waldorf grade 1 Archives

:: Chilli mused as we wrote B/b on the chalkboard that on it’s side a capital B looked like the wheels of a bicycle! (Apologies for the out of focus, terrible quality photo here) ::

Living on a little island known the world over as ‘The Apple Isle’ and being right close by the heart of the valley producing these world renowned apples, I thought it only fitting that our Alphabet Journey begin in a way that wove in the story of our local area. We are learning our letters in alphabetical order, leaving the vowels to come back to at the end. We are working on the sounds of the vowels amongst our morning circle work, however we will come back to these special ‘Angel Letters’ to learn them together at the end of our alphabet studies. We are also learning the capital and lower case letters or ‘Mumma’ and ‘Baby’ letters alongside each other. I saw this recommended in the Waldorf Essentials curriculum and with Chilli being an older Grade 1 child, I thought she would most likely handle it well so I decided to give it a try. She definitely seems to be taking in both forms well and learning each letter thoroughly; Mumma and Baby letter as separate forms as well as the sounds of each letter and being able to think of examples of words that begin with each letter we study. At the beginning of the year when we started our first block, knowing we would learn both cases of the letters alongside each other, I presented the short, basic sentences we were writing in this way – rather than just all uppercase writing as is often the way in Grade 1 Waldorf. I think this gentle start with looking at both upper and lower case forms in this way, as well as starting to feel a sense for the spacial relationship between the two forms, has been beneficial to Chilli before coming to the letters themselves as lessons.

Our first letter in our journey, was B/b. I am using the fairytales to bring each letter to Chilli, but for the letter B/b, I decided to write a short, sweet, gentle introductory story for our Alphabet Journey. We are using a ‘container’ story to carry us through the year and the family we are ‘travelling along with’ was about to start off on their journey to find the letters, when Mumma suddenly realised she’d left her hat in the gardens of the last place they’d stayed. As they were walking out of a forest and their path would go quite near by this cottage they had stayed at with a lovely lady named Sarah, they could easily stop back in and collect Mumma’s hat. Well…. when they arrived there was quite a kerfuffle happening. They could hear Sarah crying in the orchard “Oh my beautiful Bramleys, they are all bumped and bruised.” You see a big blustery breeze had come barrelling through the orchard and had bumped all the Bramleys onto the ground bruising them. Sarah was most upset but she spoke about her favourite things to make with her Bramleys – which are a cooking apple. This story then tied in with many of the meals we enjoy our homemade apple sauce on through the year, particularly roast pork which comes from a friend’s farm that we visit weekly. Chilli had made her very own ‘Bramley Jam’ last year – buying from our local co-op, peeling, coring, cutting and cooking down the apples. Mrs Bramley is also one of her favourite characters in the story ‘Christopher’s Harvest’. I liked the opportunity in this short and sweet story to weave in many aspects familiar to Chilli. One of the aspects of Waldorf Education I am continuously mindful of and try to remember in my lesson planning is the importance of ‘linking back’. Finding links in the lesson you are presenting, to lessons you have previously had – creating a ‘net’ of concepts for the child – showing a relation of many concepts and similarities between the lessons, times, countries, places etc that we are studying. With apples being such an iconic part of our local area, and Bramleys being such a beloved apple in our home from Chilli’s early childhood, I thought this was a beautiful opportunity to create that woven ‘net’ in the beginning of our alphabet journey.

:: The Apple Museum has this amazing wall with alphabetically named places for all the apple varieties. It is out of season at the moment so just some regular display apples filled the spaces, but the Smith family has quite an extensive Heritage Orchard at Grove from what I’ve heard and I assume in season these shelves are filled with the varieties indicated in each space. Matthew Evans’ book ‘Real Food’ has a picture of what I think may be this display with apples in their correct spaces during the season ::

In the heart of the Huon is a wonderful little space that is dearly loved by the locals. The Smith family has been farming their land for generations and the most recent chapter in their story saw the conversion of the orchards to be organic. The Smith family orchards joined the organic movement in Australia quite a while back and the products they produce are amazing. The Smith orchards are the national supplier of organic apples to one of our biggest supermarket chains – Woolworths. That is definitely no small feat and they still have beautiful apples to sell to us locally on their roadside stall. A few years back, The Smith family orchards which were known at the time as ‘Raw Organics’ rebranded under the name of Willie Smith’s – honouring one of the early generation men amongst the farming family. They not only produce fresh apples, pears and cherries, they also produce cider and have renovated an old apple museum to become the ‘Apple Shed’. This place is a thriving hive of activity with local cultural, community and foodie events through the year. In all the times (and I can assure you it is many!) that we have visited the Apple Shed, we’ve not really taken the time to wander through the museum. Therefore, I thought a field trip to this memorial place of a family and community who has been so important to our local area through the years gone by would be a lovely little adventure.

Our time in the Apple Museum definitely didn’t disappoint. Woven in through the story of the Smith family from their arrival in Australia in convict times to the present day, was the story of numerous men and women who worked in, developed and made famous the apple industry that our little Apple Isle became so well known for. The story told through picture, words and exhibits of machinery, tools and other apple picking paraphernalia is wonderfully interesting and Chilli was at a lovely age to really absorb the story and be interested in the information. Marlin enjoyed himself immensely as well – standing on the scales, sitting on the rungs of old wooden ladders, turning the crank handles of a juice press, looking into the old apple picking bags and rummaging in any old wooden crate he managed to find his way to. There was something for all of us there.

:: My little organic girl was disgusted at the spraying equipment used back in the day and wasn’t too interested
in looking at it! ::

Of course, at the completion of the museum we most definitely needed to sit for a minute, and would you believe it – this delicious looking slice of apple pie made it’s way to our table! Mmmmm – Mmmmmmm…. It was REALLY that good!

Back home in our school room, we had been doing all the usual form drawing and pre-cursor activities; walking the form laid out in twisty ropes, drawing the form in the sandpit with our toes, exploring the sound of B/b with creative verses and movement gestures, hearing and recalling our story, creating a free drawing, writing a sentence emphasising the letter we were learning, drawing a picture that held the letter abstract and then finally discovering the letter in this drawing. We drew the form on each others backs, in sand trays with thin driftwood ‘pencils’, in the air, on the chalkboard and then in our Main Lesson Book. Once we’d learnt the letter B/b we modelled both the forms (upper and lower case) out of coloured beeswax to stick on our ‘Alphabet Window’ where slowly through the year we will create the entire alphabet out of beeswax letters.

:: Our capital B was in the mouth of the cloud (which ended up much lower on the drawing than I’d anticipated! And the lowercase b was down the right hand side of the tree trunk and around the apple laying at it’s base ::

Are you currently learning the alphabet with your children? What are your favourite creative activities to help them experience the letters?

One of my favourite aspects of Waldorf Education and something I think can be so deeply and wholly honoured in homeschooling, is the immersion in a particular topic. As homeschoolers, we have the benefit to permeate our ‘immersion’ topics into so many aspects of not only our schooling, but our everyday and family life.

The last story of our first Grade 1 block (which was of course Form Drawing) was from the Earthschooling curriculum – ‘Moon Flower’. We used this story for bringing the form of a circle to life and the opportunity presented amongst the theme of not only this story, but also the continual story of a family’s journey that carries us through our year – to immerse in the Japanese culture. The story of Moonbeam is a traditional Japanese Tale. It is a gentle, sweet and inspiring story.

I am using a ‘base’ or ‘foundational’ story through the year of a family that is on a journey together. Through this journey, many opportunities and experiences arise that ‘meet’ the little girl ‘Anna’ in our ‘family’ with her lessons for the year. This ‘base’ story idea comes from the Waldorf Essentials curriculum and I also think it is mentioned in Eric Fairman’s Grade guide. As we approached the tale of Moonbeam, our ‘family’ met a Japanese Lady. The children enjoyed talking to her about the culture, what foods she liked and used to cook with her mother as a child, as well as the lady’s name and the meaning/origin of her name. ‘Sakura’, the lady our ‘family’ ‘met’, told the ‘family’ the story of Moonbeam, as it was one of her favourite stories when she was younger.

Following on from this part of our Form Drawing for circles, we concluded this first Grade 1 block with what I like to call an ‘immersion’ – really diving deeply into a topic or theme and having it permeate as much of our daily/family life as is possible. On Saturday morning, Chilli and I went shopping together – just a Mumma and Daughter shopping adventure. We purchased the ingredients we needed to cook a special ‘Japanese Feast’. That afternoon we set about preparing the foods we needed to bring together the Japanese Fare that Sakura had mentioned were her favourite meals when she was younger. It was nice that Sakura had reminisced about cooking these dishes with her mother when she was younger – as Chilli and I were now cooking them together! During our cooking and dining time, we listened to a beautiful collection of Traditional Japanese Music. Amidst our cooking and preparing, Chilli also relished in the opportunity to get out her cuisenaire rods to work out certain measurements along the way.

The dishes we made were; Yudofu, Tempura with sweet rice, Anko to put into Dorayaki for dessert and then of course Green Tea. We found a really wonderful Japanese Cooking site with handy videos and clear instructions. The green tea was actually a gift from a Japanese friend who visited and stayed with us last year. It was in a really sweet little metal tin with the gorgeous Japanese paper labels and fancy Japanese writing that many special Japanese products have. I often think that certain Japanese products look so pretty the way they are presented. Whenever we receive a gift from our Japanese friend, it comes wrapped in the most gorgeous natural packaging and then gift wrapped by the store it was purchased in. Everything is mindful and beautiful.

Chilli delighted in going about setting up her very own ‘Japanese Restaurant’ to serve Daddy and Marlin in for dinner that evening. We set the table together, made a menu board and then Chilli put on her ballet ‘Character Shoes’ as her ‘high heels’ because “All waitress’ in restaurants always have high heels on Mummy!” We chose our Japanese names for the evening (we actually just used the two lady’s names from the Japanese Cooking 101 videos!), lit the candle, and invited our guests to dine. Our guests came dressed very well to the restaurant as well!

The next day we ventured out to our favourite Tea House! (Any excuse – I know!) This time there was guidelines around what we could order – we were there for tea, and this in my opinion is the best place in Hobart to go for tea. The tea menu is extensive without being exhausting. Mathew and Shae know their tea – that’s for sure and they’ve recently put together a retail range of teas, so we were eager to try some of these. Between us we selected 4 of their different teas, and conveniently Shae had made a Matcha Cashew Cream Cake for the sweets that day – so of course we had to try a piece of that! It was all delicious.

Following on from our tea adventure, we went on to another of our favourite Hobart destinations – The Japanese Gardens in the Royal Hobart Botanical Gardens. At any time of year this space within the Botanical Gardens is breathtaking, and this Summertime trip was no exception.

Field Trip :: Learning the Letter B

Field Trip :: Japanese Culture