Class 2

We end our year in late November, early December. So as you are all starting your new year in America we are starting to finish up our year.

I thought I would share a little bit of what Sheth and I have done this year.

We have done Saints, and animal stories. I have not done as much as I would have liked as I have had one of the busiest and most emotional years of my life.

We have learned a lot of poems in English and also Afrikaans, as it is our second language.We have made a lovely poetry book. I wrote the poems in and Sheth decorated the pages.

We have been working on family words. I never did this with my other children. It has made a huge difference with learning to read. We have done almost 50 of them. We will just keep adding the family words to our special book, as we do more and more.

Sheth also revised his vowel caterpillar and drew it in his family word book.

I have been using the grade 1 readers from the LLATL blue book series. I have not had time to make readers this year so I improvised. I have not used the LLATL curriculum, just the readers.

We have other readers appropriate for his reading level that he will read and then circle articles in brown, underline nouns in blue, pronouns in purple and verbs in red. He is really good at this and enjoys doing it.

We have done maths using the Waldorf outline. Column addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Sheth has learned to carry numbers in addition and subtraction. We have worked on time - being seasons, years, months, weeks and days.

Sheth has also been learning his times tables. This needs lots of practice and even Caleb who is in grade 7 still needs to practice them. Times tables are the basis to ALL maths problems (or to ALL maths solutions).

We have had fun and we are working to finish off our year.

Maths

Yesterday we were making some beautiful maths formula cards.

We used our wet on wet paintings that we have done through out the year.

Area = Base x Height
Area over* Base = Height
Area over* Height = Base

Distance = Speed x Time
Distance over* Speed = Time
Distance over* Time = Speed

*or divided by

Grade two maths

Sheth and I have been having a lot of fun doing maths, the last couple of weeks.

We have been recapping our four processes. We have heard stories about the processes. The monkey and the crocodile was for subtraction.

We heard about King Turnip Counter, which opened the door for us to count to 100 twice and then count backward from 100.  

We also drew big circles on our outside cement. We then numbered  them up to 40. Sheth walked on the numbers while counting. He walked backwards as he counted backwards. He then jumped as we recapped our 2, 5 and 10 times tables.  

Then to the book work! Sheth drew lily leaves in water, he numbered them and then coloured certain numbers for his skip counting. He has the sweetest turtle which fits on the leaves, so we make up games and play.

We then moved on to the 3 and 6 times tables.

I am teaching Waldorf maths and we use the odd word sheet from Math-U-See.

Sheth enjoys maths where Caleb never did. This is because Caleb did Math-U-See only: book work, book work, book work! No time to play and learn through play. If only I had found Waldorf home schooling sooner.

Maths curriculum: Geometry

Geometry was my favourite part of maths at school. I enjoyed the beauty in the shapes and I enjoyed working out the different angles and degrees etc. It is like the best mystery book that you can read! You have to work out certain things in a certain order to find the treasure or maths answer.

A Journey through Waldorf Geometry.
By Melisa Nielson

• www.alittlegardenflower.com

Learning how to draw an
isosceles and equilateral
triangle

This is an e-book and a DVD is sent in the post. Melisa shows you how to construct the different forms on the DVD which is very helpful for me.

When I found Melisa's geometry curriculum for grade 5, 6 and 7, I was so excited. Caleb has done the grade 5 geometry so far and has loved it! We will be doing the grade 6 later in the year.