Robinsunne has created the most beautiful and amazing multiplication learning art I have seen yet. It's a Multiplication Clock, and it encompasses the entire multiplication table for the numbers 0-12 in a very appealing and usable way. I can't wait to make one!
Luckily, Robinsunne has so graciously posted detailed directions online HERE.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Friday, September 14, 2007
Waldorf Homeschoolers on Near Circle
Bloggers just got an amazing new tool on the block. It's called Near Circle, and it's designed to "group blogs or websites that all have something in common... to create a common reader community."
What's new in the Waldorf Homeschooling circle? You can find out here:
http://www.nearcircle.com/viewCircle?name=waldorf+homeschooling
Extra thanks to Rebecca for setting this up!
What's new in the Waldorf Homeschooling circle? You can find out here:
http://www.nearcircle.com/viewCircle?name=waldorf+homeschooling
Extra thanks to Rebecca for setting this up!
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Monarchs!
What a summer we've had!
Plenty of ups and downs, the most notable ups being my brother's wedding, and the birth of my second niece. Another fantastic up is the new homeschool community we've found; plenty of friends for all three kids, incredible moms and lots of impromptu outings.
One of our recent outings has been great fun for all the kids involved, and it's easy to transfer to most US communities, so I thought I'd share. We're raising Monarch butterflies.
There are so many books about Monarch butterflies, that I'd be hesitant about suggesting any one. Most all of them cover metamorphosis, milkweed induced toxicity and the incredible migration that monarchs make. One, The Butterfly Book, by Kersten Hamilton offers suggestions for how to raise a caterpillar (but I've never actually read it...) In truth, this is a rather easy project. We've been successful for 3 years in a row just winging it (pun intended), and so I'll share some of what I've learned.
The first step is to learn to recognize milkweed. (check out http://www.monarchwatch.org/milkweed/guide/index.htm for photos of all the different species one might encounter.) In our area the most plentiful variety is common milkweed. I've found it all over the place: inner city vacant lots, our community garden, a neighbor's front yard, roadsides and even big fields in our local park system. Don't feel like you have to get to a rural place to find milkweed. This summer, we supplied eggs for 5 families from a smallish stand growing in the corner of our local health food store's parking lot. Personally, I've found that it's easier to find monarch eggs from small urban milkweed stands. The big field we visited this year had very few eggs per plant, which meant much more searching (searching in the hot sun with insects biting everyone and the baby fussing). One common sense caution - don't cut all the milkweed from any one place.
So you've located some milkweed. Now you're going to hunt for monarch eggs or small caterpillars. Very gently turn over the milkweed leaves and search for small white domes (or little, smooth, yellow, white and black caterpillars). Here's a picture of an egg we found.
When you've located an egg or caterpillar, harvest the entire top of that milkweed plant (use a knife or pruners, and immediately get that stem into water). I've found that the milkweed wilts if it's kept in the sun, so when you get it home, don't keep it in a sunny windowsill.
If all goes well, the egg will hatch in a few days (more than five, and that egg likely won't hatch). You will notice a tiny light green caterpillar (about 2 mm), and that caterpillar will begin to eat the milkweed. The caterpillar will grow at an incredible rate, and consume great quantities of milkweed. When your first plant starts to get old, you will need to harvest another milkweed sprig (careful not to bring home more eggs unless you want them!). Use a soft paint brush to transfer the caterpillar from the old plant to the new plant.
This eating and growning will continue for 2 weeks, and the caterpillar will grow to almost 5 cm. Things to watch for:
A greyish slumpy shape next to your caterpillar - this is its old skin. Caterpillars molt just like spiders and snakes. Keep watching and you might get to see the caterpillar eat its molted skin. The caterpillar will stop eating and stay very still for a while right before molting.
Greenish blackish lumps under the milkweed. This is frass, caterpillar droppings.
Spiders. They are predators and can eat wee caterpillars. Do a spider check of your plant before bringing it indoors.
After roughly two weeks your caterpillar will get restless. Up until now all it wanted to do was eat milkeed, but now it wants to travel to find an appropriate spot to form a chrysalis. It is advisable to have created a caterpillar proof habitat before now. This year I got clever and made such a habitat (in years past we've had caterpillars exploring the lighting fixtures). It was quite inexpensive. I purchased one large embroidery hoop and 2 yards of tulle. We already had clothespins and wooden slats from our blinds. A hot glue gun and an extra set of hands was all I needed to put it together.
You might notice your caterpillar bobbing it's head around a spot for a while. It's forming and adhesive "button" of silk from which to hang. When it hangs, it will form a "J" shape, and you will know that the chrysalis will come soon.
I'm always amazed by the beauty of the chrysalis - this photo does not do it justice. Sometimes I wonder if we value gold so much because of how beautifully it's used in nature. The caterpillar stays in the chrysalis for roughly 2 weeks. I've read somewhere that it's body actually liquifies and re-forms, which is miraculous to consider. After 2 weeks, the chrysalis will split, and the butterfly will emerge, damp and crumpled. Once it starts to fly around, you can feed it sugar water on a cottonball, or a piece of watermelon. Falcon is endlessly amazed by how they can roll and unroll their proboscis. We've always set ours free - It's great to watch them soar away.
Plenty of ups and downs, the most notable ups being my brother's wedding, and the birth of my second niece. Another fantastic up is the new homeschool community we've found; plenty of friends for all three kids, incredible moms and lots of impromptu outings.
One of our recent outings has been great fun for all the kids involved, and it's easy to transfer to most US communities, so I thought I'd share. We're raising Monarch butterflies.
There are so many books about Monarch butterflies, that I'd be hesitant about suggesting any one. Most all of them cover metamorphosis, milkweed induced toxicity and the incredible migration that monarchs make. One, The Butterfly Book, by Kersten Hamilton offers suggestions for how to raise a caterpillar (but I've never actually read it...) In truth, this is a rather easy project. We've been successful for 3 years in a row just winging it (pun intended), and so I'll share some of what I've learned.
The first step is to learn to recognize milkweed. (check out http://www.monarchwatch.org/milkweed/guide/index.htm for photos of all the different species one might encounter.) In our area the most plentiful variety is common milkweed. I've found it all over the place: inner city vacant lots, our community garden, a neighbor's front yard, roadsides and even big fields in our local park system. Don't feel like you have to get to a rural place to find milkweed. This summer, we supplied eggs for 5 families from a smallish stand growing in the corner of our local health food store's parking lot. Personally, I've found that it's easier to find monarch eggs from small urban milkweed stands. The big field we visited this year had very few eggs per plant, which meant much more searching (searching in the hot sun with insects biting everyone and the baby fussing). One common sense caution - don't cut all the milkweed from any one place.
So you've located some milkweed. Now you're going to hunt for monarch eggs or small caterpillars. Very gently turn over the milkweed leaves and search for small white domes (or little, smooth, yellow, white and black caterpillars). Here's a picture of an egg we found.
When you've located an egg or caterpillar, harvest the entire top of that milkweed plant (use a knife or pruners, and immediately get that stem into water). I've found that the milkweed wilts if it's kept in the sun, so when you get it home, don't keep it in a sunny windowsill.
If all goes well, the egg will hatch in a few days (more than five, and that egg likely won't hatch). You will notice a tiny light green caterpillar (about 2 mm), and that caterpillar will begin to eat the milkweed. The caterpillar will grow at an incredible rate, and consume great quantities of milkweed. When your first plant starts to get old, you will need to harvest another milkweed sprig (careful not to bring home more eggs unless you want them!). Use a soft paint brush to transfer the caterpillar from the old plant to the new plant.
This eating and growning will continue for 2 weeks, and the caterpillar will grow to almost 5 cm. Things to watch for:
A greyish slumpy shape next to your caterpillar - this is its old skin. Caterpillars molt just like spiders and snakes. Keep watching and you might get to see the caterpillar eat its molted skin. The caterpillar will stop eating and stay very still for a while right before molting.
Greenish blackish lumps under the milkweed. This is frass, caterpillar droppings.
Spiders. They are predators and can eat wee caterpillars. Do a spider check of your plant before bringing it indoors.
After roughly two weeks your caterpillar will get restless. Up until now all it wanted to do was eat milkeed, but now it wants to travel to find an appropriate spot to form a chrysalis. It is advisable to have created a caterpillar proof habitat before now. This year I got clever and made such a habitat (in years past we've had caterpillars exploring the lighting fixtures). It was quite inexpensive. I purchased one large embroidery hoop and 2 yards of tulle. We already had clothespins and wooden slats from our blinds. A hot glue gun and an extra set of hands was all I needed to put it together.
You might notice your caterpillar bobbing it's head around a spot for a while. It's forming and adhesive "button" of silk from which to hang. When it hangs, it will form a "J" shape, and you will know that the chrysalis will come soon.
I'm always amazed by the beauty of the chrysalis - this photo does not do it justice. Sometimes I wonder if we value gold so much because of how beautifully it's used in nature. The caterpillar stays in the chrysalis for roughly 2 weeks. I've read somewhere that it's body actually liquifies and re-forms, which is miraculous to consider. After 2 weeks, the chrysalis will split, and the butterfly will emerge, damp and crumpled. Once it starts to fly around, you can feed it sugar water on a cottonball, or a piece of watermelon. Falcon is endlessly amazed by how they can roll and unroll their proboscis. We've always set ours free - It's great to watch them soar away.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Eurythmy
In Waldorf schools they do this "movement thing" called Eurthymy. Have you ever wondered what it looked like?
Yeah, me too.
And then I found some Eurthymy videos over at YouTube. Hooray for YouTube! I feel like I've stepped into the light.
See also: Eurythmy over at Wikipedia.
Yeah, me too.
And then I found some Eurthymy videos over at YouTube. Hooray for YouTube! I feel like I've stepped into the light.
See also: Eurythmy over at Wikipedia.
Math - Odd and Even Gnomes
Oooh, that last math post inspired me. Of course we haven't even introduced ourselves. I'm Aleisha, mother to Nightowl (7) and Bearcub (2) for more about us check out our record at Leap of Faith. But onto math....
For our last math block of first grade we needed to cover odd and even as well as Roman Numerals. As luck would have it it Nightowl had absorbed Roman Numberals 1-20 via reading the Old Mother West Wind chapter books by Thornton Burgess (great Waldorfy books - btw). Scratch that off the list. We'll probably need to review next year but oh, how I love when the subjects overlap.
Now, whenever I mention math or anything math related Nightowl immediately begins chanting about Gnomes. She simply adores the little math Gnomes. So much that every math task needs to be Gnome related. I did no planning for this, but keeping the Gnome-love in mind started drawing a picture of the Gnome Divide on my large chalk board. Then I made up a story:
After illustrating this story on the chalkboard I went outside and hid several piles of "jewels" around the back yard. Then I sent Nightowl with her collecting basket to pretend to be Divide. Whenever she found a pile she sat down and attempted to divide up the piles. This was fun. We played this for a while and then began dividing other things into odds and even.
The next day we discussed the story again. Then I brought out the 100-Board, which is a Montessori manipulative that I like. We looked for number patterns of odd and even. Nightowl learned that evens end with 2,4,6,8,0 and odds end with 1,3,5,7,9. Then we had a little game of "Guess which number?" where I called out random numbers and she classified them according to odd or even.
Overall, it worked pretty well.
For our last math block of first grade we needed to cover odd and even as well as Roman Numerals. As luck would have it it Nightowl had absorbed Roman Numberals 1-20 via reading the Old Mother West Wind chapter books by Thornton Burgess (great Waldorfy books - btw). Scratch that off the list. We'll probably need to review next year but oh, how I love when the subjects overlap.
Now, whenever I mention math or anything math related Nightowl immediately begins chanting about Gnomes. She simply adores the little math Gnomes. So much that every math task needs to be Gnome related. I did no planning for this, but keeping the Gnome-love in mind started drawing a picture of the Gnome Divide on my large chalk board. Then I made up a story:
In the land of the Gnomes is a great jewelled forest - a dark and quiet place that has piles of jewels hidden everywhere. One day the king benevolent King Equals learned of this forest in a dream. Now King Equals just happened to be in need of jewels so that he could purchase supplies to build more houses for the creatures of his kingdom. He went to the forest to look at the jewels. Just as hew was about to gather a pile of jewels a great bird flew down.
"Be careful kind King," said the bird. "These jewels are enchanted. Only piles of even numbers of jewels can be taken from this place. If you take an odd numbered pile they will simply disappear."
So, King Equals headed home deep in thought. He needed a Gnome who could search the great jewelled forest and bring back "even" piles - whatever that meant. Back at the castle he called on Divide and explained the problem. "What does even and odd mean?" asked the King.
Divide explained to the King that "even" means the pile can be divided into two piles with the same(equal) number in them. He explained that "odd" means you cannot divided the piles equally.
The King was a little confused so he asked if Divide would please go to the forest and collect the even piles. Divide was more than happy to and so he did.*
*I though I had a photo of this drawing but I seem to have lost it. Sorry I can't share.
After illustrating this story on the chalkboard I went outside and hid several piles of "jewels" around the back yard. Then I sent Nightowl with her collecting basket to pretend to be Divide. Whenever she found a pile she sat down and attempted to divide up the piles. This was fun. We played this for a while and then began dividing other things into odds and even.The next day we discussed the story again. Then I brought out the 100-Board, which is a Montessori manipulative that I like. We looked for number patterns of odd and even. Nightowl learned that evens end with 2,4,6,8,0 and odds end with 1,3,5,7,9. Then we had a little game of "Guess which number?" where I called out random numbers and she classified them according to odd or even.
Overall, it worked pretty well.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
The Mathmatics of Sharing
I wanted to post this before it sank into my mental oblivion. This was school, and we've been all about summer for almost 3 weeks, so it seems terribly old, but it was a "good idea," and worth sharing.
Like the Ark Family, our path to Waldorf-inspired learning has been full of detours. We too tried the Well Trained Mind approach for a time. Falcon loved the stories, and we read loads of myths and beautiful "living books," however, the bit about reading "early, fast and well" just wasn't happening for us. Glad we moved on. One of the few things that hasn't changed for us is our math curriculum. We started with RightStart, and we like it (for the approach, the manipulatives and the games - I'll post a review at some point). RightStart is different from the recommended Waldorf approach in quite a few ways, noteably in that the functions are introduced much more gradually. That is why, at the end of his 3rd grade year, Falcon had not yet been formally introduced to Division.
So we had a Sharing week.
At breakfast on the first day, I felt Falcon out by asking him a simple sharing question, "If you and The Skater were walking and you both saw a $5.00 bill at exactly the same time, how would you share it equally?" Falcon paused over his oatmeal and answered, "We'd take it up to Marcs, and get change and we'd both get $2.50. I'd spend the 50 cents on a Yu-Gi-Oh card from Marcs' vending machine"
I thought he would understand the concept without much difficulty. We proceeded by going out to our front walk to create a number line. Falcon has been working with his times tables, so we re-introduced math (we'd had a breather) by playing number line games. We spaced the number line so that a jump of ten was the maximum distance that Falcon could jump, and he went leaping all the way through his tables. Next I brought out a bean bag and threw it so that it landed on 15. I told Falcon and Charlotte that this was a new way of playing hopscotch, and that you had to jump on multiples that would get you to the bean bag, counting how many jumps you made. This went over pretty well, although I hadn't though out how to keep score, or what to do when the bean bag landed on a prime. Despite my lack of planning, we played until it started to rain (goodbye number line!). The rest of the day we took many opportunities to share - cookies, grapes, cherries, both within our family, and as fictional problems with lots of friend. Falcon noted that some things, like cookies, were easily split in half, whereas giving three kids 2 out of 3 pieces of a marble wasn't really a possibility. At the end of the day we read 17 Kings and 42 Elephants by Magaret Mahy. Falcon noticed right away that every elephant had a king on its back, and that there was no way that this could be the case. Charlotte loved the poetry of the book and immediately decided to create a Twinkling Tunester.
The next morning I asked Falcon what sort of a picture he wanted to make in his ML book for 17 Kings and 42 Elephants. He whined. This is not unusual for Falcon. He loves to be read to and the do fun things, but coloring and writing are not a strong point. However, this was an unusual whine. "I already know the answer, and I don't want to do a whole page for that baby book!" Fair point. This book was recomended in "Math and Literature (K-3)" by Marilyn Burns for a third grade lesson, but it was mostly just a bouncy poem. Charlotte asked me to read it again (and again), and then Falcon and I moved on. We visited several problems from the previous day (including 42 divided by 17), and I introduced the division symbol, and the concept of a remainder. Falcon wrote math problems on the chalkboard, and he discovered that he needed to think of the problems as "42 shared between 17" to get the numbers in the right order. He accidentaly reversed the order of one of the problems, and realized that this matters with division.
Latter I read from "The Man Who Counted" by Malba Tahan (Thanks Sara for this great idea - read her lesson here: http://twiningoaks.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html). Falcon was entirely entralled by the story in which a herd of 35 camels is divided between three brothers: the eldest was to receive 1/2 the herd, the middle 1/3 of the herd, and the youngest 1/9. When Beremiz (The Man who Counted) arrives and adds his camel to the herd, suddenly not one, but 2 extra camels are available. "How did he do that?" Falcon asked repeatedly. The ML page for the next day was Not Whined About.
Sharing Week was briefly interrupted at this point when Falcon got a nasty gash on his writing hand/wrist. He had to have 4 stitches and couldn't possibly write or draw or color for quite a while. But he still wanted to hear more from "The Man who Counted." Our last lesson was also a story of division. Beremiz and the Narrator find a man left for dead by bandits in the middle of the desert. The man is famished and asks to share whatever food Beremiz and the Narrator have, offering to pay a gold piece each for the 8 loaves that they have between them. Beremiz had 5 of these loaves and the Narrator had 3, so when the man was returned to his home, he offered Beremiz 5 gold pieces and the Narrator 3. Beremiz quietly tells the man that this division is incorrect; he should receive 7 pieces of gold and the Narrator only 1. Each loaf is shared between three men, so the narrator eats 8/9 of the bread that he provided, whereas Beremiz only eats 8/15 of what he originally had. In the end, however, Beremiz splits the money evenly, explaining that this is Divine Division.
Oh how Falcon loves this story! Beremiz is So Cool! He has been practicing telling it (often it's a Star Wars version, with Yoda for Beremiz), using props. When he gets it perfect, he'll tell the story to his Grandpa, who loves tricks and subtlety.
Like the Ark Family, our path to Waldorf-inspired learning has been full of detours. We too tried the Well Trained Mind approach for a time. Falcon loved the stories, and we read loads of myths and beautiful "living books," however, the bit about reading "early, fast and well" just wasn't happening for us. Glad we moved on. One of the few things that hasn't changed for us is our math curriculum. We started with RightStart, and we like it (for the approach, the manipulatives and the games - I'll post a review at some point). RightStart is different from the recommended Waldorf approach in quite a few ways, noteably in that the functions are introduced much more gradually. That is why, at the end of his 3rd grade year, Falcon had not yet been formally introduced to Division.
So we had a Sharing week.
At breakfast on the first day, I felt Falcon out by asking him a simple sharing question, "If you and The Skater were walking and you both saw a $5.00 bill at exactly the same time, how would you share it equally?" Falcon paused over his oatmeal and answered, "We'd take it up to Marcs, and get change and we'd both get $2.50. I'd spend the 50 cents on a Yu-Gi-Oh card from Marcs' vending machine"
I thought he would understand the concept without much difficulty. We proceeded by going out to our front walk to create a number line. Falcon has been working with his times tables, so we re-introduced math (we'd had a breather) by playing number line games. We spaced the number line so that a jump of ten was the maximum distance that Falcon could jump, and he went leaping all the way through his tables. Next I brought out a bean bag and threw it so that it landed on 15. I told Falcon and Charlotte that this was a new way of playing hopscotch, and that you had to jump on multiples that would get you to the bean bag, counting how many jumps you made. This went over pretty well, although I hadn't though out how to keep score, or what to do when the bean bag landed on a prime. Despite my lack of planning, we played until it started to rain (goodbye number line!). The rest of the day we took many opportunities to share - cookies, grapes, cherries, both within our family, and as fictional problems with lots of friend. Falcon noted that some things, like cookies, were easily split in half, whereas giving three kids 2 out of 3 pieces of a marble wasn't really a possibility. At the end of the day we read 17 Kings and 42 Elephants by Magaret Mahy. Falcon noticed right away that every elephant had a king on its back, and that there was no way that this could be the case. Charlotte loved the poetry of the book and immediately decided to create a Twinkling Tunester.
The next morning I asked Falcon what sort of a picture he wanted to make in his ML book for 17 Kings and 42 Elephants. He whined. This is not unusual for Falcon. He loves to be read to and the do fun things, but coloring and writing are not a strong point. However, this was an unusual whine. "I already know the answer, and I don't want to do a whole page for that baby book!" Fair point. This book was recomended in "Math and Literature (K-3)" by Marilyn Burns for a third grade lesson, but it was mostly just a bouncy poem. Charlotte asked me to read it again (and again), and then Falcon and I moved on. We visited several problems from the previous day (including 42 divided by 17), and I introduced the division symbol, and the concept of a remainder. Falcon wrote math problems on the chalkboard, and he discovered that he needed to think of the problems as "42 shared between 17" to get the numbers in the right order. He accidentaly reversed the order of one of the problems, and realized that this matters with division.
Latter I read from "The Man Who Counted" by Malba Tahan (Thanks Sara for this great idea - read her lesson here: http://twiningoaks.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html). Falcon was entirely entralled by the story in which a herd of 35 camels is divided between three brothers: the eldest was to receive 1/2 the herd, the middle 1/3 of the herd, and the youngest 1/9. When Beremiz (The Man who Counted) arrives and adds his camel to the herd, suddenly not one, but 2 extra camels are available. "How did he do that?" Falcon asked repeatedly. The ML page for the next day was Not Whined About.
Sharing Week was briefly interrupted at this point when Falcon got a nasty gash on his writing hand/wrist. He had to have 4 stitches and couldn't possibly write or draw or color for quite a while. But he still wanted to hear more from "The Man who Counted." Our last lesson was also a story of division. Beremiz and the Narrator find a man left for dead by bandits in the middle of the desert. The man is famished and asks to share whatever food Beremiz and the Narrator have, offering to pay a gold piece each for the 8 loaves that they have between them. Beremiz had 5 of these loaves and the Narrator had 3, so when the man was returned to his home, he offered Beremiz 5 gold pieces and the Narrator 3. Beremiz quietly tells the man that this division is incorrect; he should receive 7 pieces of gold and the Narrator only 1. Each loaf is shared between three men, so the narrator eats 8/9 of the bread that he provided, whereas Beremiz only eats 8/15 of what he originally had. In the end, however, Beremiz splits the money evenly, explaining that this is Divine Division.
Oh how Falcon loves this story! Beremiz is So Cool! He has been practicing telling it (often it's a Star Wars version, with Yoda for Beremiz), using props. When he gets it perfect, he'll tell the story to his Grandpa, who loves tricks and subtlety.
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