Lost in Space
I have not been blogging much lately and I think one factor that is lost is that I have not been reflecting on my work with the children. Maxine Greene would call it the de-familiarising process which allows one to always look at things afresh. In Islam in muhasabah we take it one step further as the renewal of the self and his (her) relation to Allah.
The beauty of the faith is that there is always that spiritual connection in everything that we do and I am truly needing it with all that Western theories I'm always reading about.
Well, today we painted Cesar Augustine taking a walk and seeing the autumn leaves falling. We didn't really paint his potrait of course but just waves of yellow and wisps of red for the leaves, which of course turns orange when they come together.
So Cesar Augustine was walking along and admiring the beauty of fall and thought he wanted to always be remembered on such beautiful autumn days when the plants and trees change their colours so he decided to name that month August after himself.
I of course told the kids it was just a tale I spun but August is really named after Cesar Augustine. The lesson is a consolidation of Ihsan's lessons on the history of the names of months of the year and the leaf rubbings, leaf shapes, leaf parts lessons we just had.
I of course could also link it to the spring equinox, the revolutions of the earth and Roman history. What joy it is to homeschool....By the way, there are no pictures cause my handphone which I took photos of the kids' works and moments of working are nowhere to be found. I once lost my laptop and it showed up in my son's treasure basket.
Yesterday for Ihsan's lesson on mechanics we did capitalisation of the months. Being the Montessori-Waldorf and whatever else is fun homeschooler that I am, instead of just writing the labels I wrote with Stockmar crayons in my most archaic handwriting and we decorated each label according to the seasons or history of each month.
Thereafter, the labels were stuck to Ihsan's main lesson book in a circle to signify the turning of the earth round the sun ( which he drew with the crayons in shades of yellow, orange and red)through the months to make a y
The beauty of the faith is that there is always that spiritual connection in everything that we do and I am truly needing it with all that Western theories I'm always reading about.
Well, today we painted Cesar Augustine taking a walk and seeing the autumn leaves falling. We didn't really paint his potrait of course but just waves of yellow and wisps of red for the leaves, which of course turns orange when they come together.
So Cesar Augustine was walking along and admiring the beauty of fall and thought he wanted to always be remembered on such beautiful autumn days when the plants and trees change their colours so he decided to name that month August after himself.
I of course told the kids it was just a tale I spun but August is really named after Cesar Augustine. The lesson is a consolidation of Ihsan's lessons on the history of the names of months of the year and the leaf rubbings, leaf shapes, leaf parts lessons we just had.
I of course could also link it to the spring equinox, the revolutions of the earth and Roman history. What joy it is to homeschool....By the way, there are no pictures cause my handphone which I took photos of the kids' works and moments of working are nowhere to be found. I once lost my laptop and it showed up in my son's treasure basket.
Yesterday for Ihsan's lesson on mechanics we did capitalisation of the months. Being the Montessori-Waldorf and whatever else is fun homeschooler that I am, instead of just writing the labels I wrote with Stockmar crayons in my most archaic handwriting and we decorated each label according to the seasons or history of each month.
Thereafter, the labels were stuck to Ihsan's main lesson book in a circle to signify the turning of the earth round the sun ( which he drew with the crayons in shades of yellow, orange and red)through the months to make a y
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