Monday, October 7, 2013

HomeSchool at Grammies - Art and Writing

Here are photos of our first few classes in the new school room (craft room) - we manage to get together once a week, for 2 lessons in both Art and Writing. It's been so fun - the children are excited to learn, a testimony to their mother's remarkable views and dedication to nurturing their love of learning. It's really something to see - they are absolutely unabashedly happy to learn whatever lesson comes up for the day. We have used art pencils, crayons, play dough, and watercolours so far, whilst painting the sky ("Grammie, there are no clouds in the sky - it's just blue!" " Go back out and take all your blue pencil crayons, and see how many blues you see!" was the reply) outside on a blanket, drawing with  music, and another day while listening to a story...all to get the creative juices flowing.





Here we are in our new 'classroom' upstairs - it's a beautiful space to teach and learn in - with plenty of natural light, and inspiration int he form of books and materials.






Writing is our other pursuit; the children do tons of writing already, at home, so we have gone back to the beginning to refine grammar and punctuation. They are so quick to learn - it's hilarious - even poems are gobbled up like candy. They are so quick to memorize - and that includes Scarlet who has her own Grammie School day  - she's equally eager to work hard and learn!

Jane, Charlie, and Jacob memorized The Goops By Gillett Burgess in a few minutes and Scarlet and Jacob learned The Caterpillar by Christina Rosetti equally quickly - we'll move on to more difficult material once we work into it a little...what we're doing now is probably not challenging enough.

Our class motto, for which we have been mocked (haha) is:

"In the circle of creativity, we are free to be we!" We say it together, of course if you were to say it on your own, you would say "I am free to be me!"











Notice Scarlet's grammie bun :)

Last day we had to make a few rules...one of which is that to learn, play, and create the way we want to, we have to all be free to make a few mistakes without them being quickly pointed out by each other...so basically we each have to let each other be, while each person figures out their own mistakes. There was a little too much unsolicited criticism and correcting (which is my job), but I think we have put a stop to it. We'll see next day.



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your Grammie school sounds like so much fun.

The book Sky Color:
http://www.amazon.com/Sky-Color-Creatrilogy-Peter-Reynolds/dp/0763623458/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381253431&sr=8-1&keywords=sky+color

would work wonderfully well with your art classes. Jonas really liked it but I think it would still be very enjoyable as a quick intro for older kids too.

Anonymous said...

Oops, that was me, Royall!

Elizabeth said...

Cool! I looked it

up immediately - that would be a nice addition to our growing art library!