Catching up

We've kind of fallen off the wagon in terms of organization of any "school-y" type stuff in the last week, but we've had daily activities, so I'm sure that counts for something ;).

I can't remember what we did Thursday, but I think we hung out with Nat and Audrey. Then over the weekend, David took them to Genesee Village Country Museum, which Tom and I visited the day before. It's amazing - so much history! And they had cool 19th century games for the kids to play.

On Monday we had Nat and Audrey over.

Yesterday was LCG - Emma's class:

Hello,

We had a lovely, peaceful day today.

I brought in a very quiet music CD today-- I think it helped us have a calm classroom and focus on our work. I know the children love to chat (and they have lots to chat about!), but I want to be sure we can focus on our work.

We started the day with our opening verse and songs. Then we did our form drawing and painting together. We are going to be working on stars for the next while.

I drew a star on the board, then we noticed the similarities between our human forms and a 5 pointed star. We went outside and drew large stars on the sidewalk and "walked" them. Then we came in and painted stars, using the three primary colors-- two colors to blend for the star, and the remaining primary for a border. We'll continue with this using different combinations. Thanks again to paint parent Jaye Nitschke for help with set-up and clean-up.

We played a new song on the recorder-- "Pierrot."

Then Melissa came in for handwork. The children are all making nice progess with crocheting, and are also making progress at working more quietly. Talking less helps to get more work done.

We had a delicious snack and I read them a Hans Christian Anderson tale-- "The Darning Needle." I hope to begin reading a chapter book next week. We'll still have some time for snack chit chat, but this will give us another outlet for our snack time.

Then we got right into our main lesson books. I re-told the stories of "How the Indians Learned to Give," and "Why the Leaves Turn Red and Yellow." Again, we tried to work quietly while we drew and wrote a summary of the story.

We ended a bit early to head down to the Willow Room to help with clean-up. I'm proud of how well the Evergreens have done this month. We have one more Tuesday to help the Willows, then we're off until February.


FIELD TRIP?
I'm wondering if anyone is interested in setting up a time for us to go the science museum to see the Iroquois exhibit-- part of it tells the story of Hiawatha and the peacemaker that I told the children. It would be nice for us to have another gathering outside of class.


CLASS MEDITATION
I've shared this with some of you before. This is a meditation that Waldorf teachers often do with their students. I've used it many times over the years, and have found it very helpful for many kinds of situations.

If you're at all interested, it would be nice if parents joined me in doing this meditation for the class. If you're not interested, please disregard this!!

In a nutshell, this is a meditation to do at night, before you go to sleep. You essentially give a situation over to the spirit world. The intention is that you also take the situation "into sleep" with you, and work on it while you sleep.

Here is an example-- say "Susie" was overly quiet and withdrawn in class. I'd do the following meditation, in three parts.

1. State your belief that Susie is a spiritual being--
e.g., "Susie is a child of God."

2. State the problem as if it's been solved--
e.g., "Susie feels connected to the class and happily participates in class activities."

3. State something you genuinely appreciate about the person--
e.g., "I love Susie's generous nature."

That's it-- then you go to sleep. I have found that doing the meditation, on a regular basis, has helped in many different situations, including my classes at LCG.

For the Evergreens, you can do meditations on individual children, or the group as a whole. One example would be "The Evergreens are a productive and harmonious class."


That's all for now.

Peace to all of you,
Lynn


Melissa, the handwork teacher, cornered me on the playground to tell me that she has NEVER seen a child learn to knit as fast as Soren. She is just blown away by her. She said her mouth was literally hanging open in class and she even let Soren work on her own (Melissa's) sweater that she's knitting (and she's a *serious* craftwork person - this was not done lightly!). She is not generally very effusive, so I thought it was pretty neat that Soren's doing so well. That and recorder are her favorite things to do in class I think. I'd like to get her started on a knitting project this week.


This morning is Camp Arrowhead.