Form Drawing

Want to come learn about Form Drawing? Jennifer and Rick will be presenting a visual teleseminar through The Waldorf Connection on Thursday Feb. 17 at 1pm PST/4pm EST.  Free! *There will be a 48-hr free replay

 This will be a Visual Power-Point presentation so that you can "see" examples and learn about Form Drawing.

What will be covered on this call?

*What is form drawing?

*Why is it important (its more than for good hand writing)

*Who needs to learn it?

*When & How do we teach Form Drawing?

*How to incorporate Form Drawing into our lessons

Come watch this workshop on web!  It is suggested that you use the webcast link so you can VIEW this as well as listen.

Here is the link to view workshop on the web: http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventID=17796018

If you prefer to listen over the phone: 801-656-2240 ID: 006647#, or back-up number 704-804-5068 ID: 006647#

Skype: http://instantteleseminar.com/skype and useID: 006647#


We have also set up a *special* for Waldorf Connection participants. Hope to see you on later today!

Our First Day of "School"!

Our homelearning year officially started on Monday. Here are some of the things that we did....

We started the day with a bike ride by the American River....


Next, it was time for a treasure hunt! First, the kids followed clues around the house and yard.


Then, the kids were each given a math problem which lead them to a "treasure". Ricky and Joey each received wood knitting needles, and Wilson received a snail...each one with their name woodburned by Daddy.

Circle Time included our Circle Time song (see our first blog posts for the song), Daddy's Good Day verse, and Mommy reading an individual verse to each child.

Wilson was introduced to the letter "A" through a Romanian tale, a verse from LMNOP with movements, and singing with Mommy. We sang "The Ants Go Marching" and looked for ants in the yard. We will be doing a 3-day rhythm for each vowel, and then move into the consonants. We are using the Earthschooling curriculum this year (it's wonderful--more to come on how we use it).

We did form drawing, using the "Write Approach" book 1 as our guide.

Daddy started Joey and Ricky on a woodworking project. They made plans to build a small sandbox for Wilson.

Joey and Ricky designed and drew the first pages of their Main Lesson Books for the year.

Ricky had clarinet lesson and Joey had jazz dance class. We all had "vruit" (beets, carrots, apples, kale through the juicer, mixed with orange juice) in the afternoon.

We ended the day playing with cousins, picking tomatoes from the garden, and then "camping out" on the back deck overnight! A memorable first day at Syrendell.

Mycology - Mushrooms!

The magic of mushrooms has touched us at Syrendell this year. Mycology is utterly fascinating...are they plants, animals, neither? So many varieties, colors, shapes....fabulous fungi.

Our own backyard is filled with different mushrooms throughout the year. This week, we noticed that with the warmer, drier weather, the mushrooms are beginning to curl up and disappear.

We dissected a mushroom, observed a curled-up-dried mushroom, made a mushroom spore print, did a mushroom form drawing, read books on mycology, and did block crayon drawings. Two of our cousins came over and joined us in creating beautiful, crayoned fungi! We also read an adorable book that features a sprite who lives under a mushroom is Naming Renick by Mamaroots (which you can purchase in her Etsy shop).

Form Drawing & Science

In a previous blog post, we showed how we incorporate form drawing with social studies. This past week, we did form drawing that related to our science learning. It's a lot of fun to tell science stories as we draw our forms!

Biome Study: Wetlands

(creek, ponds)

(we tried making the creek's wavy edges symmetrical, moving from one corner to the diagonal corner-- a wonderful challenge!)

Astronomy Study: Heliocentrism, Gravity, Copernicus, Galileo

(sun, orbits)

(pendulum)

(keeping concentric circles evenly-spaced without a compass was tricky, but it brought up great conversations about the shape of elliptical orbits vs. circular orbits of actual planets)

Block Crayons

We love our wax, block crayons! Following the book Coloring with Block Crayons (and a DVD of the author), we have been exploring how to use the different parts of the crayons, and how to blend the three primary colors to make other colors.

This week, we made a circle, starting with a cloud of yellow, blue and red, and then creating the other colors of the rainbow when the colors met and blended. Wilson kept his drawing in a circle. Joey decided to bring her colors inward and create a brown center. Ricky moved his colors inward and outward to form a rounded triangle.

We keep our crayons in a beautiful case that Joey and Mommy made from naturally dyed alpaca felt. We created an e-pattern with instructions and pictures so that others can make their own! Joey embroidered a pretty leaf on the front, and added silk ribbons that we dyed with blueberries and onion skins as ties. We are also selling them as custom orders to people who request one through our Etsy shop.

Here is a poem that Mommy read while we made our rainbow circles (from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, by Betty Jones):

Rainbow Fairies

Two little clouds one spring day,

Went flying through the sky;

They went so fast they bumped their heads,

And both began to cry.

Old Father Sun came out and said:

"Oh, never mind my dears,

I'll send my little fairy folk

To dry your falling tears."

One fairy came in violet, and one in indigo;

In blue, green, yellow; orange and red,

They made a pretty row.

They wiped the cloud tears all away

And then from out the sky,

Upon a line a sunbeam made,

They hung their gowns to dry.

Form Drawing and Balance

We really enjoy form drawing every week! This week, we worked on balancing the right and left sides of our bodies. One of the exercises we did was form drawing.

We started with a large spiral on our chalkboard with our dominant hand, beginning on the right, moving from the outside of the spiral in towards the center. Then, we started at the center and traced the spiral back to the beginning.

Next, we drew the spiral in the opposite direction, starting on the left, first outside in, then inside to out.

Then, we switched hands and repeated the above spirals, first starting on the left, then a spiral starting on the right.

Each time we drew, we talked about how it felt. Using the non-dominant hand brought up feelings of awkwardness and hesitation. Then, as we practiced, the spiral drawing felt really good using either hand (yes, Mommy did this too)!

Finally, we did a curlique drawing to a story about water nymphs in the ocean. We did the form one way, then the other way. Finally, we did both curliques with the non-dominant hand in both directions.

We talked about the things that we like to do with our dominant hand (writing, eating), our non-dominant hand (everyone had a different example), and with both hands (playing piano). A discussion arose about how Wilson is left-handed and the rest of us are right-handed, but our dominant feet did not match our dominant hands.

Next week, we are going to do games with bean bags and walking to work on balancing and coordinating our right and left sides!

Form Drawing and Social Studies

Form drawing is something that we look forward to doing every week. We draw forms during circle time on Friday mornings first on chalkboards, and then with crayons on paper. We draw as we tell stories.

Sometimes, our form drawings relate to our social studies learning. For example, when we were learning about Medieval castles, we drew a line that looked like parapets and told a story about a king and queen.

The picture at the top was drawn while telling stories about Africa in the Middle Ages. We drew the picture below this past week as we told a story about the Aztecs.