Category Archives: Fourth Grade

Wrap Up of Week Eight of Seventh and Fourth Grade

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I am trying to post a little wrap-up of each week of grades seven, four and five year old kindergarten year throughout the 36 weeks I have planned for school this year.  I hope this will encourage mothers that are homeschooling multiple children (or who want to but are worried!), and  encourage mothers that even homeschooling children of multiple ages who are far apart in age is doable.  You can find weeks six and seven  here and further in back posts you can find a post pertaining to the first two days of school this year which gives insight to our general daily rhythm.

 

Kindergarten:  This week was a birthday week for our kindergartener, so we had some company from family and friends to celebrate!  However, my little one also managed to get a good cold going by his birthday, so other than limited company and baking, this week has been a bit subdued.  We are continuing our foray into apples with the making of apple muffins and applesauce and we got out the fall books to enjoy.  Soon we will be going pumpkin picking, but we try to go closer to All Saints Day since the weather is often hot and the pumpkin will rot before that weekend if we get it too early!

 

Fourth Grade:  We are continuing Continue reading →

Wrap Up of Weeks Six and Seven of Seventh and Fourth Grade

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I am trying to post a little wrap-up of each week of grades seven, four and five year old kindergarten year throughout the 36 weeks I have planned for school this year.  I hope this will encourage mothers that are homeschooling multiple children (or who want to but are worried!), and  encourage mothers that even homeschooling children of multiple ages who are far apart in age is doable.  You can check out weeks four and five here.

Kindergarten:  The momentum is back!  Week four included our usual activities and then we had a week at the beach of flying kites, digging in the sand and diving into waves.  This week began with a day at the apple orchard and back to a friend’s house to celebrate Michaelmas.  This week we have done fingerplays about apples, an apple orchard circle, Suzanne Down’s story “Little Boy Knight” with puppetry, along with making applesauce and apple crisp from our apples that we picked (and getting to use one of those wonderful apple peeler/slicer gadgets with the handle to crank!), making apple prints, cutting apples to see the star inside, and lots of verses and singing for Michaelmas.  It has been a fun week with apples and gestures for fall!

Fourth Grade:  We finished our first math block, which was a review block that went over many topics  but mainly focused on deepening measurement and conversion of measurement units in a way that worked into our Man and Animal block.  Our fifth week saw the beginning of our Man and Animal block with a presentation of the human being in its threefold organization of the head, trunk and limbs.  We worked in crayon with a painting resist for a Continue reading →

Wrap Up of Weeks Four and Five of Seventh and Fourth Grade

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I am trying to post a little wrap-up of each week of grades seven, four and five year old kindergarten year throughout the 36 weeks I have planned for school this year.  I hope this will encourage mothers that are homeschooling multiple children (or who want to but are worried!), and  encourage mothers that even homeschooling children of multiple ages who are far apart in age is doable.  You can find weeks two and three here.  Week one is  here. and further in back posts you can find a post pertaining to the first two days of school this year which gives insight to our general daily rhythm.

 

Our fourth week began with Continue reading →

Wrap Up of Weeks Two and Three of Seventh and Fourth Grade

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I am trying to post a little wrap-up of each week of grades seven, four and five year old kindergarten year throughout the 36 weeks I have planned for school this year.  I hope this will encourage mothers that are homeschooling multiple children (or who want to but are worried!), and  encourage mothers that even homeschooling children of multiple ages who are far apart in age is doable.  You can find week one  here. and further in back posts you can find a post pertaining to the first two days of school this year which gives insight to our general daily rhythm.

Weeks two and three were fruitful.  Here is a glimpse into some of what we did during those two weeks:

Kindergarten – Our little four year old (soon to be five years old this fall) spent time with whittling under supervision, a simple circle with singing and circle games, watching puppet shows of the story “The Fishing Pond” from Suzanne Down’s work Old Gnome Through The Year.and working with our simple weekly rhythm of making salt dough, drawing or crafting, baking, nature walk and painting, along with cooking with his big sisters and housekeeping tasks.  He also helped plant seeds and has been busy watering each day.

Fourth Grade – In weeks two and three, our fourth grader worked with Continue reading →

Wrap-Up Of Week One of Seventh and Fourth Grade….. (And How to Handle Life)

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After I wrote my last post about the first two days of school, I had a comment by one of my sweet long-term readers who asked if every day went as smoothly as those two days.  Those two days did go smoothly, but certainly it is not always smooth. Sometimes it is super rough and awful.  Or one child is having a hard time and it is impacting the flow of all the other children and our day.  That is life homeschooling multiple children.

Part of life in homeschooling is also just life.  This week involved going to the barn, our family attending (and me leading) a breastfeeding support group session, numerous calls and emails and such that needed to be returned after said meeting, two visits by friends to our home on separate days, a run to the allergist and grocery store, a visiting aunt who is here through the weekend to teach machine sewing and work on a  mini-quilting project with my seventh grader (which is normally more eighth grade in a Waldorf School, but this particular aunt lives far away so I am happy to take her up on it now!), (our fourth grader also doing a mini project to help brush up on measurement skills and look at textiles and then will  have a turn machine sewing in eighth grade for her very own),  a husband who traveled out of state the majority of the week, and the pet care of two hamsters, fish, frogs, and a large dog plus meals and housekeeping.  That is all life and part of homeschooling as well.  Especially as your children grow older, they may have more activities or passions they are investigating and have distinctly different needs than the children in grades one through four.   Life may expand outside the home, but being within the home is still the basis of homeschooling and the more you are home, the more smoothly things will run, in my experience.

So, how does one manage life and homeschooling?  Continue reading →

First Two Days of School: Seventh Grade, Fourth Grade and Kindy

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People who are curious about homeschooling always want to know how it rolls with multiple children and how it works teaching multiple grades using Waldorf Education at home.  It is undoubtedly different than a Waldorf school, and yet I feel indebted to the schools and the resources the Waldorf school teachers use as I gleam so much from the teachers and their resources.

We celebrated our first day of seventh grade, fourth grade and kindy (our four year old will be five in October, so this is his five year old year) yesterday.  What follows are two days in the life of our homeschooling adventure.

On most of the “first day of school” in years past our older girls would dress alike in something new or wear something pretty from what they already had.  This year they dressed up in something they already had, took the dog and their little brother for a quick walk (all barefooted) and came back and we took first day of school pictures (still barefooted).  They quickly checked on their hamsters, fish and frog and then came to the school room.  We opened our school day around 8:15 with prayers and confession, and then a reading from “Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends” (Christian book). We are alternating this book in the morning with some of the writings of St. Theophan the Recluse.  Next we moved into singing and fingerplays for our four year old and ended with a story from Juniper Tree Puppets’ Old Gnome Through The Year book.  I had wet on wet watercolor painted a very large background with a pond and frog puppets on sticks that move within the painting and had needle felted a gnome for the telling of this story.  The older girls then grabbed their folders of independent work (fourth grader reviewing coinage in math and seventh grader reviewing United States geography) and the little guy and I went downstairs.  He worked on tying his apron in the front, measuring ingredients,  and stirring with one and then both hands to make a big batch of yellow, lemon essential oil scented salt dough.  After we cleaned up, I took him outside (still in his heavy apron) to hunt for beautiful sticks and presented him with a very small pocketknife. (If you would like to know more about this, please see the writings on the Forest Kindergartens in Germany and Europe, and also the woodworking book for 3-5 year olds by  Master Waldorf teacher Marsha Johnson.) I demonstrated and modeled the use and care of the knife and how to whittle and  he very carefully whittled the bark off the end of a small stick to be a fishing pole for the Old Gnome puppet in our story under supervision.  Once the whittling was complete for the day, I put the knife away in a very safe place. Our seventh grader then took over the supervision of her brother  whilst I worked with our fourth grader.

Our fourth grader began with Continue reading →

Plans for Fourth Grade

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I am planning fourth grade for our second go-around now and have worked out a rotation for blocks.  I thought it might be helpful to some of you who are planning.

 

I want to start the year with Continue reading →

Puberty Part One

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Often on Waldorf lists and groups, I see threads regarding puberty.  These threads typically concern the outward signs of puberty, or perhaps issues not of puberty but of sexuality, such as a discussion on what to tell a six-year old or a nine-year old about sexual relationships.

I have already discussed in an earlier post how the development of the child during something such as the nine year change is viewed from a spiritual place that looks at the development of the soul, and how the curriculum and parenting in a Waldorf way meets the child during this point whether outward, physical signs of puberty are taking place or not.

This is one of the best articles I have read regarding puberty Continue reading →

Fourth Grade Handwork

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I was going to post pictures of fifth grade handwork projects, and realized suddenly I had never posted the fourth grade projects!  Our homeschool group has been exceedingly lucky to have trained Waldorf handwork teacher working with us.  She really knows the Waldorf curriculum inside out, and has taught  many of the children for years, so can really  invent projects for them that are stunningly beautiful and fulfilling to the children.

 

So here are the fourth grade projects in all their glory:

The first project, which was actually done in between third and fourth grade,  was a bear that had a pattern of essentially knitting an entire row, then knitting half a row, purling a stitch and then completing the row.  He came out like this:

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Fourth grade is a time of cross stitching.  The designs for these projects were done by my fourth grader, including choosing the colors and such.  The pin cushion has leather backing so the pins will not stick through!

 

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The last project of fourth grade was a hedgehog that was knit but the face was done in the round.  This was a preparation for knitting in the round. 

 

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Blessings,

Carrie

Guest Post: A Homeschooling Manifesto

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One of my best friends wrote these words, and was gracious enough to let me share these words with the world.  I can see this being printed out and put on refrigerators everywhere for a dose of encouragement.

Thank you to my dearest friend, Andrea Hartman!  These are her fine words:

I remember back to when we were homeschooling, on those really hard days when the house was a mess, and I was a mess, and the kids were a mess, and I would be having the passing thought  that I should send them to school.  School would be better for them than this.

We had to do public school this year.  We might have to again.  You might have to one day.  It’s not the end of the world, but now I see the public school experience not from my own experience, but from the experience of my children.  I feel like I am really blessed with the knowledge of ‘both sides of the coin’ here.  We are planning to go back to homeschooling this coming fall, so I have written a Homeschooling Manifesto. I didn’t write my little manifesto to discuss the negatives of school, but to reconnect myself with the essence of homeschool.  I’d love for you to read it, file it away, and on those crazy days, you can pull it out and remind yourself of what you are really doing.  I promise you, I will be reading it next year, many times.  😉  I hope you enjoy it!

 

Today, in New England, it was a beautiful day. Sunny, breezy, low 60’s. Perhaps to my Florida family, this is a chilly day, made for long sleeves and snuggles. But to my northeastern friends, this was a day for opening windows, climbing trees, and running through the grass barefooted.

As I gratefully cracked open my own window over the kitchen sink this afternoon and felt the cool breeze on my face, I realized that these three aforementioned activities are so very symbolic of the choice our family has returned to- homeschooling.

For a variety of reasons, our family tried public school this year. I must say, that of all the public schools out there, this is one of the best. Not because of test scores or academic standards, but because it is old and has character, it is small and cozy, and the principal is there every day, accessible and available to chat with a smile on her face. One cannot say this of many public schools. Continue reading →