New Year

Today we painted stars and read a short story and poem on the story of the Three Kings. It's the day after, but we don't do school on Sundays so it seemed appropriate for today.  This is wet on wet painting inspired by the style of Waldorf schools.

Star in an indigo sky.

The watercolors were mixed too weakly, but I love the dreamy effect. Left to right are 3-yr-old's, 6-yr-old's, and mine. I did mine as I read to the kids. Not sure where that orange line came from. My older daughter's is quite radiant in person. My younger daughter's is a ballerina. Can't you tell? She's not big on following instructions. Go figure.

We're heading into a new seasons of lessons. Looking forward to where we're headed.

First Grade!

We started First Grade last week in a very calm way.  Since we had a big move to deal with, formal K was cut a bit short. So right now everything is review.

Here's what we're doing in September -

French conversation throughout day, introducing one or two phrases a week

Hand Plays - one a week (5 Little Fishies was our first week)

A poem a day from When We Were Very Young by Milne

One story a week from The Blue Fairy Book

Review of Math-U-See Alpha's first lessons and then moving forward

Pathway Readers 1st grade program

Reviewing word families with our kit from Simply Charlotte Mason 

Waldorf inspired finger knitting

Waldorf inspired watercolor

Waldorf inspired soups and breads

Observing nature, keeping a notebook of sketches

A unit on Paddle to the Sea.  We live in the Great Lakes now so the story should have a lot more relevance to my kid.

We will pick a poem to recite this week.

Learning to read a very basic map.

Reading a bit a day from Genesis

At bedtime we are reading Comet in Moominland.

That looks like a lot written out, but it's really not! Basically I've created our own kind of Oak Meadow program. I want to  add recorder lessons in October. Hope my ears can take it. We may pick up Oak Meadow 2 next year, but I want to try out a year on the Amish readers first. They are so much less expensive.

For the 3-year-old, we are doing hand plays, poems, playing with clays and yarns, fairytales, and gentle introduction to alphabet. She LOVES the math manipulatives too.

Sword of Damocles

Here's one of her drawings from today:

"The Sword of Damocles"

Starting Ambleside Online

My older daughter wants to do more. All of the time! I am almost at a loss as she is not yet reading and only 5 1/5. What I've decided is to follow the read aloud First Grade schedule at Ambleside Online for the next few weeks to see how it goes. The best part? Most of the books are free online!

We've read three of the stories so far, and she has enjoyed them immensely. The idea of reading from several stories in one week is great for her. While we like Five in a Row, she doesn't enjoy the repetition aspect. A used copy of Paddle to the Sea is coming on Friday. I'm excited about that one in particular since it integrates Canadian History for us.

Aside from using Charlotte Mason narration to tell me about the stories, she will also draw a picture that corresponds with the story. We're going to compile these (if we get past the 4 weeks) to make books about the books. I'm looking at some Waldorf supplies for lesson books. The lesson book thing is used in Oak Meadow, and it's definitely one of the best parts of the OM experience. I like these more than lapbooks because it all comes from the child.

We *do* enjoy lapbooking, however, and are filling a leftover OM lesson book with lapbook printouts for FIAR. We are also creating stand alone lapbooks for her various interests.

Homemade Playdough for Letter Review

Every Friday we review our letters and numbers that we've learned since beginning Oak Meadow. This is a bit different than the way it goes if  you are following OM K properly. In the curric, there's only one letter a week. You do that for three weeks, and then you do an entire week of review. We followed the curriculum that way through letter D when my kid decided that she was ready to speed things up a bit. She was getting bored and forgetting her letters because there was so much time between each one. Every child is different. Some wouldn't even need the sped up version of intro that we are doing. Some might need more time in between. I like that the OM K curric is flexible enough that I can do a week in one day now and not feel like we're missing out on too much.

This week we ended with J and 6. I promised that we would make our own clay to do review. Friday, however, ended up all crazy due to illness so it wasn't until Friday night that I was able to make the clay. I was going to make a simple salt dough, but this recipe for homemade playdough had been tempting me for awhile.

After a few moments of debating, I went with the new (to me) recipe (if only because I didn't feel like dragging out the paints for the other dough). I got out the pot and spoon, called my D1 out of her room, and we got to mixing. It wasn't until we'd started that I realized we only had about 1/4 cup of salt left in the house! My husband ran out to get some for us. Meanwhile we finished putting everything else in the pot. I doubled the recipe and used gel food coloring to make it super brilliant.

This what it looked like while we waited for the salt:

This is what it looked like right before I started cooking it:

I thought cooking it would be a lot like making a choux pastry, but I soon realized that keeping it smooth would be almost impossible. The only real objectives that I found necessary were constant stirring to keep from burning and getting all the moisture out. It wasn't at all pretty when I dumped it on the wax paper to cool, but by the time I finished kneading it, it was the softest, loveliest playdough I've ever touched. By the way, I used coconut oil, which I think has made it quite soft without the need for baby oil some have recommended .

And here are some of the letters that D1 made (she picked out the color, btw) on Saturday morning:

I definitely recommend this dough and agree with the idea that it would make an excellent present for just about any child (and some adults!).