Thursday, September 10, 2015

Blessings

A year and a half ago, I joined Waldorf Essentials Thinking Feeling Willing program, and wrote about it here. Since then, Melisa, TFW, and the TFW community have been amazing, especially as we worked on getting E sorted out last spring/summer.

This picture perfectly embodies our school life right now. E's pill box, with all the gut-healing supplements that have enabled him to sit and focus. Sunglasses, which he now frequently uses even indoors because of Irlen. A return to cursive, which for 6 months was too much to handle. Shading, that he never had the will to do before. Best of all, my E willingly completing seatwork. I have no doubt this year will have ups and downs, but right now I am going to enjoy the blessings of peace.

 

Then last week, I had the honor of seeing my first guest post published here! So exciting.

 

Saturday, September 5, 2015

First Week, Almost Complete!

We began slowly, with main lesson only. Botony for E, weather for e.

Bulbs: fleshy layers of leaves ready to spring up at the first warmth.

Some plants place their scent in the flower, while others keep it deep inside the bulb. We had an extra sixth grader with us for the first lesson. Two boys, onions, and knives...

 

The wonderful part of this is that the boy attends a school for the gifted, but didn't know parallel vs reticulate leaves, that onions and tulips were both bulbs, or what rhizomes might be. He was truly impressed, declared me an artist for my chalkboard drawing, and told E this is the best school ever. E came to a quiet conclusion that I may have been right when I told him every form of education leaves gaps of some kind.

Tulips are based on a six-point star.

What happens when one sautés onions? The sugars caramelize. There are sugars?

The parallel quality of the leaf extends down into the bulb. Bulbs are made up of layers of colorless leaves, right? So this makes sense. Shown is a rhizome leaf alongside the onion skin. We have an amazing number of rhizome plants in our yard....

e has spent much of her time listening to wind stories. Her favorite is Gluskabi and the Wind Eagle. We even watched a third grade class production of it on YouTube. This is the start of her Beaufort Scale, a visual method of estimating wind speed.

Then on to roses, based on a five-point star. Briar roses have five petals. A long time ago, Persians created the garden rose from the briar rose, and today still all roses have petals in multiples of five. We learned about grafting, again with YouTube. And accents. One of the videos was a man from Alabama, and E was fascinated by his accent!

E has now completed an entire summer of 28-hours-a-week of gymnastics with the big boys, and his grips showed his efforts! Falling to pieces, they were. These are his new high bar grips, prior to breaking-in. He's the proud owner of buckles this time around!

 

We have just a few tasks left to pick up this weekend: comparing roses to apple blossoms, a main lesson book page, completing the Beaufort Scale for the wall, and flying a kite. I love Waldorf more every year!