Our Waldorf Homeschool Journey

Hi Everyone,

I have a breathing space, the kids are drawing and listening to J. Strauss. They picked it out of our CD collection. Next thing I heard it in the background. So fantastic!

We started school again today, after a 5 day break. It was a whole new experience for me, as StJohn started his Grade 1 Letters. He’s been copying the writing on everything from boxes to toys to food cartons. Because of this I thought it best to start him a little earlier than I’d planned as I do not want him to get into the habit of creating letters incorrectly.

Juliette has a full 6 months coming up everything from Division in Maths to the production cycle of Beef. (I see myself having a lot to say about that as I don’t eat dead animals. Should be Fun! LOL)

Teaching both of them was a new experience for me, as usually StJohn just listens to what I’m teaching Jules and I keep him busy with a few educational activities.

Today was different as they each had a main lesson. I must admit I was a bit nervous as Stjohn can be a difficult fellow. He bounces around, doesn’t sit still and generally has a hang of a lot to say!

But it went so smoothly! We started with our opening verse, then I got Jules started on a phonics worksheet. I was then able to do StJohn’s main lesson with him. Then set him up with an excercise, while I did Juliette’s main lesson.

Then I moved over to StJohn to help him create letters out of playdough. While he was busy there I was able to do Juliette’s first cursive writing lesson with her. StJohn was then finished, and was ready to play!

So off he went after packing up his dough, and posing for a picture (I had to it was his first day of Real school).

Then Juliette and I were able to finish the writing lesson. After that I taught her primary colours. StJohn had come back to the table at this point so he joined in. They learned their primary colours in both English and their second language Afrikaans.

Once this was done, Juliette read aloud to me for a bit. She is reading so well. I want to record her reading, and put it on the site. So that you can hear what I mean. She’s doing so well. Pronouncing words like stepmother, schemes, woodcutter, underbrush as smoothly as though she had learned them years ago. She hadn’t seen some of them until she opened this book.

We then did our closing verse and we were done for the day!

Well that’s it, I’m off to continue making dinner, and I’m expecting a call from one of my friends back home in Cape Town. YAY!

Oh and then it’s bathtime, dinnertime,storytime, you know the usual.

I feel so blessed to be doing this job – Homeschool Mom.

Blessings to all of you,

Susan

Filed under: Homeschool on July 9th, 2007