Shining Moments

Hello everyone,

Michaelmas added a beautiful extra day to last week, it was nice seeing the students back at the Wessling’s farm.

Thanks to Heidi Schoen for getting the school a membership with The Restaurant Depot – that will keep costs for Pentathlon Pizza’s down.  Thanks also to Rick Majzun for making contact with the 4/5 class at the Nairobi Waldorf School, we’ll work on our first pen pal letters to them this week.

In main lesson we worked on ratios and spent quite a bit of time reviewing factoring whole numbers and a little bit of time reviewing long division.  This week’s homework will have factoring, long division and ratio word problems.

This week’s spelling words are:  Intersecting – Opposite – Adjacent - Radius – Area – Observe – Height.  The challenge words are: Parallelogram and Circumference.

In this week’s main lessons some geometry terms will be introduced and we’ll be working on areas of rectangles, parallelograms, triangles and circles.  We’ll need to know about Pi, so we’ll estimate it with clay, sticks and string – just like the Babylonians did.  Last time I led a class in this exercise, we averaged 25/8, the same number the Babylonians used and just about half a percent off our modern approximation.

Speaking of Babylon, we closed out the week with clay modeling of Gilgamesh and Enkidu grappling.  The children were paired up, everyone made only one character and there were no assignments of who made which.  The modeling eventually turned out quite good but what was really remarkable was how well the pairs worked together.  I didn’t hear any arguments but did hear quite a bit of collaboration.

It was a really nice week overall,

Steve

Dear Morning Garden Families,

It was great to see many of you at Michaelmas!  I know I could not say hi to everyone, but I was bit busy during the festival and I am sorry if I missed you!  Our last two weeks has been filled with the Michaelmas story.  We have been singing songs and doing a puppet show.  I have seen dragons and knights many times in the class during play time.  In Morning Garden, I chose the story "The Little Boy Who Wished to be a Knight" for this year's Micahelmas puppet show instead of the traditional one, St.George and the Dragon.  It is about a little boy who tamed the dragon with his sword that was forged by St. Michael using star fire and in the end, he saves the princess.  I will continue the story this week since this is the real Michaelmas week.

The children are coming together well and it feels like we have known each other for a long time.  During the first couple of months in Morning Garden, we focus on building the rhythm and learning how to communicate so that we can be together pleasantly.  Around winter break, I usually start seeing the children playing together in a creative and harmonious way.  I am pleasantly surprised by your children!  They are eager to participate in the activities and can play very imaginatively.  There are times I step in and redirect their play or give them a new idea, but not as often as I expected.  The children have put on a Michaelmas puppet show, adventured through the woods, traveled across the ocean on a pirate ship to find treasures, played house with baby dolls and been mommy kitty, baby kitty and brother kitty etc...  The children are also very caring and when a child is crying, at least one child will come up and give a hug or use gentle words.  I have even heard a child saying, "I will protect you until your mom comes back." to another friend who was missing mom.  We also planted some vegetables that will be used for our soup and we are watching how the seedlings grow everyday.   Speaking of soup, many children eat it and some love it!  I always say we will try a fairy bite of every snack and I believe everyone tries at least a bite.

I will try to share a poem or song in every newsletter.  If you have any requests, please let me know.

Here is a poem we are enjoying with finger play:

Three little apples hanging on a tree

One fell down and bumped my nose

Another little apple as rosey as rose

It fell down and bumped my knee

Another little apple as ripe as can be

It fell down and bumped my toes

It rolled and rolled nearly to my house

Where it was spotted by a tiny little mouse

"This apple will make a fine meal!"

and he munched, munched and munched, even the peel!

This is the blessing (song) for our snack:

Earth who gives to us this food

Sun who makes it ripe and good

Sun above and earth below

To you our loving thanks we show

Lastly, it has been pretty chilly in the morning, so please dress your child in layers.  A hat would be great in the morning.

Blessing on your week!

Ms Michiyo

Hello everyone,

It was lovely to see all of the students at Michaelmas this weekend -- grade 4 was one of the only classes with full attendance at the festival! Many thanks to all of you for helping make this festival a special occasion at the Wessling farm. No doubt you all heard stories about going down to the creek (cold water!) and exploring the caves upstream (fox skull!) -- I hope everyone slept soundly that night after all the excitement.

We have been working diligently on our Main Lesson books for Language Arts. Details from Norse myth are paired with illustrations on the facing page, the text in pen -- mostly cursive, although I do allow some printing -- and the illustrations in colored pencil or in wax crayon. As we create these illustrations together we develop an eye for layout, color shading, and relevant detail. Usually the children copy the texts I have written on the board, occasionally I just give the first couple of sentences and then let them compose the ending themselves. Nearly always, when doing this they write more "for themselves" than I would have assigned. Funny how it works that way.

In the week ahead we will hear myths involving trickery, cleverness, tough choices and harsh consequences.

Spelling continues apace, this time with words that contain AI or AY to make the long-A sound. (Each spelling list has its own particular focus.) Each week I also assign a few "outlaw words" that break the rule, which need to be memorized for correct spelling; for this list, the word Again is an example. I also like to include some words from Norse myth, for two reasons: a) they are important for our curriculum, and b) they are fun to spell. It's not everyday you can drop the word Yggdrasil into casual conversation.

We continued reviewing the 4 math processes, this time working with a scenario I devised about a Viking marketplace. There are iron axeheads for sale, and yellow/black beads from Birka that are known to archaeologists as "bumblebee beads", and there are wineglasses from Rhineland and some French combs made of antler inlaid with silver wire. And so on. If there are 5 combs to a box, and a comb costs six silver pennies, how much do 3 boxes cost? Story problems lead us develop skills in quick reckoning, estimating, and formulating problems as mathematical equations (5 x 6 = 30, 30 x 3 = 90 silver pennies)

Currently I am assigning homework on a two-day schedule. Handouts go home twice a week (sometime Mon - Wed) and are due two days later. The children are building up good work habits about making sure assignments go home and come back. It may be time to consider having your child bring a backpack to and from school every day -- the lunchbox could go inside as well.

The class dynamic is relaxed but focused, collegial, and supportive. We are settling in.

Bill Layher