Quiet School Week

This week has been slightly more challenging trying to do our schoolwork. F seems to have gotten some gluten or casein into her system via cross-contamination somewhere. It could be as simple as a dusting of flour on a counter top, or a change of formula or handling in something that was previously "safe". At any rate, the allergic shiners and her lack of focus make it hard to deny that something toxic snuck in despite our best efforts. She adores school, but this week would be a struggle if we didn't allow ourselves the opportunity to take it easy and save the work for later. I think this relaxed schedule is going to be one of the many perks to homeschooling. We have so much more time available to us, so taking a break, when necessary, won't affect our schooling in the long run.

Yesterday we made it halfway through a fairytale, after beginning it twice, when we decided enough was enough and we headed outside to see what creatures were visiting our butterfly garden that day.

Today, we were going to learn a new matching game, Autumn Dominoes, but I could sense that her level of concentration wasn't quite up to the level necessary to introduce something new. Instead, we played one round of this Eric Carle matching game. It's a lovely game that works on developing mathematics and literacy skill for the over 3 crowd, though little J enjoys it as well.





Once we were through playing our game, we headed outside to play, rough-house, and discover the many gifts that the recent rains had left behind for us to find, like pretty white mushrooms, and moist earth for digging in.




Tomorrow we will attempt our Autumn Dominoes. I printed our set of dominoes from this website, and used an adhesive laminate to make them extra sturdy. I broke down and ordered a real laminator today and am really looking forward to its arrival!

Waldorf K5: The Letter B

Today was ABC Story Time at the library. We are on the letter B, and B is for baby. This worked out quite nicely as F and J have a baby sister on the way, and one of the little boys there just got twin brothers last night! We each received a "cookie" with a certain number of chips on top and a number printed on the bottom. Each child took their turn putting their cookie into the jar as we counted from 1 to 10. Poor F drew the "8" cookie and had no clue what that symbol meant, but we counted the chips instead and played along. Next we listened to a story about a new baby, and did a craft. Afterward there was a finger play relating to the craft we did, and we sang our alphabet phonics song up to B.

I'll admit it. This is all very out of line with the Waldorf style of Kindergarten, but that is the joy of homeschooling. F shows a strong interest in learning about the letters and their sounds. This 30 minutes a week seems to satisfy her and gives her an opportunity to learn from someone other than Mommy. They also passed out a sheet to trace and practice the letter B. She showed no interest in that, so little J used it to scribble on while we did our craft.

Waldorf K5: The Life of a Leaf

We started up with a Waldorf-inspired Kindergarten for F recently and so far we are enjoying ourselves very much. With everything else going on with J's physical therapy, we are taking it slow and just easing into our new school routine. We're currently doing one to two days of school each week, depending on our schedule, and plan to eventually find ourselves in a regular three day per week rhythm, in addition to attending our library's ABC story hour program.

Today we read a lovely little tale called "The Life of a Leaf" by Reg Down.

This tale and others from the Tiptoes Lightly collection can be found here: http://www.tiptoes-lightly.net/short-stories/

I started by having her go outside and collect her favorite leaves from off the ground. She came in with quite a collection to help us tell the story. Then we enjoyed reading "The Life of a Leaf" together and using the leaves that she collected as props for our storytelling.

Creating a leaf collage

Recalling "The Life of a Leaf" complete with Jack Frost on the right, the little leaf wearing all of his colorful jackets, and finally, a worm munching on the brown leaf and feeding the grateful tree.

Of course, no autumn craft project would be complete without some crayon rubbings of fallen leaves. We used our leaf collage to create our rubbing. I was surprised to find that this was not her favorite part of the leaf activity. Perhaps it was because we had reached the limits of her attention span by that time. She was careful to select the same colors that the little leaf wore in his many jackets.