Cover of one of Elijah’s Main Lesson Books
One of the classic Waldorf, second grade, main lessons for language arts.
From our work with “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse”. He knitted some sweet mice finger puppets for a puppet show that we put on, but I forgot to get pictures!
Jan Brett has a fun version of this one.
Main Lesson page from the Jataka Tale “Foolish Words”
Mural created for the story “Foolish Words”; in full above and some details below. This story is included in the Donna Simmons book that I mention below, but we also enjoyed “Twenty Jataka Tales” retold by Noor Inayat Khan.
I culled from different sources two years ago when I did this block with Iain, mostly just working directly with Aesop’s Fables. Since then we’ve been gifted a copy of “Animal Legends” by Donna Simmons of Christopherus, which I like a lot because it pulls stories from different cultures and lays them all out with ideas on how to work with them. Also, as with all of Donna’s books that I’ve used, it makes planning e-a-s-y. Seriously, easy as pie. It’s all laid out right there. And I can choose to diverge from that at any point I please (and there are times when I certainly do), but if I’m having a low energy, low motivation, sleep deprivation fueled kind of day, I can still pull off a pretty good lesson with minimal effort.
Illustration from “The Mouse and the Lion”. I recently found this beautiful, wordless adaptation by Jerry Pinkney. While I generally try to share stories for our Main Lesson work from my own memory, I will occasionally have a child read the story them self (more so with an older child, less so with a younger). But later in the year, I do think that it’s fun to revisit a story in the form of a beautiful and/or well written picture book.
Elijah’s one of those kids who when presented with Waldorf style drawings with vague features and just the “gesture” of the subject, will go back in his own picture and add in all the details. It kind of makes me laugh.
“The Wolf and the Lamb” I do so love that little lamb!
Elijah’s beautiful diorama to go with the story “The Old Man and the Bear”. That one is a fun story! It made him laugh.
I think you probably all know what this one is from!
“The Hungry Fox” (a Middle Eastern Tale)
This week we are finishing up a math block, with one “Saints and Heroes” lesson slipped in-between…
And next week we’ll be starting on the “Saints and Heroes” block in earnest.
Excellent! I love your posts on home education. We start home schooling officially on Monday.
What beautiful drawings, My 15 yr old son wanted to “tell” Elijah what a great artist he was, and my 4 yr old daughter was excited for me to tell her the srories of the pictures she saw, we started by having her tell me the story by telling the story of Elijahs pictures.I find that homeschooled children all seem to draw far more detailed and beautiful drawings than most of the other children around the same age.Thank you again for sharing such a great blog.
I love the little lamb too! All of Elijah’s work is wonderful, the cover of his lesson book is beautiful. We did second grade last year and both my daughter and I loved our main lesson blocks. Now in this third grade year she still often asks if we can read saint stories. It was a good year!
such beautiful work
I love Elijah’s drawings! We loved the second grade too.
Awesome,faboulous work done.
awesome.