Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Extreme Parenting

Time is flying! I dropped these pictures into blogsy at least a month ago, and then got so caught up in, well, life that I forgot all about them. I recently heard homeschooling described as "parenting on steroids".... and that is incredibly accurate. Extreme parenting.

Botony from a Waldorf perspective was really something. Plant families as they relate to the development of a human being from birth to adulthood, how humans have brought about many plants from one base plant (check out the wild cabbage!), the different ways plants express themselves through scent, sweetness, color, shape, and size, the gifts plants give, the relationships plants have with other creatures (gall wasps!) and more. No mention of the standard info, like photosynthesis, parts of a seed, or cellular structure. That will come. First, the child must develop a relationship with and appreciation for the whole plant.

E wrote this after his first French lesson. He's using an app called Duolingo; so far so good.

Fractions. I started this year with Jamie York's Making Math Meaningful, but quickly realized that E is not ready for me to teach him math directly, and perhaps never will be. That's okay. Back to Teaching Textbooks!

This is e racing her clouds! I used Tales of the Shimmering Sky for her first weather block, and she enjoyed it immensely.

e helped me sew a set of math squirrels for a friend. They certainly have personality!

I have never been able to create green by layering. I know it can be done....but not by me. So after seven years, I finally just mixed a jar of green! And one of purple. Beautiful, deep purple.

Another idea from Tales of the Shimmering Sky: the rainbow snake who threw himself into the sky as a sculpy necklace! The downside of doing so many varied crafts for e's first block turned out to be that my little sanguine e now expects that much variance every week! Painting the seven days of creation (we are on day five) was too much of the same by day two!

 

So what have we done since these pics were taken in early September? Jewish culture, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, People of the Woodlands, the Jamestown Colony, Ancient Mythology and geography of India, typing, math, form drawing, painting, drawing, modeling, sewing, knitting, crocheting, building, food preparation and preservation, gardening, weather, fibers, Michaelmas, read-alouds (Wildwood series by Colin Melot), swim team, gymnastics, chorus.... And somewhere in there we've cleaned laundry, dishes, and toilets, too. Currently in the works is a pot of marigolds, boiling on the stove. I don't expect to get such a shade of yellow as Nicole achieved, as our marigolds are orange and red. Perhaps an earthy brown, good for knitting animals.