It begins!

Hi everyone..well there seems to be a big movement worldwide to rush childhood. In the UK at the moment, voters have 8 months or so to challenge the governments plan to enforce a compulsory law that all children are to be reading by age 4 or something really silly like that. It seems that as a homeschooler where one would think life could revolve around the family and laying down solid foundations for developing co-operative & heartfelt relationships as the most important beginning lesson, and therefore be a bit more fluid, even we are not immune to this growing phenomena. So despite the fact that the eldest cub is still 2 years off being able to actually understand and compute academic concepts (given that he hasn’t even lost one milk tooth yet), with some trepidition we have ’officially’ begun our ’school’ year.

As you know we are basing our approach on the Steiner model of learning which not only emphasises the importance of learning through imaginative mimicry of everyday household life but also the importance of rhythm. Although we have loosely followed daily, weekly & seasonal (Holy day) rhythms since Ariel was born, I have been a bit more focussed on it since ‘officially’ starting to homeschool this week. So our daily rhythm now looks like this:

• circle time -morning verse (ours is currently the Lord’s prayer), giving thanks, movement games
• story time
• main lesson activity (carries on from theme of story)
• freeplay
• morning tea
• activity (depending on day -art, craft, music, food preparation. gardening)
• freeplay (while i do some chores and prepare lunch)
• lunch
• quiet time/story
• outdoor freeplay/walk

Again this rhythm is fluid according to when we actually get up & have breakfast, if there are any morning errands, or when our homeschooling group gets together.

So as this was our first week I thought we would start…at the beginning…of everything. Our storytime began with the days of creation. For this I employed the help of a beautiful little treasure which Ariel aptly named…Treasure.

 Our Storyteller

Ariel knows his alphabet and is playing around with reading but I thought i would review this for him anyway just to deepen his understanding of the letters, their sounds, their characteristics, and how to write them. This week and next week, however, we will begin with form drawing to start becoming used to writing the actual letters with grace and ease. For our Main Lessons this week we have been looking at the signatures that God has put in His creation…the patterns that commonly re-occur in the natural world..and use these as a base for our form drawing. The boys and I explored our garden and found numerous spirals, flowforms, circles, branch-like patterns, etc…here are some that Ariel drew from memory;

 …and some inspiration…..

Story number 2 was reading from a book called ‘Uno’s Garden’ by Graeme Base..and has the underlying theme of looking after nature and achieving a balance between looking after our beautiful planet and existing here peacefully. It fit nicely with our theme of the creation and what God said when he placed Adam & Eve in the Garden (ie: that they should tend it). Ariel did some more form drawing and then moved on to building a natural indoor habitat for some grasshoppers he had found.

We had our homeschooling get together on Wednesday this week at Bicentennial Park in Homebush. There was only the 2 of us (families) this week.  Nevertheless, the mum’s had a good time chatting and eating yummy raw food creations and the children had fun playing together, riding their scooters, and building sandcastles in the sandpit..until someone threw sand in someone’s eyes. This brought up a good opportunity to explore the concepts of saying sorry (acknowledging the mistake), asking for forgiveness (seeking restitution & repenting from the heart, ie: realising that they had taken away the joy of a friendship from the other person) & restoring the relationship (by offering to help build the wronged persons’ sand castle).  At the end of the day all was well, and everyone left as good friends again.

Joshy meanwhile has been having fun doing what big brother is doing (listening to stories, playing in puddles & drawing with crayons), playing the drum, and eating lots of raw food (something his brother doesn’t enjoy so much..but we are on a winner with green smoothies every morning). His favourite past-time though seems to be sweeping the kitchen floor. It’s a tremendous help! See, Joshy is already learning a valuable lesson!

Till next time.

Peace. xo