Pages

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Hello, introduction

Thank you so much to Lisa for creating this wonderful space.  I have been hoping for the opportunity to contribute more actively and thought I would post a quick introduction.

We currently live in England, UK although my husband and I were both born and grew up in southern Africa.  We have strong family connections in UK and in southern Africa.  We have four boys aged 8, 5, 3 and 7 months and from the start we have home educated and always been Waldorf inspired.

Currently, we are covering 2nd grade and kindy.  I plan out my own curriculum and draw ideas from a variety of resources.  For 2nd grade, we've recently been covering a block on Aesops Fables.  I have created an umbrella story to appeal to my son's interests and it's based on four happy adventurers who go on various quests and then I drop in carefully chosen fables into the story.  We recently covered the fable 'The Boy and the Nettles' and did all sorts of activities based on nettles - making paper from nettle leaves, making nettle tea, the various uses of nettles.  The week after that we spotted a fox whilst out walking and my son was so very excited, having not seen one in broad daylight before.  I quickly used this fantastic teachable moment and changed our story to cover two Aesops Fables involving foxes.  It worked out beautifully!

We are looking forward to the start of Advent this weekend and will spend the month enjoying the Advent season as well as covering some of the Saints starting with St Nicholas next week.

In January, I plan to cover a Math block using Anansi stories and follow that by a Language Arts block using African folktales from Southern Africa.

We also really enjoy following Jodie's pennywhistle programme.  The areas I find most challenging are fitting in reasonably peaceful watercolour sessions, and fitting in form drawing.

So, that's a very quick introduction from me.  Looking forward to sharing and learning with you all in this wonderful space.

Happy weekend!

2 comments:

  1. Hooray! Yeah! Welcome Kelly, I am so happy to read you. What an inspriation you are with four children. I'm going to look up the fable of the boy and the nettles. Do you paint together with the three older boys?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Lisa
    we enjoyed the nettle fable. It offered so much scope!
    Yes, I paint together with the three older boys. I find it difficult to keep to keep the watercolour time each at their own levels so as to benefit each of them, that is the younger two exploring 1 colour and the 8 year old painting at a more advanced stage. They all want to do the same thing which is okay sometimes but sometimes not ideal! Any tips appreciated!

    ReplyDelete