sistermama gets real

Summer Books

Five or six books at a time in the seasonal book basket seem to work best for us.  The basket is near our couch for easy reading during the day.  I may change a few books out once during the season, based on something we're doing (like going to Maine) or whether it is early or late in the season.  Before the kids went to Maine with John, we had out from the library the wonderful Make Way for McCloskey collection.  Lots of wonderful Maine related reading in that one! 

Summertime in the Big Woods is part of the My First Little House collection.  We own and love all the books in this collection.  Each book captures a little vignette from one of the larger books and combines it with lovely illustrations.  Because each book just tells a little story, I've found that they don't diminsh the larger book when the time comes

Peter in Blueberry Land  No surprise to see that Elsa Beskow is represented in every seasonal book basket at least once.  I like the minibook versions, their smallness makes them some how cuter.  We'll be picking blueberries in the next week or so, and I'm sure we'll be referencing Peter and Sal as we do.  Plus I love in this book that Peter is picking blueberries as a gift for his mother.  Doesn't hurt to have a little reinforcement of being nice to your mother around here!

 

Brambly Hedge Summer Story  I don't know why Jill Barklem hasn't written and illustrated more of these wonderful stories about a community of mice.  There is a book for each season, plus a few extra books.  Maybe this makes me treasure them more?  The stories are sweet and the illustrations are sumptiously detailed.  This makes a great "looking at" book for the prereader. 

The Beach Before Breakfast  I stumbled on this book at a church school sale.  They were selling lots of old library books, so you know I went straight for those.  I'm always looking for something decent for Jack to read chapter book wise, and I find lots of great books for his level were published in the 40s and 50s.  This is a picture book though, and nicely suited for this time of year.  From an intro at the start of the book:

"The reader, as "you" and an adult friend as "I," explore a beach during early morning.  We squat and peer, looking for squirt holes, rake up shells and quahogs, and observe the minnow and the gulls.  Finally we return to the beachside cottage to decide whether breakfast is to be clams or pancakes."

Ummm, both please.  And I'll take my pancakes with blueberries.

The Day the Babies Crawled Away  This book is written in cheerful verse and illustrated using sillhouettes in a way that is unique and very detailed.  My mom picked up this book for Jack and Lu while she was on a trip, and it has been a favorite for several years.  

Do you have some favorite summer time books?  Please do share them in the comments. 

Seasonal Book Bags

I've found with books, as with toys, that too much even of a good thing is not a good thing.  We used to have hundreds of books, books crammed in every free space in the house.  We even had many doubles of books from when my husband and I merged collections.  It used to bother me when I went to other people's houses and there weren't lots of books, who gets rid of books?  My opinion about the gathering of books has slowly changed.  When we first had Jack we lived in a 4 bedroom 1800 square foot house - lots of room for books there!  However every move since then has found us in ever dwindling space.  Our living space is now about 850 square feet.  Thankfully we also have a basement and several outbuildings.  I acutally love the size of my house, we have tiny bedrooms, big living areas and just enough room for the things we actually need. 

Back to the books.  Turns out we don't actually need to own hundreds of books.  Pre internet days I didn't want to get rid of certain books because I was afraid I would never find them again.  Now I feel fine letting go of books I've read, because books lost can always be found again.  As far as kids books go, I used to think that owning massive quantities showed children that books were really important.  In practice I've found the opposite to be true.  The more my kids have of something, the less they value the individual items.  When John's grandmother was a child she had an illness and they burned all her belongings in hopes of stopping the spread of infection.  One of the things burned was a Mother Goose collection.  She mourned the loss of that book!  Can you imagine a child today feeling the loss of any one object that keenly? 

For the last year I've been steadily weeding through our children's books.  I've put some time into collecting seasonal books, and that's where I've put priority in what I keep.  I also have approximately 25 Christmas/winter holiday books that I love (these get wrapped and opened daily as part of our Advent celebrations).   All of these books have been stored (shoved) onto the top shelf of one of our two closets. Obviously not a very good system.  They were getting crushed, out of order and taken down when I didn't want them to be. 

The above is everything I had shoved in that closet. 

I recently reorganized this closet and decided to round up random tote bags that I don't really use and assign a bag per category.  The current season's books are out, so I have a bag hanging for Autumn, Winter and Spring.  Plus we do of course have some favorites that don't fit in that category so there is a random favorite bag.  Also, when Jack was learning to read I found some good early readers (not an easy task) and they have their own bag as well.  The Christmas books are in a bin near the other Christmas decorations.  I'm looking forward to the ease of grabbing a bag and swapping Fall out for Summer when the weather starts to change.  I do get a little sad thinking about these bags and knowing that in a few short years the interest in picture books will dwindle. 

The current books live in a basket in the living room.  Both Jack and Lucy remember these books fondly from season to season, and are glad to see them when they make return appearances. We do also go to the library every other week, and Lucy can check out 2-3 books.  I usually try to help her make quality choices.  Although Jack started last school year unable to read, he is flying through grade 4 and 5 reading level books now.  For summer he gets to choose whatever he wants from the library (as long as I think it is appropriate).  The libary books live on their bedroom shelf.  Tomorrow I'll share the books in our summer basket.

Thoughts on Third Grade

"During the ninth year, the child takes a deep breath and draws itself out of the world in which he or she was united and goes into an inner soul space within the physical body. The world becomes an object, as the sense of Self grows stronger. The age of the dream is passing, and a new age that will one day culminate in the attainment of full waking consciousness begins to dawn. The Third Grade curriculum has a more realistic, practical quality than the first two grades." - Rudolf Steiner

 

I'm really looking forward to third grade - there is a lot of DOING involved.  In most Waldorf schools it is a year of making, building, gardening and farming.  As I've mentioned before, Jack really doesn't like the physical act of writing, so, while he'll still of course have to do some writing, I'm keeping it on the back burner for third grade and instead focusing most of his time on actually doing things. I also plan on spending lots of time on the things I felt we didn't have much time to do while I was schooling and working - mainly handwork and special projects. An earlier post lists my planned main lesson blocks for third grade.

The 9 year old third grader is quite different from the 8 year old second grader.  I see it in Jack already, as he approaches his 9th birthday.  He has a certain Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde element, one moment he is very thoughtful and responsible and the next moment he is screaming at me (direct quote) "You are the f word!"  At least he didn't actually say it!  I think he is starting to feel that tug, that makes up the root of the 9 year change - who am I?  a little child or something else? where do I belong?  how did I get here and why am I here?  Carrie has a great post here about the 9 year old change.   Here is another great article on the 9 year old by Rahima Baldwin Dancy.  The typical Waldorf third grade curriculum addresses this change through focusing on how we make a home for ourselves here on this earth, and through hearing Old Testament stories.  Old Testament stories directly speak to the 9 year old child's changing consciousness. The theme that I'm holding in my head for third grade is "Making the earth our home" and we will look at how humans get food, clothing and shelter. 

For Jack's third grade year, I'm planning on creating my own curriculum drawing directly on indicaitons from Steiner and following some typical Waldorf main lesson blocks.   I've read so much lately, that I'm not going to be great about citing where I found certain ideas, but I'll try to remember.  Spread through three main lesson blocks over the course of the year, we will learn about grains (as in oats, rice, corn, etc.), fibers/clothing (cotton, wool, silk, leather/fur) and shelters (homes appropriate for different geographical areas). 

My main underlying goal for these blocks is to convey the idea that geography (climate and available resources) determined what foods original people grew, what they wore and how they lived.  Just as we saw the relationship in first grade between letters and images, (ie letters didn't just spring up fully formed from a person's mind), external forces influenced the use and development of food, clothing and homes.  This will not be true geography yet, in that we won't be looking at exact countries and discussing their history, etc., rather it will be focused on geographical areas like hot/wet, dry/wet, temperate, arctic, etc.  I will, though, have certain areas chosen in my mind, and I plan on finding folk stories from these areas to introduce and carry the different topics.   My plan is to have four regions that will carry over the three blocks. 

Obviously, the grains involve farming and learning about different farming techniques.  We will touch some on this aspect, but since we live surrounded by farms plus have a garden and chickens ourselves, I don't think we will spend too much time on this outside of what we normally already do.  The fiber/clothing block is so obviously hands on, I'm really looking forward to planning projects for that one! Our family is so blessed to have found the Tamakoce Wilderness Program.  This will be Jack's second year participating and he has grown so much under the leader's excellent guidance.  Each session ends with an overnight spent in a shelter that the children have constructed themselves, so I feel as if Jack already has had a pretty good building experience.  That said, this book looked great to me, and I'm going to see where we can get with it. 

I haven't thought much about the Old Testament stories yet, most of my inner excitement has been spent thinking about the above.  I'm waiting till I go to the Steiner Library for some source story books.  The main two I'm planning on looking at are the Jakob Streit books and Pearl S. Buck's Story Bible.

 

Planning for two

Since Lucy will be starting first grade, this is my first time actually planning for two kids.  I did a little bit of planning for 6 year old Kindergarten, but mainly it was just a story per week with a few related activities and a little circle time.  I thought in my planning this year that I would plan first grade first (since I've done it before) and then plan third grade.  I very quickly found that planning for more than one kid is not a linear process!  I needed to have an idea of what Jack would be doing at a certain time in order to decide what Lucy will do, and vice versa.  I think it is a little bit like knitting two socks at a time - you work a few rows on one, and then a few rows on the other.  I spent a few days thinking about my goals for the year for each kid, including what is usually brought in the Waldorf curriculum for the year.  I'll address my thinking for grade one and three in later posts, but thought I would share the rough break down of blocks I've decided on:

                Lucy (First Grade)                                                 Jack (Second Grade)

1.            Form Drawing (two weeks)                                Heritage Grains w/ Folktales                                 

                Fairy Tales and Capitals (two weeks) 

2.           Math - Quality of Numbers                                 Math  (carry/borrow/columnar multiplication

3.            Fairy Tales and Capitals                                      Fibers/Clothing w/ Folktales

4.            Two week holiday block for both - handwork and stories

5.            Math - Four Processes                                         Math - Calendar / Time

6.            Fairy Tales and Capitals                                      Old Testament Stories

7.           Form drawing (two weeks)                                 Math - measurement using OT stories

               Mother Goose reader (two weeks)

8.            Mother Goose reader (two weeks)                 Shelters/Housebuilding w/ folk tales

                Math - 4 process practice (two weeks)

9.            Outside block for both getting garden prepped / nature stories

10.          Two week review for end of school year, maybe prep short play

Please note that this is my plan for main lesson blocks, and doesn't include shorter middle or afternoon lessons.  Also, don't feel behind if you haven't started planning yet.  This is by far the earliest I've planned.  I just happened to have that week home by myself and thought getting a jump start on this would be a good use of my time.  Plus I'm excited to not be working and feel like I have quite a bit of extra time on my hands all of a sudden! 

ETA - Ughh, sorry that the lines are carrying over weird in the block chart about.  Typepad doesn't seem to have an easy way to make a two column list, and I don't feel like messing with it.  Everything that carried over actually belongs on Jack's side.

 

 

 

 

Jack's First Grade - Letters, Writing and Pre-reading

Jack's first day of first grade. 

My mom buys J and L each a new outfit for the first day and all of us go out to breakfast with my grandma.  How lucky J and L are to still have 4 generation time!  This was two years ago, but I figured I've got pictures I might as well share what we did.  Warning that this is going to be a mega post.  (I had better split this up, it is starting to get ridiculously long!) Hopefully this will also help me while I'm planning first grade for Lu.  Jack's 1st grade language arts type blocks as planned looked like this:

1 - two week form drawing and painting block.  We also started the pentatonic flute.  Our first day of school included the intro lesson straight from Steiner on line and curve.  What amazement J showed when he realized that the whole world was made of lines and curves!  We ran around outside and inside while he shouted and named all the lines and curves he found.  This was a very exciting way to start the school year.  I don't really have pictures of form drawing. I've struggled bringing this to him, as he has really struggled with writing.  He simply hates to do it, and it takes a lot of work for him.  I haven't pushed it though, and it is getting easier for him.  I'm planning on being more rigourous with Lucy on the form drawing, and have Jack do it along with us.  I think that she will really enjoy it and that he will find it much easier now. 

For painting, I made up simple little color stories.  We used three colors of paint (red, yellow, blue) as we had already had many experiences painting with each color on its own.

2 - 4 week block of Fairy Tales and Capitals.  I didn't use a container story for these (a container story is a larger story that you use for the whole block, or longer, and the fairy tales would be stories told within that larger story).  Most of this list I received from Carrie at Parenting Passageway. Here is the list of letters plus stories that we used in the order I introduced them.  All are from Grimm's unless otherwise stated:

• M - Semeli Mountain (mountain)
• B - Snow White and Rose Red (bear)
• T - Three Billy Goats Gruff (troll)
• H - Hut in the Forest (hut)
• W,F - Fisherman and His Wife (wave,fish)
• D - Little Snow White (door and dwarves)
• S - The White Snake (snake)
• J - Jack and the Beanstalk (Jack!) - not Grimm's

This was the first block, here is the list for the second block, which was a three week block:

• K - I can't remember what story I ended up using! (king)
• R - Rumplestiltskin (himself!)
• L - Longshanks, Girth and Keen (Longshanks) - we LOVED this story, thanks Carrie!
• G - The Golden Goose (Goose)
• C - Master Cat (cat)
• briefly did something with the vowels, but don't really remember what now!  

I'm going to share some chalkboard pictures, not because they are great, but because I hope their Not Greatness will inspire you to draw as well. Wow.  It is really hard to take a decent picture of a chalkboard.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

The Hut in the Woods

The Fisherman and his Wife

Little Snow White

I didn't introduce or do stories for all the letters.  Jack already had a familiarity with all the letters and was able to write most of them properly.  What I wanted to give him was the experience of having letters arise from stories.  Most of these stories I told not read.  I found it pretty easy for first grade to learn them by reading them a night to myself for at least three nights before I planned to tell them.  Most of the first grade stories are straight forward and not too complicated.  I used a three day rythym for this block.

So, on the first day I told the story and left it at that, no follow up activity.  That night after bedtime, I did the chalk drawing on the board, but didn't yet highlight the letter.  The second day I retold the story and afterwards J tried to find a letter in the drawing.  I helped him find the letter, highlighted it with chalk and we had some small alliterative poem or verse with its sound.  Then Jack copied the picture into his main lesson book.  On the third day, Jack retold the story to Lu and I.  Sometimes just retelling it, but also acting it out with toys or people.  This is the day we did lots of practice with the form of the letter.  Tracing it out in the air, walking it on the ground, making it with beans, drawing it with our feet, tracing it on eachother's backs, etc., before Jack actually practiced writing it.  He then wrote a line of them on the top of the page facing his drawing.  At this time, he left the rest of that page blank.  In a later block he can back and wrote a sentence for each story, forming his first reader.

3 - The third block was the second part of Fairy Tales and Capitals as mentioned above.  This was right before Christmas. 

4 - 5 week block.  In this block we went back to the Fairy Tales and Capitals main lesson book (MLB) and revisted the stories.  I helped Jack come up with a sentence or two for each story and he copied them into his book.  This formed his first reader and he practiced reading from it.  We didn't do the whole book his way, maybe about half of it.  We then moved onto a little Mother Goose nursery rhyme block.  He created a MLB with his favorite rhymes illustrated and written.  This became his second reader. I thought Mother Goose rhymes would be successful as a first reader because he is so familiar with them.

Title page

5 - 4 week nature block.  This was our last block of the year. I used various nature stories from The Baldwin Online Children's Literature Project.  We spent most of our time outside, and didn't do any table work. 

Jack loved the stories mentioned above, and although he was a full 7 years old he REALLY struggled with the little bit of seat work we had.  He found sitting and writing very difficult - it took so much concentration on his part his forehead would actually bead up with sweat as he wrote!  So, we took the writing really slow and one of my goals for him for the year was to build up the amount of time he could sit and work without becoming frustrated (within reason of course!).  I think this is to be expected for a first grader. 

This reflects just the main lesson work in this area.  We also had circle time pretty much every day (works for us, but not for everyone).  Every month we had a nature story and at least one holiday story (more on this later!).  I also tried to work in time for Lucy to have little repetitive stories like The Pancake, The Turnip, The Gingerbread Man, etc.  Lucy fit in pretty well for this year.  She heard all the stories with Jack and drew the story picture from the board.  Basically she was allowed to work alongside Jack if she wished, but I had no expectation that she would do so or that her work would be done in any particular way.  The main areas she wasn't allowed to participate were flute playing, knitting (with needles, she can finger knit) and retelling the story (wanted Jack to have to do this).  Waiting for things is so underrated.  She is so excited start first grade this year, mainly because she has been eagerly waiting for knitting, fluting and reading!