Grace's Practice Work Books

numbering recognition and formation
counting
adding
subtracting
solving word problems

picture study

narration

copy work

beginning capitalization

punctuation

creative writing

printing capital letters, lower case letters, and words

writing words, phrases and sentences

small muscle control

follow written direction

letter recognition and formation

printing practice

reading comprehension

vocabulary building

finding the main idea

critical thinking

inference

Fairy Tales and Indian Food

This is our bed time reading for the month of August. For our actual Fairy Tale Block we will be using The Tales of Tip-Toes Lightly by Reg Down

The kids received a very full Indian history lesson this Monday at Rachel's house

and as part of our review we cooked up some delicious Indian food.
As the turmeric dyed vegetables simmered in the pan, the kids took turns re-telling The Life of Krishna. They all remembered his life quite vividly from his mischievous childhood ways to his daring defeats.

While the rice baked, we learned how to tie a sari. Lydia got one for her birthday last week.

Ahhhh, a feast! Curried zucchini and green pepper, Indian fried rice and puris.

While the girls cleaned up, I read the prologue of the Ramayana.

Before the new moon...

Two years ago we started all of our main lesson blocks on the new moon or as close to it as we could get. I'm not really sure why we abandoned this system because it seemed to work quite well. We started a fresh subject with the new moon, the lesson becoming more full-bodied as the moon became more full-bodied, learning to apply the subject matter to life as the moon waned and preparing ourselves for another educational adventure with the new cycle. This way of teaching really appeals to me and also keeps me on track which is good because I tend toward procrastination and the moon never takes a day off.

The new moon of August is not till the 20th so we will be taking the school days before then and doing quite a bit of reading and more practice work.

This week we will be focusing on fairy tales and on the 20th begin a main lesson block on them. They will hear the tale on day 1, re-tell, act out and illustrate on day 2 and write story captions and discuss the stories lessons on day three. Most stories will have more than one part, making the lesson stretch out the full week.

Practice Work

Shelby and Grace have had a full week to adjust to school life again. We have gently made this transition by doing some easy review in workbooks and playing educational games on the computer. Shelby has been brushing up on some 1st grade math skills.

Grace enjoys a typing game.

Here We Go Again...

This blog will feature the work of Shelby, second grade and Grace, first grade. This year Lydia has her own blog @ www.creatingfifthgrade.blogspot.com and is currently working on typing up her first report of the year on our fantastic trip to New Vrindaban in Moundsville WV a few weeks ago. I have posted pictures of this field trip here: http://spiralpathways.blogspot.com/2009/07/new-vridabran.html

The following week I taught an Herbal Day Camp here at my house and the pictures of the weeks activities are also on spiralpathways here: http://spiralpathways.blogspot.com/2009/07/herbal-day-camp-2009.html

Here as a list of activities:Herbal Day Camp 2009


Day One: Herbal Identification

Gather and read part 1 of Herbalist of Yarrow
Walk through the gardens with Hyde tour guides and learning about what we have growing here
Herbal identification activity: 21 herbs in various stages laid out and numbered. The children made note of the ones they could already identify
Discussion of the healing properties of those herbs
Lesson on plantain (the miracle plant)
Plantain harvest and hanged to dry

Day Two: Flowers

Circle Time
Herbalist of Yarrow Part 2
Harvesting fresh basil, rosemary, cilantro, nasturtium flowers and zucchini blossoms for lunch
Preparing herb lunch:
Pasta with garden zucchini and tomatoes, garlic and onion in olive oil with fresh-cut herbs and nasturtium flowers
Herb cream cheese filled zucchini flowers
Collected brightly-colored flowers and foliage and made beautiful nature-made pictures with leaves and petals
Learned of the medicinal value of red clover, lavender and rose and brewed a delicious tea to lift the spirits, ease pain and calm the nerves.
Collected the leftovers from the Art project and tea and made a fragrant potpourri to take home.
Day Three: Herbal Cooking

Circle Time
Part Three of Herbalist of Yarrow
Cooking Asiago Basil Focaccia bread topped with sage and sweet basil pesto pasta
Wildcraft (herbal board game)
Garden Yoga
Herbal leaf rubbing cards

Day Four: Herbal Medicine

Circle Time
Conclusion of Herbalist of Yarrow followed by discussion
All prepare lunch: Herbal Stone Soup and cheddar chive drop biscuits and fresh chocolate mint tea
Making olive oil and beeswax based skin salve using freshly harvested yarrow, comfrey and plantain along with dried lavender and chamomile flowers.
Created a Human Herb!