Our Waldorf Homeschool Journey

Well Friday ended rather badly with StJohns’ horrid behavior, he’s going through that choleric stage at the moment, testing boundaries at every opportunity. So we never got to do is lesson with him on Friday…but that said he helped bake the lamingtons after school. But enough of that…Juliette and I looked at the Architecture and specifically the temple of Atlantis. Now Plato describes these things beautifully in one of his plays, so the lesson was relatively easy to put together.

Firstly the chalkboard drawing that was done and waiting for her in the morning…

I felt that the temple was a solid structure not the type found in ancient greece. Just my personal impression, so I went with it. We spoke about the various types and colours of bricks/stones used in their building. How it could have been plain or exquisitely patterned. We spoke of the temple, where it was situated and what was inside. We spoke of Poseidon in his chariot being pulled by winged horses and surrounded by 100 sea nymphs riding dolphins. We spoke of how the temple was covered in silver on the outside and how the pinnacles of the temple were covered in gold. We thought about orichalcum, what was it, how did it look?

I had made Juliette a small pair of butterfly earrings the previous evening using a copper coloured metal, which has a similar colour to orichalcum. She was thrilled with them and wore them today.

And then Juliette wrote a bit about Atlantis, it’s temples and the mineral gifts from the Earth that were used there. Here is her page…

And we explored a slightly different avenue in respect of drawing on Friday. Yes, she drew the temple, but then she cut out tinfoil (silver) for the walls of the temple and gold paper for the roof, and glitter was applied liberally, not only to the picture I’m afraid. It goes everywhere!!I always forget about it’s staying power if I haven’t used it for a few months. Everything has bits of glitter on it or in it, even the poor cat! But let me tell you it was worth it! Look at what Juliette created…

The thing that struck me about this picture was its’ simplicity. Often her drawing and paintings are full of detail. This was so simple. She measured and cut the paper and foil, and left spaces for the glitter, then filled it in carefully. It took her ages to do. And she put the last bit of glitter on and said,”I’m finished.” Usually she will pick up a pencil or crayon and fiddle a bit here and there, before finally leaving the picture be.

You’ll notice that we try and do an activity related to the lesson each day. In the architecture of Atlantis there seemed to be a strong feeling for the mineral kingdom, so I decided on glitter, and foil, in essence - metals. I feel that this is really important when homeschooling using a Waldorf approach. It’s part of learning using the head, heart and hands for me.

We ended the day with an odd little story from Denmark about a Sea Nymph, and we chatted about how the humans have felt about them for centuries.

Tomorrow we are going to look at the technology and healing powers of the Atlanteans, crystals and the like, it should be fun! I’m not as prepared as I’d like to be so, I’ll be up early tomorrow getting myself together.

Filed under: Waldorf Grade 5, Ancient Civilisations, Waldorf Homeschooling on September 6th, 2009