Saturday, October 22, 2011

Waldorf Inspired Home School Themes- Leaves

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.
Photobucket
It's a wonderful time for exploring leaves! We've been taking gathering walks and enjoying and crafting with leaves all week.
Our first project was inspired by Joy's watercolor leaves. We used many autumn inspired colors to cover the sheet of paper, painting both sides.
Photobucket

Photobucket
After letting it dry we used cookie cutters to trace out our leaves then punched a hole in the ends and replaced our apples with our beautiful leaves. Perhaps we'll keep our branch around to decorate for each season.
Photobucket
Next we worked on a little something for Halloween. We made lanterns following this tutorial. We will be going to a friend's house on Halloween and doing a lighted walk through the woods.
Photobucket

Photobucket
These turned out so beautifully. The tutorial was for a candle holder but Kaiya and I finger knitted handles for them, hot glued them to the rim and then fit the ring over top.
Photobucket
These lavender pillows I already shared with you here.
Photobucket
And we are actually still in the process of making these leaf prints. Going by this tutorial we have, so far, made the dough, pressed the leaves and used our leaf cookie cutters again to cut some out, baked them and now they are waiting for us to paint them, which we will do tomorrow.
Photobucket

Photobucket

PhotobucketLinkPreparing for this week I realized that, unlike squirrels, there are tons of leaf projects and we just didn't have time to do them all. You can see all of the above and more leaf inspired crafts on my homeschool board.

Songs
Come, little leaves...
The Leaves on the Trees
Little leaves fall gently down...

Story
The Life of a Leaf ( a free pdf)

Facts
Why do Fall leaves change color?

You can share what your Waldorf inspired home school has been up to, too!