Beltane

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

A Hand Made Wreath
an Ancient Rite
Circling the Maypole
to Welcome the Harvest
the Marriage of the God and Goddess
a Beltane Celebration.

2nd Grade at a Waldorf School

Well, another year of school down. I am now the mom to a rising 3rd grader. Okay, I need to stop typing for a moment while I wipe the tears and blow my nose. All good now. Noah's year was filled with language arts, math, nature studies and playground fun. He completed last year's knitting project and started on a new one - a stuffed gnome. His class gave two wonderful plays and treated everyone to a Chinese New Year program.


In a Waldorf school, there are no textbooks. At least, not in our school. Each day the students begin with a blank piece of paper and create their own textbooks. When they learn to write, there is no tracing on workbook pages. It makes for beautiful work by the children.


In language arts this year, the children heard beautiful stories which were translated to artwork in the textbooks, they continued mastering print and in January they began cursive. Noah's cursive is great. Better than mine! He learned the multiplication tables through form drawing and bean bag tossing.


There are days when I wonder how the heck we can continue paying for private school, then I look at his work and I know that Great Spirit will provide.

St. George and the Dragon

St. George and the Dragon was a big part of the school year.  They used it as part of the pedagogical study and this was the play that was performed.  I LOVE Noah's Dragon.

2nd Grade Math

The Crow and the Pitcher

Well, I have NO idea why these loaded like this.  I even tried rotating them before uploading them.  Oh well.  This was one of my favorite stories as a child.  The Crow and the Pitcher.  I love that Noah wrote it out and illustrated it himself instead of reading someone else's book and seeing that person's art.

The Peacock

This is Noah's peacock and one of his printed pages from the earlier part of the school year.  I love this picture.  Did I mention there are no lines on the page?  They use TOTALLY blank paper.

Mary Pope Osborne's Odyssey

Noah and I love Greek Myths. Any myths really - but especially Greek myths. Who can resist tales of the Greek Gods and their love/hate relationship with mankind? Not I! Nor, my magical son. Normally a D'Aulaire's girl for presenting these feasts for the ears to Noah, I stumbled across Mary Pope Osborne's version of The Odyssey at the library. 7 delightful CD's by one of our favorite author's - she is also the author of the ever popular Magic Treehouse series!


For the last few days we have been listening to these CD's in the car. We began them last Thursday and will sadly finish them tomorrow. We have read other version's of this tale - including the Barefoot Books version (I love Barefoot Books!) but this tale - this tale rewritten by Osborne and read by Shakespearean actor James Simmons are more than I could have wished for.


Each day we are eager to get into the car to go SOMEWHERE - ANYWHERE so we can listen. Oh, I know, we could listen at home, and probably will, but to be in the car with the kids imagining these events is lovely, simply lovely.


Dreaming of Odysseus and Penelope and the Goddess Athena - patron Goddess of my own fair city of Nashville.....

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