Letter G

 Olly did not find the "G" in my drawing yesturday. He did notice a lot of things though.

After I pointed out the "G" we drew our "Gs" together in our good books. He did his like we do with form drawing. Going over it and over it again and again until it was dark enough to see.

We also had a verse that went with the story. The verse has a lot of "G" sounds, so he is getting the phonics in that way.

Letter Story G

 Olly and I have started our first Language Arts block for first grade.

We used the Enki Education story "The Little Falcon". One day I read Olly the story. The next day we recalled the story and we colored our pictures.








Olly's picture did start out with a Golden Gate. He also drew the boy and some trees, with tree roots.

Then the dreadful thunderstorm arrived soaking the boy in rain dark black clouds in the dark black sky. He did give the boy his crystal so that he could control the storm and his fear of it.

Tomorrow we "find the letter" in the picture.

The Eagle And The Wren - Scottish Trickster Tale

This is our last trickster tale of the unit. Phew! The energy is getting really wild.

The different types of birds were chattering about which was the best flier. The Eagle overheard and joined the conversation. It was decided that the highest flier would be considered the best flier. Yes, the Eagle was the leading force behind this decision! So everyone tried to fly as high as they could. But no one could fly as high as the Eagle. When he was sure of his victory Eagle began to celebrate. And who should stir in the feathers of his back - but the wren. Being well rested, Wren was able to fly even higher than Eagle - so she won the contest.




Brother loved the story and was giggling uncontrollably when he realized what had occurred. He figured it out before I was finished reading and laughed through the rest of the story. It was really cute!

Here is his picture. His energy is CRAZY. Way up in the left, you can see the Eagle and the Wren. He has decided that they live on an island, and that the island was made by volcanos. So his entire island is filled with exploding volcanoes. Kind of like how he is feeling right now. He thinks the volcanos are beautiful and brought a volcano book down to show me after he was done his pictures.

Also, we exploded our volcano with baking powder and vinegar last night. I think that he incorporated our science experiment into this picture.

The Two Foxes - Scottish Trickster Tale

The next story was about two brother foxes who stole the fish from out of a basket on the man's back. One fox laid in the path pretending to be dead. The man picked up the "dead fox" and put him in the basket so that he could sell his pelt. Once in the basket, the fox started throwing out the fish for his younger brother to cart off. The man didn't hear any of the squeaky noises in the basket or the sounds of the fish hitting the ground. He was too excited thinking of his future with the proceeds from the sale of the fish and fox fur.



Brother included a thought bubble to show the man's dreams of his future.

I thought it was rather selfish and wasteful of the foxes to steal ALL of the fish. It felt like more fish than they could eat. But brother just thought the story was hilarious!

His little fox sure is cute. He definitely caught the energy of the fox with his flash of red with a long nose.

The Fox Outwitted - Scottish Trickster Tale

The next step of our Sages unit is to follow up with some trickster tales. Trickster tales reflect the wild and crazy energy of the eight year old - or second grader.

Our first tale was of a fox who caught a vain goose for dinner. The goose outwitted the fox, getting free again. Brother loved it. He told his dad about it at dinner.



Brother wanted to tell a story with his picture. So he broke it apart into two scenes.

John Muir Unit Study Ch 4

In this chapter, John discovers the Giant Sequoias. He also sees that they are being logged. Brother was a sad about this, but the fact that this happened so long ago provides some separation. In addition, Brother felt very empowered by John's actions to save the remaining trees.




Here is Brother's close up of the Giant Sequoias. He really wants to show the feeling of the size of the tree. He was really involved in the feeling.




And his summary.

John Muir Unit Study Ch 3

In chapter 3, John leaves his family and goes to University. He changed his name from Johnny to John. This really effected Brother. He was very interested in Johnny deciding that he had become a man.




This is a picture of the dome that John built his cabin by. Brother was very interested in the idea of having a little stream running through the hear of the cabin.




And the summary. Each day Brother takes more ownership of the summarizing process.

John Muir Unit Study Ch 2

In the second chapter Johnny Muir, his little brother and his father moved to America. The rest of the family follows once the farm is established. This was a hard chapter for me because Johnny had to leave his grandfather behind. I was supposed to do Tonglen Meditation on the story before sharing it, but I didn't have time before we started. So I was sad when I read about the leave taking. Fortunately, both of brother's sets of grandparents live here, so while he picked up on my upset, he wasn't particularly upset by it himself.



Brother is very interested in engineering - so he was mostly interested in the ship that Johnny and his family would have traveled on.



Here is the summary. He did a lot more of the summarizing this time around. He definitely has opinions about what should be said. We were running late today - so he only wrote one sentence. I finished off in the orange below.

John Muir Unit Study Ch 1

The Enki curriculum provides us with Sages stories. They are stories of wise people who started out a bit precocious but grew and developed. Beth suggested that we start with John Muir as he played in a castle when he was a boy and my children are both really into castles right now. It was a great suggestion. Brother could really see himself in Johnny when he was a boy and enjoyed experiencing Johnny growing into a man.




This is a picture the castle that Johnny and his brother played in when they were boys.




This is Brother's first official summary. I did most of the summarizing to provide an example. The next day, before we wrote down the summary, we edited it to be sure that everything Brother felt was important was included.

His writing as much improved. I write two sentences on the chalkboard and he has to copy it onto his paper. I also write the same two sentences down on a piece of paper which I set by him. He used to completely copy off of my paper. However, the visual therapy has really improved his tracking. He is able to copy completely off the board now, and actually seems to prefer it. Brother wrote in orange and I wrote in purple. Brother also corrects his work in purple.

Enki Town Board

This is the town board from our Enki curriculum. It is for learning word families such as Eep/eap and Ight/ite.

I used stockmar water colors directly onto a tri-folder presentation board I purchased from Staples. The paint is really thick. I put it on saucers and added water almost as if I was using oil paint on a painter's pallet. I learned a lot about color mixing and using water colors when I went through this process. It will be good to bring that to the kids.

The town isn't finished yet. It could use some flowers around the houses to make it come more alive. But it was functional and the kids really enjoyed it.

Week three - "F"

Yes, you were right. The letter is "F". He got a little stuck in the curve, but we used yellow to cover over some of the letter and he redid it.



Copywork is still a challenge. I am asking him to do the first line of the poem, which take him over 10 minutes. But, it will get easier.

Meanwhile, circle is going great! Brother is really fed by our first grade activities and Little Brother is floating in and out. When Little Brother joins us we add in a couple Kindergarten songs that are fun and speak to big Brother's silliness. He is really silly!

Week three - Guess the letter!

Probably not so hard to guess the letter this time! Our story was Rumpelstiltskin this week. The woodsman happens upon Rumpelstiltskin in the dark part of the wood dancing around the fire.




I think Brother and I have fiery temperaments. I managed to include a bit of the darkness of the wood, Brother has almost none.

Week two - "B"

Brother had a really hard time getting the block crayon to move with the form "B". So, it turned out lumpy. He drew over it to try and make it look more "B"ish. He concentrated so hard on getting the "B" form, that he messed up the picture frame. Oh well.



Copywork! He did less copying, but he used a pencil instead of a crayon, which was a bit of a stretch. And he copied the whole thing from the board, rejecting the idea of copying off of my page. It's fine if he copies of the board, but it sure does lengthen the amount of time he spends on the activity!

Week two - Guess the letter!

I love this drawing. It is just so cute! He didn't mean for it to turn out sideways. I'm glad that even when things don't turn out the way he expects them to, he can move through that and make the best of his art. The black is the bear's cave with a green tree out front.

Week one - "T"

Brother is still reversing letters some times and is still struggling with copy work from the board. I was hoping that tracking would kick in over the summer, but it isn't fully functioning in quite yet. Which is totally fine as he just turned seven on the 30th. Hopefully by eight years old he will be fully tracking and can do his copy work from the board with ease.

Today's circle went really well and was a lot of fun! I think it was because the three of us wrestled in the living room this morning before we went on our walk.

Week one - Guess the letter!

We are officially back for the second part of first grade now! We had a couple false starts trying to find our rhythm. This week felt like we were ready! We are starting slowly with our morning walk, circle and lessons followed by rest and afternoon practice.





Guess the letter!

It was really neat seeing Brother fall right into drawing again. He had no resistance to filling his whole page with color. Last year he wasn't really wanting to color the background in and just did it to please me.

And the Letter is "L"

Letter



Copywork

R's copywork

We participated in an Enki support phone call and it was brought to my attention that some of our "issues" were most likely due to eye tracking difficulties. Brother's eye tracking in not mature enough to allow him to look at the chalk board and then copy it down onto his paper. He can do it, but loses his place constantly. So he has to re-find his place on the board every time he looks away to write a letter. This takes a lot of effort, tiring him quickly so that he can't write much. A way to support him in his copy work is to put the copywork on a piece of paper beside him so that he doesn't have to look so far away. This is normal, and should resolve on it's own. If it hasn't by the time he is 8, then we can start looking into eye exercises. I put the copywork up on the chalk board as well knowing that someday he will use the board exclusively.

And the letter is!

The Waterfall Of White Hair

Mine



Brother's

Brother slipped into using lines again when he was drawing his picture. And using more symbols. It felt like a step back, and then I looked at my picture - which I am not at all happy with. I outlined as well - just with a different part of the crayon. This is my reminder that I need to practice the picture first so that I can bring it to Brother well. To be fair, our neighbor started cutting down trees during this letter, and I couldn't think. So, we spent a lot of time at parks to avoid the sound of chain saws.