Nature Study

This was one of my favorite blocks this year. I told nature stories involving Nehemiah the Gnome. I had so much fun making up these stories containing tales about farming, nature in Virginia & also some pedagogical stories. Nehemiah lived up in the mountains of western Virginia & one day he dropped his hat into the lil' Cowpasture stream. He decided to follow the stream to find his cap. His adventures are many and eventually lead him to the James River & on to the Atlantic Ocean! I would love to have the time to publish the stories in a wee lil' book!

While I told these stories to my students, our daily review often involved them reading the story I had written & drawing a picture. - Yes, a bit unusual. ;-) Below are the book covers my students created!

3rd Grade Yurt

The yurt with sheep was created by my students. The shepherd was created by me. The frame was created by the father of a student. Heirloom craftsmanship & cherry wood. The walls were needle-felted, then wet-felted & sewn together; some by machine, others with blanket-stitch by hand. The walls have scenes on them... Shepherd, sheep, trees, flowers & such. The wooden tag on the door reads: 3rd Grade ~ 2010/11.

It was our 3rd grade building project & also our auction art project. My students were very proud. The yurt sold for $400. It has a 3-foot (app. 1 meter) diameter & it's about 14" high. The roof was wet-felted using feet. :-) Fun times! We left it "rugged" rather than cutting it to a perfect circle.

Shepherd felted at the last minute, in true procrastinator style. The sheep each had a lil' tag with the name of the student who created it wood-burnt in. It was such a great project. My students worked so hard & we had so much fun.

(The pictures were taken with Noah's iPod & they are thus a bit grainy. The beauty still shows, though.)

Sunday ~ Wheat

I should have arranged these differently. It just so happens that I don't have all that much to add to this information. Wheat is associated with the Sun.

The Grains

(Watercolor painting by a 3rd grader)

I just wrapped up a two-weeks block on "The Grains" this week. I loved teaching this block. I covered 7 grains, the trade of both miller & baker as well as some basic information about windmills. I will attempt to blog about this for the next 7 days, covering the grains we covered in class. I will share some of the beautiful work my students did these past two weeks; work from all students. Hard to believe that on top of this, we also prepared for our class play, Joseph, during this time!

Each planet is associated with a day of the week. I did give my students an overview of this, although they will not formally be studying planets until 6th grade. The quality of the planets brings an understanding about the grains. It seems just natural that a watery Moon day calls for rice!

Here is a list of the grains we covered. They are all so very different. Some people switch millet & oats. They feel that millet has more of a female Venus quality than oat. I found the information here very helpful.

(A windmill ~ Crayon drawing by a 3rd grader)

I will hopefully have a blog post for the next 7 days, starting with Sunday. I hope you will enjoy this as much as I did.

The Blanket

Finally. A picture of the blanket my students made for my birthday. 35 colorful squares. So beautiful.

Knitted Sheep

 Our school's annual auction is fast approaching. My students have been busy working on the class art project, which is a dollhouse-sized yurt with 12 sheep & a felted nomadic herder (made by moi). The frame of the yurt, with a diameter of app. 3 feet, has been created & we will do the felting next week. Most sheep have been knitted by the students.

The sheep are waiting to be sewn up. I have woodburned each student's name on a small wooden tag. The tag will be tied around each sheep's neck. Wooden tags courtesy of Tonya over at Natural Earth Farm. Superb craftsmanship I must say! The students are using Peace Fleece yarn. It's so soft! (I don't want to show the names of my students, so I used the extra tags to make name tags for my family.)

And each student copied the pattern!

Birdhouses

Voila! I wanted a manageable building project to do with my 3rd graders at school & I wanted it to be something functional; not something that collects dust. A parent kindly created kits for the students using this plan. They wrote their names & the year & added a little design which I then traced with a woodburning tool. Twelve third graders & twelve hammers & not a single band-aid used! I call that a success.

Hot Pepper

In the spring Nathan's class planted some tomatoes, bell peppers & well, one hot pepper plant. The story according to Nathan is that his teacher brought some rather small plants to school & each child was allowed to pick one of them to plant. He remarked that he thought he had gotten one hot pepper plant, but wasn't sure.

Nathan was determined to find the hot pepper. He said he carefully looked at all the plants & thus located the one and only plant that was different from all the others. He said he secretly hoped that he got the hot pepper.

Well, we went to school today as I had some errands to take care of there & walked to the 3rd grade garden. Nathan looked at the two raised beds and exclaimed, "I knew it! I knew it! I got the hot pepper." - Thus the picture: A beaming child next to a hot pepper plant.

Samuel And Saul

Nate's Old Testament Book II

Impressions from Nate's 2nd book of Old Testament Stories:
The Golden Calf

The Promised Land

The Walls of Jericho

Ruth

Hot!

Another project signaling the end of the school year is near. Yay! Nathan brought home his crochet oven mitt. He finished it in handwork class while Noah and I were at the Pentathlon. They learned how to crochet in 3rd grade. It's two squares joined with single crochets & a picot edging. Purple, red & blue. It looks lovely, the stitches are very neat in my opinion, but being the Virgo-perfectionist he is :-), Nathan wants to felt it in the washer, so that "the mess-ups don't show." Just where, oh where did he get that craftsy-perfectionist streak from I wonder... :-)

Creation Day VI

Watercolor, Creation Day VI

I just think the text is so sweet! (Both pictures by Nathan, 3rd Grade; Text by Nathan's teacher.)

Abraham & Isaac

Nathan brought home a most beautiful morning lesson book today. It has amazing watercolor paintings of the days of creation & other wonderful images. Some I have shared in a previous post. I can't share it all, as there is just so much of this art!

Nate's 3rd Grade Play

Nathan's 3rd Grade Play was today. It was "Joseph, The Dreamer." Nathan was Simeon, one of the twelve brothers. He was so nervous, but everything went just fine. He spoke clearly. One of his lines was, "While he's alone and far from home, we could... kill him..." The way he said it made everyone laugh. It was "just right." At first he thought he had messed up, but then he realized it was "just" good acting. As I looked at the pictures Nathan drew over the last couple of weeks, I realized he took this story into a lot of his artwork at home, too.

This is a picture he drew of Joseph, surrounded by his brothers.

Wet-on-wet watercolor of Joseph by Nate. I just love the colors!

Chalkboard drawing by 3rd graders. - The backdrop for the play.

Egypt

Joseph as a shepherd in Canaan. The slave traders in the background.

Nathan as Simeon.

Noah's play "Isis and Osiris" is next week. Noah is Horus. As a teacher I struggle with plays, but my students are enjoying it. I will share some impressions when it has been performed. Nathan is in bed now with a swollen wrist and a fever. What a combination, eh?! Quite bizarre how kids can "crash" within an hour. Yikes. Someone tripped him & he fell just before the play. Not sure about the fever. The wrist is pretty swollen. Yikes. His class trip starts Monday... Never a dull moment, eh?!

Old Testament Stories By Nathan

Some images from Nathan's 3rd Grade Old Testament Stories Morning Lesson Book. Nathan is nine years old and loves to draw and paint. The sequence is random.

Tubal Cain

Garden of Eden

Jacob & Esau

Baby Moses

Nate The Violinist

Nathan is a violinist now. He loves it. He has been wanting to play the violin for a while, and I was finally able to make it work financially. He sleeps with the violin next to his bed. :-) This is such a cute picture, I think.