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hereinantwerp
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| Posted: Oct 20 2007 at 12:09am | IP Logged
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Re. the animal stories block--we are keeping it pretty light. First we cuddle up and read a story aloud. I've planned the Just So Stories (we skipped a few about the alphabet, sticking to the animals), a short illustrated collection of Grimm's animal stories from the library, a few of Aesop's fables, some "Brer Rabbit" stories, and I have a book on mythical beasts (illustrated by Jane Ray, a very nice book, I read it often with my oldest), that we'll use if he's still interested. Native American stories are often used here but we just finished a unit on this and had read our fill! I'm planning on 3 or 4 weeks but if he starts to lose interest we'll move on.
After the Read aloud I have him copy out a sentence or two in the Main Lesson book, which I generally write out on a scrap piece of paper. This is generally a "title" for the picture or a little summation (VERY short). I do not do the illustration ahead of time for him as some Waldorf people suggest, he tends to be very sure about what he wants to draw and how he wants to draw it, and would not like the strict directions, but we do decide together what "scene" he will draw, so I can write a sentence or two that fits with it. Also I encourage him to fill the page (sky, ground, trees, etc.) and tell them real people don't float mid-air . . . today for the first time we did a very simple "waves" border on the writing side of the page as well. He does the drawing on one side of the page, and the text on the other side. We're using the big lyra triangular pencils, but you could use whatever you have (except markers, they bleed through). I like in the Waldorf overview how she emphasizes that kids at this age vary SO much in writing ability, and to tailor the writing to fit where they're at. If a child was up for it maybe you could add a spelling practice or copying a full poem.
It's different than the other "unit study" things I've read about because we are not writing out vocab words or definitions or getting technical in any way (not that I was ever good or diligent about that stuff!  ). More just experiencing the story, and letting the "connections" happen on their own. We're both enjoying it a lot  .
We haven't tried modeling yet, I did buy some stockmar wax and we'll try that after a lesson that lends itself--today's story was about a crab and I thought the legs and claws would be too hard to model. You could do a painting based on the story (the Main Lesson paper is too thin, maybe you could paste it in the book?), or in the Waldorf schools sometimes they do a little play (maybe at home a puppet show would work?).
I did buy one of the grade 2 Christopherus "unit study" books, the one on Saints and Heroes, mainly to see for myself how a Main Lesson works. It did help to see it, and also encourages me to realize they are not too difficult to plan myself. They really are about this simple: Read a story, then the next day review the story, then draw/write or do one other simple activity that goes along with it. Probably in a real Waldorf school they do more than this, movement things and songs and etc., but it's too much to accomplish all this at home with a toddler and etc, so I appreciate that the Christopherus book keeps it very simple! But I think in the natural course of the day in a home, other things do happen without having to plan them all--this is feeling "just right" to me. Another difference for us is that we read a story every day vs. 2x a week. Sometimes we even get into it and read 2 stories , then choose one to illustrate! And I would personally not even try to memorize the stories and tell them (don't I have enough to do!  ), in any case, we love the books too much!
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Angela Nelson
Mother to Simon (13), Calvin (9), and Lyddie Rose (3)
my blog: live and learn
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JuliaT
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| Posted: Oct 20 2007 at 12:22pm | IP Logged
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Thank you, Angela, for fleshing this out for me. I have no problems with the other blocks but I find the descriptions for the LA blocks so vague. I just didn't know exactly what they did. But, thanks to your detailed description, I now have some ideas on how to handle this in our own family.
Thanks again,
Julia
mom of 3(8,6,4)
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hereinantwerp
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| Posted: Oct 21 2007 at 11:12pm | IP Logged
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ha--well now that I'm finally finding time to read the Waldorf overview more in detail I'm learning lots more. So I hope you take my ideas re. doing a Main Lesson as--an amateur's first guess at this!
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Angela Nelson
Mother to Simon (13), Calvin (9), and Lyddie Rose (3)
my blog: live and learn
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: Waldorf in the Christian Home-Serendipity (
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