Recorder lessons started tonight!

(...or "Better You Than Me".)

The philosophy behind the Oak Meadow curriculum is to educate the whole child...engaging every part of the child. To that end, the curriculum for the younger grades includes a musical component. More specifically, children are supposed to learn to play the recorder. While I am somewhat musically inclined, I am not nearly as musically talented as the OE Dad, who writes music and plays several different instruments. You can understand why the recorder instruction falls to him, can't you? (Snort!)

Main Lesson Books

Oak Meadow, being a Waldorf-inspired curriculum, makes use of Main Lesson Books in the Third Grade curriculum (as well as in the younger grades). The Main Lesson Book (MLB) is simply an artistic and creative record of lessons we have completed. It might include drawings, copy work, stories, etc. The MLB serves as a beautiful textbook that the child creates herself. It is also a wonderful keepsake.

We are still getting used to the idea of creating these Main Lesson Books, and it gets easier with every lesson. Any Waldorf purists who happen upon this post will surely realize how woefully inadequate our MLBs are, but I'm hoping they get better over time. Don't judge me.

Here, after hearing and re-telling the story of Rapunzel, Thing 4 drew a scene to represent the story. She added the happy witch later. And yes, I realize she misspelled Rapunzel one time, but I'm torn between the Charlotte Mason idea that you never leave a word misspelled and the fact that I love looking back at my older kids' early work that has those kinds of sweet mistakes. I went with sentimental this time. Don't judge me.







Her entry about the Kush civilization:


She told me the other day, "You know, I learn so well this way. I hear a lesson, then I tell it back to you, then I write about it and then I draw a picture about it. That really helps me remember it." Success! Go ahead and judge me on this one.

Today's Science lesson about the plant food cycle:




While Thing 3's lesson plans do not call for the use of MLBs, I like them so much that I'm going to start using them with him next week.

Watercolor Painting a la Oak Meadow

I'm learning that Oak Meadow is not a curriculum to be rushed. Everything we do in OM is very "intentional" with a real and well-thought out purpose. In addition, everything is a process. In fact, for Third Grade, I have a Home Teacher's Process Manual that covers everything from Guidelines for Recorder Playing to Crayon Drawing.

Today we worked on Watercolor Painting. There are four pages in the Teacher Process Manual devoted to teaching Watercolor Painting. Who knew painting with watercolors was so complex?

With Oak Meadow, there is no using those nasty watercolors that come in the plastic box...the ones that all turn black after a couple of uses because all the colors get mixed up, but then it doesn't matter anyway because they crack when they dry out and you have to buy new ones. No, we used high quality paints and a good paint brush.

We used just the three primary colors. Sometimes less is more. At first, Thing 4 balked at the lack of choice, but she quickly figured out that mixing colors to create other colors is fun! With this technique, you mix the colors on the paper as you paint, not in a dish.

Oak Meadow encourages a "wet paper" method of watercolor painting. When the paper is wet, the colors blend more easily, and it allows more movement of the paint lines. I thought it was a strange concept until we tried it. If you're going to use the wet paper method, it's important to use high quality watercolor paper. All of my high quality supplies came in the art kit I ordered from OM, but you could find them at a craft store.

Today she really enjoyed just experimenting with the colors and seeing them blend.

It's not exactly a Monet, but she had fun! There's no going back to those nasty watercolors in the plastic box.

Bake Like A Phoenician

Thing 4 has been studying ancient Hebrew and Phoenician cultures over the past few weeks. Today, we made flat bread, which was most likely a staple in the diets of people of both cultures.

(How's that for product placement? It was purely accidental. I'm really not getting paid by the Gold Medal people.)

One thing I really appreciate about Oak Meadow is that they give me a lesson to teach and then give me two or three activities to reinforce that lesson. It's working so well for us.

She thought it was kind of magical the way they ballooned in the oven:

And then flattened out as they cooled:

This was her favorite part:

Various and Sundry Things

I discovered over the summer that keeping a blog of our OE activities was a great idea because it's a scrapbook for me of the things we did throughout the year. One night I was feeling pretty inadequate as a homeschooling mom, so I sat down and went through the blog, post by post and realized that our year hadn't been quite as lame as I had originally thought. We did some pretty cool stuff. However, our science experiments last year? Mostly lame.

While I don't have the energy to write decent blog posts to go with the photos I've taken over the last two weeks, I decided to post them in one entry so I can look back next summer and see what we did.

This photo is a little difficult to see, but this was an impromptu science observation. (Sometimes the unplanned lessons are the best.) We were getting in the car to run a couple of errands, when Thing 4 spotted this awesome spider web that had raindrops all over it. We stood and looked at the intricate weaving and marveled at how tenacious and hard-working spiders must be.

This was the day that Thing 3 was learning how to convert from Imperial measurements to Metric. He had to count how many cups of water this bottle held and then he converted the measurement to liters. There's an app for that, but I didn't let him use it.

During a study of Hebrew culture Thing 4 drew a Star of David in her Social Studies Main Lesson Book. (I love the Main Lesson Books! More on those in another post.) See the beeswax crayons there? She loves those...so much so that I had to order a bigger set so she could have more colors. They are pricey but so worth it. See the dog watching her draw? She often brings a friend to class.

For her Main Lesson Book entry on the folk tale The Wise Thief, she decided to draw a peach seed. She wanted the drawing to be accurate, so we had to stop for a snack. Have I mentioned that I love the Main Lesson Books? I love Oak Meadow, too.

Thing 3 is studying Colonial America right now. One of the assignments he chose was making a Pocahontas puppet. The girls in the family had to teach him how to braid. If this homeschooling thing fails him, he can always get a job on a touristy island.

Why Do My Science Experiments Hardly Ever Work?

Seriously. I'd like to know. Ok, I've had the occasional experiment/demonstration work out. But more often than not...as my boys would say, "FAIL."

Today, in the interest of learning how ancient civilizations measured the passing of time, we tried to make a Greek/Roman water clock. The directions and illustration that Oak Meadow gave me looked so simple. I thought, "Now here's an experiment I can't screw up." We just needed to punch some holes in some cans (we substituted cups, as suggested in another book we have), set them on a ladder, pour the water in the top cup and start timing.

We were excited. Thing 4 poured the water in the top cup.

Thing 3 was manning the stop watch. We watched. Water started shooting out of the hole in the top cup just like it was supposed to do. At this point, for some reason unknown to me, Thing 4 excitedly shouted, "Look! The baby is peeing!"

Then, as quickly as it started, it stopped. Well, it didn't stop exactly. It just slowed to a sad trickle. Instead of shooting into the cup below, the water just dribbled down the bottom of the top cup and landed on the floor.

Those poor Romans and Greeks. What a lame excuse for a clock.

Thing 3 accurately noted, "That is quite possibly the worst science experiment we've ever done." And let me tell you, given our track record with science experiments, that's saying a lot.

Nature Study and Nature Journaling

It was beautiful today and it's supposed to rain for the next two days, so we cut our school day short and took a quick trip to the nature center. We even took our expensive purple plastic binoculars.

We saw this sign in the visitor center. While these are the words of an adult, I think they describe the nature of most children perfectly. How wonderful it is for my children to have the time to wonder why.

We took a little time to do some nature journaling. Nature journaling is such a great way to get kids to pay attention to the details of nature. We don't do this nearly enough, and every time we do it, I think we should do it more often.

Here are photos of just a few things the kiddos noticed today on our walk. Much to the relief of Thing 3, we did not encounter any snakes or bears on the trail. Whew.