Our Waldorf Homeschool Journey

One thing I don’t often blog about, is our handwork…Now I love sewing and knitting and crafting in general so I don’t find this hard going at all. Before I started homeschooling the kids, I used to help out with the Grade 1 and Grade 2 Handwork classes at their Waldorf school. Which looking back on it…I seem to have spent hours finding dropped/vanished stitches, and threading needles and undoing knots! I loved it and would do it again in a heartbeat.

Anyway…sanguine temperament constantly distracted, bear with me!Waldorf Grade 5 Knitting… This year Juliette needs to knit a pair of socks using 4 needles (not a round). It’s a standard part of the curriculum but my daughter doesn’t enjoy knitting at the best of times. She’ll cross stitch until the middle of the night,but wool and needles are not her fave activity. So she has scheduled handwork times and we work on things together.

At the moment, she is on the first sock (which she might finish when she turns like 30!), it’s a soft pale blue. I always want to laugh, but keep it tucked up inside, as she hauls out her needles in a  typical melancholic – poor, long suffering me – attitude, and then knits so beautifully and then is so proud of her finished item.

Well for this knitting project I had to do a bit more preparation then usual! You see I’d never knitted a sock before!Why? I have no clue. I’ve knitted jerseys, shawls, an endless number of animals, but no socks. Quite frankly I was a touch nervous – it looks tricky with all those needles flying…Well, a did 1 sample sock, to work out the heel part and then adjusted the pattern and knitted a pair for StJohn, in surprise, surprise – Orange!

They came out so cute. He loves them and wears them every second day. I’ve taken to handwashing them in between.   So now I’m knitting a pair for myself and then another pair for StJohn (he’s asked for white this time-go figure) and John has requested a pair for his hiking boots. This I was thrilled at because when he first saw them he was a bit, ummhh, no thanks. I think he had visions of wearing rainbow socks with his fancy work suit.  But I will make him a conservative green, possibly olive…but boy do I itch to make a royal purple pair with orange ribbing!

Thank heavens for this easy knitting pattern! If anyone needs a simple knitting pattern for Grade 5  Waldorf Socks then please just email me, susan@ourhomeschooljourney.co.za and I’ll send it to you. I must have gone through 8 patterns until I found 1 that worked with a bit of adjustment. It’s easy and Juliette is even managing it with ease and a lot of “poor me” sighs.

Now St John has been working on a rabbit for ages now. It looked easy but turned out to be quite a bit of knitting. Easy to do but time consuming. He finished it last night. All the knitting was done by him including the casting off, the purl for the ears and the increasing and decreasing. He sewed it up last night and then stuffed the little bunnys’ tail with dried lavender. Then he took it to bed with him.

I think he did really well, he’s only 7 years old. He was so happy with his bunny, he took it to show his Grandmother today, and told her,”I even finger-knitted his bow!” Next on his list of handwork is a knitted pair of fingerless mittens, in orange to match his socks, he tells me!

Filed under: Handwork & Crafting, Waldorf Grade 2, Waldorf Grade 5, Waldorf Homeschooling, Waldorf Toys on September 23rd, 2009 | No Comments »

Mmmmhh…you may be thinking, what on earth is this crazy woman doing now? But bear with me there is method in my perceived madness. For Grade 5 we finished Atlantis studies with the destruction of Atlantis taking place in 9600BCE. I didn’t want to then hop forward to 3300BCE and launch myself into India, so I started searching for the link between Atlantis and the next mentioned civilization in the Asia type area. Some history that could fill the gap, that I kept feeling,… That’s when I found the Harappa Civilization. It is fascinating beyond measure and I wrote a 2 week long lesson block on it…

The first archeological evidence dates back to 7000BCE, it is found in the city of Mehrgarh. This is what I based the lesson block on. The city of Mehrgarh is situated up and to the left of the Indus Valley, in Pakistan. The civilization flourished until about 2600BCE when the city was finally deserted. It is thought that severe climate changed (no longer able to grow food) and possibly an enemy attack was responsible for this. But that said there is ample proof that the citizens of Mehrghar had been moving over the previous few hundred years to join the Indus Valley Civilization further down in India.

So we started at the beginning…for us that means a chalkboard drawing. I decided that this time I’d do one drawing and add as much detail as possible. It doesn’t show up well on the blog, but included in it are relevant foods, animals,plants, activities,architecture, etc.

 We started with a bit of background looking at where Mehrgarh is on our world map, and then spoke about what it looked like, the climate and other general things.Do you know it is the earliest civilization to use a grid pattern for it’s city? And that the bodies dug up had proof of dentistry, and I mean drilling, possibly the earliest to date? Anyway, after this Juliette wrote a bit about the Harappa Civilization….

And drew it as she imagined it…

We have since done form drawing. Now for Grade 5 I’ve changed the forms we do quite a bit, because there are so many awesome ancient types of writing, seals and signs we’ve used them as our form drawings. These are the few seals from the Harappa Civilization that have been translated so far. There are over 400 of them uncovered todate!

If you look carefully at her written work, you see that we use the much debated, loved and hated Vimala alphabet. I love it and use it daily myself. Juliette learnt it in Grade 4 and has used it ever since, which was her own personal choice. But what I wanted to share with you is…do you see the repetitive forms above the writing? Jules drew them and cut them out using a craft knife type thing, and made paper chains which she then coloured.

I’ve spoken about this before, and just colouring, painting, modelling etc, can become boring. I truly feel we need to keep coming up with fresh ideas. And seals of the Harappa Civilization made into paper chains seemed like a fresh idea! It also is a repetition of form drawing which I feel is necessary for the form to become part of the child.

And tomorrow I’ll add a post about the crafts of Harappa (awesome beads amongst other things!), and we’ll also be looking at an animal study of an ancient bird of Pakistan and then a  wild flower found in Pakistan and strangely enough in our back garden as well!!

I’m hoping to be finished the Harppa Civilization by the end of the week, so that we can then spend next week on St Michael and St George. Keep your fingers crossed for us please…often things don’t go as planned in this home!

Filed under: Ancient Civilisations, Homeschool, Vimala Alphabet, Waldorf Grade 5, Waldorf Homeschooling on September 22nd, 2009 | No Comments »

It was the final day of Atlantis studies. Again there was a chalkboard drawing waiting for Jules when she woke up…

We spoke about how the Atlanteans changed, how they started to use their powers not for the good of all but for the gain of a few and how this lead to their destruction. We spoke about how there were Atlanteans that remained true to the spirit. They saw where the fate of Atlantis was heading. They made plans to set up civilizations across our planet.

As I told Juliette,” These Atlanteans set sail in the wooden ships with beautiful painted sails. In each ship they had an extremely wise person, a poet, a healer, a teacher, a farmer, a scientist and a magician. Their leaders name was Manu.” (This sets us up as the intro to Ancient India!)

We then spoke about how the climate changed in Atlantis, how the storms became worse. We spoke about how in one terrifying day and night Atlantis was destroyed. How the storms tore it apart, how a volcano erupted from the very center of the earth, and how Atlantis broke apart and dissappeared, and how still to this day we are searching to try and find the lost continent of Atlantis…

Juliette then writes  bit about what I’ve taught her, and sometimes it can be quite interesting…when she wrote about the “good” Atlanteans getting into their ships to sail away, she wrote,

“Their leaders name was Manu!Yay!!Go Alanteans!!!!!”

As you can see she has a passion for exclamation marks, and she really got excited about Atlantis. We then took a 3 day weekend and started on the Ancient History of Pakistan…I know, not India, but I’ll explain why in the next post… it all started with the Harappa Civilization you see…

Filed under: Ancient Civilisations, Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf Grade 5, Waldorf Homeschooling on September 21st, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Unfortunately I haven’t been updating the blog, as I’ve been in hospital, and have spent the better part of a week recovering. So I have lots to blog about. StJohns’ grade 2 lessons have been going according to schedule and I haven’t blogged about 1! Disgusting, I know, but I just want to get Juliettes’ Grade 5 goodies up to date here first then do a couple of posts on his work.

I left off last week after completeing the architecture and temples of Atlantis, well the day after that we had planned to spend on the mineral kingdom of Atlantis and the awesome use of the  life force found within everything.

This is such a huge concept to bring to a child, that I don’t feel it’s suitable for Grade 5, so we just touched on it lightly without the indepth discussion of energy…

So this is how we did it. We spoke about how the Atlanteans thought differently to us, how they were more connected to the spirit world then we are. How they were able to “feel” and “will” a plant to grow for example. We spoke about the soul and spirit of us humans, then the animals and then the plants. I chose to focus on one of Rudolf Steiners’ lectures when he talks how the Atlanteans were able to use the very life force of a seed to power their vehicles amongst other things. We spoke about how in our time we think things through, we find solutions…Like how to use a seed to make biodiesel. (My kids are pretty clued up on environmental issues-so biodiesel was a known quantity to them-otherwise I would have found something else)

You see in the time of Atlantis this process wasn’t necessary as the Atlanteans were able to use the life force of the seed directly! I then had a (in my opinion) pathetic chalkboard drawing of an Atlantean Vehicle. I just was’t feeling well, and my drawing skills went downhill for a while there. Needless to say, the kids coined the phrase “The Atlanteans’ Bean Powered Car”…

 You see…Van Gogh I’m not! I cheated disgustingly…I felt exhausted, so rubbed out a few spots on the previous board and merely inserted a few “cars”. Jules loved them so I guess that was the most important part.

We then spent time talking about the energy found within a crystal, how it is used for healing amongst other things. We spoke about how the Atlanteans may have used it and how it is still used today, and we briefly looked at a few different crystals that we have about the house and their powers.

Lastly we looked at where the word crystal comes from…”krystallos” greek meaning ice. I then told Jules that it was believed that quartz was actually rain frozen for all time by the Gods.

I though this was a beautiful way to end the lesson…

Filed under: Ancient Civilisations, Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf Grade 5, Waldorf Homeschooling on September 21st, 2009 | No Comments »

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: Ancient Civilisations, Waldorf Grade 5, Waldorf Homeschooling on September 6th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

I was having a bit of a bad day with my darling 7 year old son… So I thought, you know what…I’m going to bake. I always feel better after a baking session, and this one seemed perfect as it has 3 easy steps. Each child was able to do something. I baked the sponge cake, and cut it up, Juliette dipped the sponge squares into chocolate icing and StJohn rolled the little cakes in coconut. Here’s the recipe…

1 cup of sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 cup of oil

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 1/2 cups of flour

1/2 Tablespoon baking powder

1/2 cup of milk

Mix the sugar and eggs together until well blended, then slowly add oil while beating, then add the vanilla.

Now add the milk and flour alternately.

Butter a square 20cm baking tin and bake at about 180 degrees celsius for 25 minutes.

Take it out of the oven allow it to cool and then cut it into squares, I removed the hard edges first.

We got about 24 squares out of our cake. I made some big and some small, as often the kids want a snack and it’s the wrong time of the day, so they only get a little something. The big ones are for Daddy!

While your cake is cooling, bring the following ingredients to the boil on the stove, then immediately remove from heat and allow to cool.

1 cup of sugar

 1/2 cup hot water

1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa

1/2 tablespoon butter

Now both your cake and your icing should be cool (lukewarm is fine). Roll your little cakes in the icing…

Then roll them immediately in the coconut.

That’s it you’ll have perfect lamingtons!

Want to know the history of the Lamington? They were made originally by the chef of Lord Lamington, the then Governor of Queensland,who incidentally didn’t like them at all! Lord Lamington is quoted as referring to them as “those bloody,poofy,woolly biscuits”.

Filed under: Homesteading Recipes, Waldorf Homeschooling on September 4th, 2009 | No Comments »

We’ve done, the creation and plants of Atlantis, yesterday was the turn of the Animals found in Atlantis. Apparently there were elephants, cattle horses etc who lived in Atlantis, but we’d done all of those animal studies in Grade 4, so I wanted something a bit different.And it had to be from the India area…

In the end I chose the Indian Blue Peafowl, commonly called the peacock. So this morning we spoke about the fertile soil, bringing forth the many and varied plants, and because of this there was sure to be an abundance of birdlife, right? Well what better bird to decorate the beautiful Atlantis than a Peacock?

This is the chalkboard drawing I prepared for this morning…

Juliette then wrote about it and surrounded her work with a form drawing, in this case being the decoration of the feathers of the peacock…

 Then she drew the peacock, and did something a bit special. I’ve found that during a lesson block, when we’re just drawing, writing and the odd painting and sculpture type work, it can become tedious. So I try and find things that are a bit more interesting. This week it was feathers. Have a look at the picture she drew yesterday. After she had finished, she then glued fine brilliant blue feathers onto the peacocks body. She was thrilled with the result…

 Now I’m off to teach her about the architecture and great temple of Atlantis. And of course StJohn is doing a fable this morning. I need to update the blog with his things as well.

Filed under: Ancient Civilisations, Waldorf Grade 5, Waldorf Homeschooling on September 4th, 2009 | No Comments »

This morning we started school with a few movement exercises. StJohn was skipping and Juliette was doing some hoop work, which worked well to calm things down for their main lessons.

For Juliette today it was The Plant Kingdom of Atlantis. Now in neither Plato nor Steiners’ work is there much to go on other than the beauty of the plants, the immense trees and the various grains that were grown. Because of this I found out about flowers that grow in the vicinity of India and found a beautiful book which is downloadable for free here! It is a beautiful book with paintings and details of the flowers. This book will come in handy for our Ancient Civilizations India Block in a few weeks time.

Anyway I had to find a flower that grows in both India and South Africa as I wanted to have it in the room when we discussed it. Finally I decided on the Iris. It is a plant of the lower kingdom. It is beautiful and easy to get hold of!

We bought a bunch and it’s been on the table since the beginning of the week. It is an out of the ordinary flower for us to have. I generally choose a mixed bunch of smaller flowers, so I noticed these flowers were being investigated by both kids. I said absolutley nothing until this morning when I discussed the Plants of Atlantis and the possibility of the Iris growing there.

Again I’d already prepared the chalkboard drawing the night before. Just a small one as the big board was still being used for the map of Atlantis.

 We spoke about the leaf of the Iris, which has parallel veins, and the beautiful petals, and Juliette ws awed when she discovered the six pointed star in the centre of the flower. Juliette then drew the Iris and journaled about the plants of Atlantis, and a short separate piece about the Iris.

I didn’t do a full Botany lesson with her, that will come later in the year. This was just a gentle introduction to the beauty of the Plant Kingdom.The lesson was mainly focused on how the people of Atlantis were more plant like than animal like in the earliest days. A discussion about the soul and spirit of the earliest Atlanteans.

Then we ended the day with a surprise gift for her. A book to keep pressed flowers in. She’ll be collecting flowers, leaves and other foliage throughout the year and finding their latin names. She was hugely interested in the taking apart of the Iris and preparing it for pressing. Of course this was only after I had convinced her that due to the flowers coming death, it would be a beautiful gift to give it to be preserved for the foreseeable future.

Tomorrow we do the Animals of Atlantis…

Filed under: Ancient Civilisations, Anthroposophy, Waldorf Grade 5, Waldorf Homeschooling on September 2nd, 2009 | No Comments »

Yesterday we did the first of StJohns’ animal fables for the year. We started with the fox and the crow. First thing yesterday we did a form drawing, then I told him the story of the crow. The chalkboard drawing was ready for him, it is sooooo important. I know a lot of Mom’s don’t do the drawings because they feel they have no drawing talent. Well then you’re missing out on so much. It doesn’t have to be a glorious work of art, just a bright representation of the story.Before I start a drawing on the board I find a quiet spot and ask the Spirit to help me. Seriously my drawings improved 10 times after I started doing that…The kids absolutely love it, it feeds there imagination, which is what makes Waldorf work

Sticking to the Waldorf way of doing things I don’t read the story to him, I just tell it, adding as I go. Obviously we took the original story from Aesop but our fox was hungry from a long winter and he hadn’t had a good meal for 3 days etc. He finally, after gobbling the cheese, saunters down the hill giggling to himself, with the cheese making him warm inside. We then leave it at that, allowing the child to draw his own conclusion.NEVER make a judgement for the child. Don’t tell the child the moral of the story. Don’t even ask what he thinks of it! I found with my kids, they genererally come to me the next day to talk about the story, before we do it again, and they refer to the moral of the story as they see it.

The whole point of the animal fable is that the child finds the moral on his own. It becomes part of him, as he has discovered it himself.

StJohn then wrote a summary of the story and drew a picture in his main lesson book.

Finally to end the day, we made cheese…which turned out pretty yummy, even though I had my doubt initially.

Filed under: Waldorf Grade 2, Waldorf Homeschooling on September 2nd, 2009 | No Comments »

Yesterday was the first day of Grade 5 and we kicked off with form drawing, then Atlantean mythology. The lesson block I put together went down really well with Juliette. We spoke about how Cronus was overthrown by Zeus, how Zeus split up the earth and how Poseidon found the beautiful Cleito tucked up on a land surrounded by sea. We spoke of Atlantis in the beginning, how it was shrouded in mist, and how that slowly lifted the more the people of Atlantis became one with Earth.

We spoke about how Cleito and Poseidon had children and then the land was split up between them. What was the land like? What grew there?What were their buildings like? Animals?Plants?

A basic introduction to the Continent of Atlantis prior to 9600BCE.

I drew a representation of Atlantis on one of our chalkboards and Juliette drew her representation of Atlantis and wrote about it.  All in all I think we both enjoyed it. We’ll go into detail about each aspect of Atlantis for the remainder of this week and part of next week. I originally set aside a week for Atlantis, but on reflection found we need seven days not 5 to really do it justice. Today we discovered the plants of Atlantis.

Everything that I told Juliette today was based on the study of both Plato and Rudolf Steiners’ work.

Filed under: Ancient Civilisations, Anthroposophy, Homeschool, Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf Form Drawing, Waldorf Homeschooling on September 2nd, 2009 | No Comments »