We have guests coming this weekend and Yoav's birthday party on Sunday (cake to be made, story to be memorized and props to be organized, bean bag party favors to be filled and topstitched...), so this will be quick, but I want to post all the lovely photos from this week.
I'm loving this method - it is so thorough and so deep. And it's so enjoyable that I'm finally able to really maintain our rhythm ;)
Yoav has very much enjoyed both Grimm's stories we've done so far and this week (as you'll see), the recall went much better. For those who are on Marsha Johnson's Yahoo group (WaldorfHomeEducators), I posted about our difficulty with recall and got a wonderful response.
On Monday (Yoav's birthday - he turned 7), I simply told our new story - Grimm's "The Water of Life". We didn't do anything else for "school" on that day.
On Tuesday, I revealed my chalkboard drawing - it's the youngest son holding a Jug (wording changed from a cup in the actual story) of the Water of Life, talking to the dwarf, with the Mountains in the distance (where the two elder brothers were stuck. We got lucky with recall on this day - Elie laid down on the floor and said he didn't want to do school. Yoav was so eager to draw that he offered to tell the story, which somehow suited Elie and led to Yoav doing a recall of the full story! I was very surprised at how much he remembered of the story (especially considering the resistance to recall in the past) without needing any assistance from me. He even remembered details such as the two lions by the door of the castle to whom the youngest brother threw two loaves of bread.
Then Yoav drew the same drawing:
On Wednesday, I "revealed" the two letters - J for Jug filled with the Water of Life and M for Mountains...
Two girls next door were off school and one joined us during our morning walk and then the other soon after. They joined in with us for Circle and when it was time to go into the schoolroom, I invited them to join us (I let them know we were doing school - they were so curious and excited to get a peek into our day!). So, again, we had a lucky recall situation - I asked Yoav to tell the girls the story while I got the paper and drawing pads ready for the girls ;)
Then they all drew the M and J - I love that the girls were so careful about it, following the exact format we do and using two colors for the letters just like us, even though these are likely the only two letters they'll do with us and the drawings will probably end up in the trash rather than in a Main Lesson Book.
These are Yoav's letters - again the format and method of drawing are from Audrey McAllen's "Teaching Children Handwriting".
And, finally, Yoav and Elie had SO much fun together this afternoon. Yoav was actually getting agitated in the early afternoon after the craft (hand-sewn felt beanbags for his birthday) so I whisked the kids (well, I honestly never whisk - I'm actually much too slow getting sippy cups and clothes together LOL) out to the forest to play. They brought their bikes and biked along a path that's a perfect ramp for them - over and over, they biked one at a time down the ramp (followed by the dog each time, which brought lots of laughs) and then walked their bikes back up. That very much calmed the energy and once it started to get cold and dark outside, we headed in for dinner. While I was making dinner and then again afterwards, the boys played with the tree blocks and wood animals together. It was such sweet play. Yoav mostly was making the structures and then would talk to Yoav in a big-brother voice about which house was for Elie and where Elie should park his truck and such. A funny quote to add since I've been lax about my Monday Memories: Yoav said he was a woodworker and was 50 years old and had been a woodworker for 30 years. Elie was very confused and said, "But Yoav, you are seven." Yoav said he was just 50 in the game, to which Elie said, "Oh, in the game.." It's hard to separate real life from fiction when you're three ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment