Saturday, October 29, 2011

Waldorf Inspired Home School Themes- Halloween

We are Waldorf-inspired homeschoolers, just starting out in kindergarten. Each week follows a theme, inspiring our work and play and learning. This theme is chosen based on the season and what's on our minds. Each week I will share what we've been up to and some links and resources that will hopefully inspire you. There is a link-up at the end of this post... I hope you will share what your home school has been up to. You can find previous weeks here.
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Flutter, flutter little bat
How I wonder where you're at
Swooping through the darkest night
You find your way without a light
Flutter, flutter little bat
How I wonder where you're at
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I would like to say this was a productive week and we made lots of wonderful things and learned to boot! But, truthfully, this sick yuck has been hanging on and we've been kinda crabby. Not to mention our first couple of projects fell through. By the way, should you get the urge to blow up a balloon and cover it in yarn drenched in glue... don't. It's icky and the yarn sank when the balloon was popped, never to revive again. I guess this does work, just not for us, not this week. And these salt dough pumpkins should've been a breeze but they fell flat, literally. I think it was because the dough had been in the fridge since last week when we made leaves with it. Nonetheless, it's also fun to squish dough.
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But on to the successes! These little pumpkin candles were fun to make and we loved the finished outcome.
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Everyone pitched in with scrapping them out and then Kaiya helped me pour the beeswax. It's the first time I've let her pour and she was so very proud of herself. I think I underestimate what she can do too much. I'm trying to let go and see what just what she's capable of (with supervision, of course).
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We're going to use them to hang around the woods on Halloween.
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Yesterday was our co-op day. They came to our house and we made fairy scopes to use on Halloween. If you're going to see a fairy I think this would be the night!
I'm woefully lacking in pictures of this project. I got very sick last night and should have seen it coming as I was very tired all day. So I didn't get pictures of everyone's, just mine and Kaiya's and Zoe's. I had wanted to do a little tutorial for you but they're super simple. I'll just give you a few little details.
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First, gather up toilet paper rolls, hole punch, craft glue, yarn, wool roving and whole big mess of natural finds to decorate.

I used the wool roving (lightly wet felted, though, you could probably get by without doing that), stretched thin enough to see through, to make a veil over one opening because, as you must know, fairies do not like to be viewed directly by the human eye. We cut out a circle of it and glued it around the edges. Then the fun part, decorating! We had acorn caps, tiny spruce pine cones, leaves, pumpkin seed, shells, dried lavender and flowers. Regular white school glue WILL NOT WORK. We used my trusty toy glue.
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After we had made them thoroughly fairy-fied (the girls were minimalist) we punched two holes near the top to string the yarn for wearing them around our neck. Very much a hit!
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Flutter, Flutter Little Bat
Five Little Pumpkins
Three Little Witches

Jack O Lantern

Story
Child of Faerie, Child of Earth (This one is perfect for what I'm looking for in Halloween!)

Facts
Not really a lot going on here this week. I wished there had been more but, like I said, school this week was spotty at best. We did talk about the magic of Halloween and the veil between our world and the world of the spirits being thin. I think Kaiya sort of grasped the concept. But it's not terribly important. We're setting the traditions in place now and building the foundation of the holiday for them.

We'll carry this on through the weekend with pumpkin carving and perhaps a little baking, and into Monday, of course.

Homeschool pinboard can be found here and Halloween here.

Now, what have you been up to?