Our Waldorf Homeschool Journey

On Tuesday, we did a version of the story of St George, how he received his name. But first I just want to share a little something I do to make my life easier and hold the kids attention…Those chalkboard drawings…I get a lot of emails asking how to do them or if they’re really necessary?

I feel that they are important. Steiner speaks about children (and adults) thinking in pictures, hence the introduction of letters in first grade as things - an example would be the letter B, we used a small butterfly, called Bertie. The B was his body, and wings were attached to it. (You can find out more about this in Steiners lectures-Discussions with Teachers)I feel that this extends all the way through a childs’ education. Drawing it on paper just doesn’t have the same feel for me, but that’s a personal choice of course. Anyway back to Michaelmas…

I have 1 chalkboard drawing for the week in a festival week. I make sure when I draw it that first - I ask my angel to guide me, second - I have a good overview of all aspects of the stories to be told for the entire week. I then include drawings of all these things in the drawing, like St George, sunflowers, a dragon etc. And I make sure I am able to rub out certain items and replace them with others. For example, on Monday we did the story of the little boy in Africa who conquered the dragon.

In that chalkboard drawing I had mud huts for the village. Now in Tuesdays’, story I needed a castle. So I rub out the mud huts and replace it with a castle. And a very important part of that story was the work of a white dove, who flew across forests to fetch St George, the brave knight, so I make a little space for her, and pop her in. All in all we change the chalkboard drawing in under 5 minutes, and the kids are thrilled. It makes my life it little easier…

Wednesday was a handwork day…still knitting, Jules is busy with socks, and miracle of miracles, she’s even knitting in bed at night! This is awesome for her she usually has a moan everytime the knitting is mentioned! StJohn is busy with his bright orange hand warmers, happy and industrious as usual.

Yesterday the story of St George was also about a princess, this time set in Libya, so the chalkboard drawing remained the same.I must admit I had an internal giggle, as I’d forgotten to show them where Libya was on the worldmap.

So I started the story, and StJohn interrupts, saying,”Libya?”And Jules steps in and says, “Yes Sin (his nickname),it’s at the top of Africa next to Egypt.”He then says, okay, quite satisfied, and we continue the story.  I found the exchange interesting for 2 reasons, firstly Juliette has an understanding of  world Geography (I wasn’t aware of how much she knew!). And secondly, the interruption which I don’t encourage was handled so peacefully, that it never changed the tone of the story. I told the story which can be found in this book…

And it was a painting day so here are their paintings. We used “normal” paints not the wet on wet style we usually do with the Goethean watercolours. Here they are, there is an abundance of water and sky as in the story the dragon rises out of a lake…

First StJohns’…

And Juliettes’ …

And that was the end of yesterday, John is busy making a sword and shield for StJohn, to be presented at the Michaelmas celebration on Saturday night, and I need to make 2 Capes of Golden Light…at this point I still haven’t unpacked the material for the capes, never mind any design ideas!

Filed under: Waldorf Grade 5, Waldorf Grade 2, Festivals, Handwork & Crafting, Waldorf Homeschooling on October 2nd, 2009