Beach School

Though in most places school is out for the summer, we will continue on through most of the summer with lessons four days per week, interspersed with trips to the beach, hiking in the canyon, and discovering new parks. I am beginning night shifts this week, so our new challenge will be finding shady places for Curtis and the kids to conduct their lessons outdoors so that I can sleep in the morning...and probably in the afternoon as well. We will be embracing the idea of afternoon siestas for everyone as the days get hotter!

Noah has just finished a four week math block that included an introduction to Roman numerals and number qualities, a review of addition and subtraction and introduction to multiplication and division. Though many Waldorf curriculums use math gnomes for early math, we decided on the characters and stories suggested in the Live Education curriculum, as that is what we are using next year. Curtis did an amazing job crafting stories and making these characters and their interactions come alive for Noah (and Isaac, as he is always close by, participating in lessons as well). Small stones are used as manipulatives for solving problems involving multiplying and then dividing bread loaves between families, sorting sheep, and the many other problems encountered by Mul de Plier, Prince Divide, Addy the Baker, and Minus Miner.

The final week of the math block lead up to the Summer Solstice. This is the first time our family has observed the solstice. Throughout the week, we talked about the sun and the longest day. We read The Return of the Sun King and modeled suns from beeswax. The boys were up early on the Solstice making a special Father's Day card. We feasted on pancakes and spent the day relaxing together, also harvesting rosemary and lavender from the garden to dry for a later project. In the evening, the boys prepared a feast of honey, raisins, millet, and almond for our garden fairy and served it all on seashell dishes and a table cloth knit by Noah. She ate everything, of course!

As we move on to our next blocks, we will continue to incorporate math into all lesson days though circle time games, jump rope counting, and the secret message math problems Grandpa sends Noah. This past week, we started a ocean and tide pool block to learn more about our new environment. The Native American stories Salmon Boy and Octopus and Raven from Keepers of the Animals were an excellent introduction to the ocean and tides. In the evening we visited the magical and whimsical Victoria Beach, talked about all the gifts we get from the sea, and then sat quietly to think about our favorite gift from the ocean.

This nature sit was supposed to be just five minutes. Noah became restless and declared himself done after just two minutes, while Isaac surprisingly continued to sit quietly for the full time. After their sit, they used oil pastels to draw their favorite gift on a rock as a thank you to the ocean; a fish from Isaac, a starfish from Noah, a purple squiggle from Arwen.

The next day, we took school to the beach at Little Corona Del Mar. As the backbone of our tide pool unit, we are reading Pagoo by Holling C. Holling, a detailed story of life in a tide pool told through the eyes of a newborn hermit crab. I have also started choosing stories for Isaac to get him (and us) used to incorporating his lessons into our daily rhythm, as he will officially begin Kindergarten in the Fall. Isaac's stories for our ocean block are A Beach Tale and See the Ocean. Our beachside classroom...

Recently, thousands of tuna crabs washed ashore and died on our local beaches. Their remains offered an intimate look at the crustacean exoskeleton described in our story. 

After reading about little Pagoo's struggle to molt, we went on an exploration of the tide pools in search of live hermit crabs and found hundreds, as well as snails, crabs, little fish, and urchins. 

Arwen's favorite discovery was that the water in the tide pools is much warmer than the big ocean waves. This natural sandy bottomed pool kept her busy for an hour jumping and splashing while the boys built a sandcastle with Dad. She is ever so slowly becoming friends with the ocean and loves to walk barefoot along the beach holding tightly to my finger, staying just far enough up the shore that the waves only occasionally reach her feet.

We are looking forward to a summer filled with more lessons in nature, sandy feet, afternoon siestas, and lazy backyard dinners of fresh local veggies and fruits.