Our Waldorf Homeschool Journey

Well it’s been 10 days since I updated the blog which is frustrating! So I’m going to try and summarise what we’ve done over those 10 days. StJohn is finally free of mumps, they went down 2 days ago! And yes, you guessed right, Jules now has mumps, started yesterday…2 days last week were lost to dentist appointments for Juliette on 1 day, and the previous day she flipped out due to the stress of the impending dental visit… So school has not been going according to schedule. But what have we been doing?

Well for Grade 5 we finished off the last of the Indus Valley Civilization by looking at their belief systems and their view of the afterlife. All this knowledge was gleaned through the archeological evidence of the Harrapa dig.

I spoke to Jules about the people of this land paying homage to Mother Earth and their various fertility goddesses…

and we looked at the various items found in the burial sites. The various items buried with the person tells us that the living believed in an afterlife of some sort. Slightly similar to the Egyptians, very slightly.

But I wanted to end that main lesson block with a fun activity! I try and do this with every block we finish, I’m a firm believer of sending them off on a high note ;o) !

So we looked back at the form drawing we’d done of the various seals of the Indus Valley people and we made our own seals, not out of clay, but potatos!

It had to be done in a day, be soooo much fun (read messy) and inspirational!We let StJohn do his own as well, as by this stage he was out of bed for a few hours a day and getting bored! The thing with potato stamps is that the potato is soft and easy to carve, yet it holds it’s form and stamps well. We just used normal poster paint – there was no way I was using my precious Stockmar paints to have potato rubbed in them! First we made a few of the seals  identical to the Indus Valley seals,

 and then I asked Juliette to make a personal seal for herself. I asked her to take her self back in time…If she had lived in the Indus Valley what would she be known for? Now my daughter is beyond crazy about cats, so it was inevitable….Her seal is a cats head, and she would have been known, 7 500years ago, as the Keeper of the Cats.(She totally came up with the name and design on her own no help at all from me). It’s the pale blue seal below…

 And that brought us to the end of that lesson block. We were then ready to start with India! Finally it is such a huge mythology, it’s so vast and great fun.

Filed under: Ancient Civilisations, Waldorf Grade 5, Waldorf Homeschooling on October 19th, 2009