Chalk Drawing 101

Chalk drawing can be very intimidating. In fact it's down right Scary. 

Drawing in general is scary for most of us with the few exceptions of those who are artistically gifted for such things. Even if it is only to be seen by the kids and not to be studied in a museum of fine art. 

All the books say the same thing about the fine arts. Something along the lines of;

"It doesn't mater how well you can sing/draw/paint/dance, just do it and your kids will enjoy the creative process."

Okay well thats great but my stick figure drawings are just not up to par. They look like nothing and are definitely not waldorf-y. So what is a mom to do?  COPY

That's right, I said COPY. 

*Secret - In the early grade school years of waldorf children copy the drawings of their teachers. It's not the dirty word we have been lead to believe.*

I have This Book (LMNOP and All the Letters A to Z)

From that and from the Oak Meadows kindergarten curriculum I can find a image that works for me.

See the L? Directly from the LMNOP book. 

This mountain scene for M? Also copied from the LMNOP book. My addition is the golden spider for our #8 story in Oak Meadow.

Okay so this one did come out of my head, mostly. Oak Meadows provided the N within the fence but since it was Solstice/Christmas I drew the Nativity. It fit with the season and with the letter N. 

In all fairness though it's not like I came up with the magnificent imagery myself.

This week is the letter O - also totally copied from the LMNOP book. See the formerly mentioned stick people? 

Now normally I change the drawing while the children are asleep. One because it's kind of magical for them to 'discover' the new drawing but mostly because if I do it while they are awake they want to 'help' which leads to less of a chalk drawing and more little kid chalk fingerprints. 

Today I broke out their own chalk boards while I did my drawing. I gave them no prompting in anyway as to the what or how of their drawings. The instructions were merely to "share the chalk there is plenty for both of you." and "draw on your own board."

Yule - 7 years.

"The world is our mom"

Loch - 3 1/2 years.

"The world - and some robots."

Rhythm

Randomly in Fairbanks Alaska we have a marvelous waldorf toy store. One of the two owners of it is doing a 4 part lecture at the local UU church about brining waldorf home both for homeschoolers as well as for parents who want a little waldorf flavor in their childrens lives.

Tonight was part one - Rhythm.

Rhythm... an often sought after thing in the world of children regardless of if homeschooling or not. Often Rhythm is confused with a schedule.

a schedule looks something like this:

7:00 wake up get dressed
7:30 Brakefast
8:15 chores
8:45 school
Noon lunch
12:45 quite time / naps
2:00 outside time

a Rhythm looks likes this:

7:00 wake up get dressed
breakfast
chores
school
Noon lunch
quite time / naps
outside time

On first glance these appear to be exactly the same and this is where the confusion comes in. Both are the same. The only really difference is the clock. A rhythm means that after -this- comes -that-. So after lunch it is always quite time. After quite time is outside time. Sometimes lunch takes 20 minutes and sometimes it takes an hour. Sometimes everyone naps for 2 hours and sometimes you're lucky if you get 30 minutes.

Both systems intend to keep people in the flow of things the problem with a schedule is that when something takes an hour instead of 30 minutes or the kids end up getting involved in a activities that ends up taking most of the day instead of the time alloted it throws everything off. The kids may or may not care but the parents get out of wack and when Mamas not happy, nobodies happy.

Rhythm is intended to let both parents as well as children know what to expect next in their day (kisses good night and lights out always follow the bedtime story) but allows for things to flow at their own natural pace.

Preschool Fun this week

This week was a lot of fun for us. My little guy is 3 1/2 so we are doing a mix of preschool and kindergarten. We have being 'doing school' since he was one and a half I have a bit of a curriculum habit so I use a ton of different resources but we started with (and are still using) Little Acorn Learning. At first I used it as a general concept idea and had to modify it a bunch since he was so little. This year I need to modify very little and I love the use of weekly themes that I don't have to plan.

We are also using Oak Meadows kindergarten program with some modification for the fine motor control components. Being 3 he can not yet form letters or really draw more then a circle or a scribble. But he 'gets it' other then that one thing.

Sonlight is a chirstan homeschooling program that is commonly used in the homeschooling community. Now I'm not thrilled with the bible aspects of the program BUT their reading list (minus the bible books) are FANTASTIC.
We are using there P3/P4 guide book as a good rule of thumb for adding books into our homeschooling program. What I like most is that some of the books are great classics I had just forgotten about and others are books I had never heard of. Wonderful additions to our home library.



Yule (almost 7) Doing a puppet show for the baby out of a cardboard box. Ah the wonderful uses of a box.

Loch (3 1/2) Practicing some practical skills, using the wash board to wash his clothes.


We decided to do some dying with silk we had to make new play silks then I also got it in my head to while we were at it to try dying some of the babies diapers.

Look mom it looks like a kite!