else I want to do with Soren: handwork, composer study, picture study, or Mandarin. Then someone blows out our candle and school is over for the day.
But that's not really it. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Scott has "Science Night" with Soren, a half-hour block after Carl goes to bed for whatever Scott wants to teach about. And on Saturday, they go to lego club with two other boys and their dad is the coach. On Tuesday, instead of Kindergarten, we do nature study at a park or on a hike and on Thursday (also instead of Kindergarten), we walk to the library. And all the interstitial moments of the day are taken up by more books and more legos.
This routine is working great for now but it will, of course, not work forever. For starters, the weather will get colder and all our outside activities will have to be reconsidered. And we have several short vacations planned this fall. And then I will have a baby! Who knows what that will be like? I am a little stressed about maintaining positive homeschooling habits. But for now, I think we've got something good going.
The Rain Maiden - Megan took the first unit and shared an end of summer story that coincided very nicely with our weather (alternating hot and rainy). It is, apparently, a German story with a female protagonist. Soren, who was happy to stay home, was nevertheless curious about the story and so asked Carl to tell it to him after the unit was over. We all got a rather lively rendition of a charming tale about a young girl who must wake up the slumbering rain maiden in order to win the hand of her true love.
The Strong Boy - My unit was over Michaelmas so I told a story about the true meaning of strength and courage. It was inspired by a story found in the comments on this blog. I told that story each day of our first week. Then on the first day of the next week, I told the story that goes along with making dragon bread. On the second day, the Kindergarteners took turns retelling The Strong Boy and on the third day, I read St. George and the Dragon. I was really surprised that all the children were absolutely still and quiet for the entirety of that very long book, even our 3-year-old. Also in our circle, I shared nursery rhymes about nuts and we learned to sing "We Are All Enlisted". For the outdoor part of Kindergarten, Carl lead us all in the Michaelmas circle from years past and we enjoyed playing with our homemade shooting stars. We painted with yellow and blue (to make green dragons), shaped dragon bread, and made figurines to act out the story out of beeswax. That last activity was successful for the first time in Kindergarten history because I found a tip suggesting that you warm your beeswax in water before modeling with it. Worked like a charm!
In First Grade
In our main lesson this month, we began The Story of Sunshine, a container story I will be using to introduce Grimm's Fairy Tales and the math concepts I want to discuss this year. The story was inspired by this lovely story, which I was actually planning to copy word for word. But in the end, I decided to make it special to Soren by incorporating the theme of sunshine, which was my nickname for him as a baby and has become symbolically important to him in the last year. My story begins with a baby born of a drop of sunlight who is adopted by a beekeeper and his wife. Because he was born of the sun, he has the special power to draw rays of sunlight by tracing his finger through the air. I used this part of the story to introduce form drawing with straight lines and curves. Soren's favorite part of the story was when Sunshine was traveling over the mountain, carrying his family's honey to market, and spilled it over a cliffside. The honey spills all over a little mountain gnome, who thinks that it is actually liquid sunlight! Soren thought it was hilarious.
So the first week was our container story, introducing Sunshine, and the second week began the Land of Numeria container story, where Sunshine goes looking for inspiration for his sun-pictures and stumbles upon a mysterious door that can only be opened by answering 12 riddles. We discussed the first three riddles for the other three weeks of this month: What is 1? What is 2? and What is 3? Each riddle is accompanied by a "hint", which is actually a Grimm's fairy tale, and the "answer" is a rhyme about the quality of that number.
For ONE, I told the story of "The Goose Girl". We talked about the one sun in the sky and about the one and only real princess in the story. We talked about the uniqueness of each person, especially about the uniqueness of Sunshine and of Soren. The answer to the riddle was: "One is the sun. One is the sky. / One is the world and one am I."
For TWO, I told the story of "The Two Brothers." We talked about the first two brothers, who are opposite, and the second two brothers, who are a reflection of each other. We talked about duality and drew yin yings on the sidewalk. We also talked about odd and even numbers. The answer to the riddle was: "Two sides of a coin. Two halves of a heart. / Should two be friends or should two be apart?"
For THREE, I told the story of "The Three Little Men in the Woods". We talked about how three is a magic number and watched the school house rocks video about three. We talked about the family in the story: the beautiful young girl, the King, and their baby. Three really is a special number and I could tell that Soren got that feeling. The answer to the riddle was: "Mom and Dad made me. / That's the magic of three."
On the first week of school, Soren and I made a main lesson book as per these instructions. Each week, I made a drawing for Soren to copy into the book, which he calls The Story of Sunshine.
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