We’re a few weeks into our Waldorfy experiments, and things are far from settled.  I’ve been busy, and tired, and things just haven’t gelled yet.  We’re not getting much ‘work’ done, but we’re getting a bit here and there at least.

One thing I’ve loved about the Waldorf ideas, is the concept of drawing to learn.  This isn’t solely exclusive to Waldorf, of course, I’ve seen it pop up in many curricula and philosophies.  It’s just especially prevalent in Waldorf, and so it’s led me to re-examine the idea with more freedom and more deliberate cogitation… how can we work main-lesson-style drawings into Flipper’s other subjects?  It’s one thing when you’re working with a resource that already includes drawing, but it’s another thing altogether when you want to keep using the materials you have, but add/substitute drawings where appropriate.

Well, I had a flash of brilliance today (if I say so myself).  I confess it wasn’t entirely original.  I was inspired while reading about The Sentence Family.  This particular grammar resource reminds me a bit of Sentence Island, which I’ve been thinking of using with Pomme when she’s old enough.  They are similar in that they both teach the facts through interesting stories with anthropomorphised grammatical concepts, rather than dry academic text.

Where Sentence Family takes a step beyond Sentence Island is in the active, creative element from the student.  Given cues and suggestions, they are to draw their own pictures of the grammatical characters.  For instance, Verb is an energetic young boy who wears red, and he should be drawn doing something active.

This approach is similar in concept to lapbooking, narration, and Waldorf main lessons, in that the child does not merely parrot back fill-in-the-blank answers, but becomes part of the process, engaging in an act of creativity which helps to secure the information in their consciousness – not just their short-term memory.

I was so impressed with this, that it struck me, that this is the way to incorporate drawings for Flipper’s other subjects.

First up, was French.  He is currently on unit one of book two of L’art de lire, and in general is doing very well.  He’s remembering the vocabulary and the pronounciations, his translations are generally accurate, he’s even getting the hang of gender and number agreement (which we don’t have to worry about in English).

But for some strange reason, the basic verbs avoir and être cause him constant confusion.  Not for lack of practice – he’s actually been taught these as early as age 4 or 5.  He sings the songs I learned as a child (conjugating to the tune of Mexican Hat Dance) with joy and enthusiasm.  He translates them accurately from french to english.  But english to french?  He’ll mix up “vous” with “il”, “est” with “êtes”, spell them wrong everywhere (he even used “ill” and “ills” recently), confuse the avoir conjugations with the être conjugations… many of the mix-ups are understandable… but not really after this length of time.

He needed a way to make each one more concrete, more individual.  Enter the main lesson drawing book.

I had him divide four pages into 2 sections each.  Then in each of the 8 sections, he labelled and illustrated one conjugation of être.  I gave him some hints of ideas where needed, but for the most part I just let him be creative and draw whatever was meaningful to him.

So, for “je suis”, he drew a simple stick figure of himself, with an arrow pointing to it saying “me”.  At my suggestion, he added a background of grass and a beautiful tree.  Then he thought of adding another person to the picture, smaller and in the background, to differentiate between the “me” and the “other.”

Then, for “tu es”, he drew the same two figures, but this time the other was the one in center focus.  For “il est”, the same two figures were located one on either side of a new figure, both pointing to him. “Elle est” repeated a similar picture, but with a girl in the center.

For “nous sommes”, he created a soccer team.  Complete with matching jerseys, a soccer ball, and an intricate net.  “Vous êtes” became, of course, the opposing team, with a couple of the first team off to the side pointing to them.  For “ils sont” and “elles sont”, the solitary figure of himself again took the center, pointing off to the side to a gaggle of boys (or girls) in the background.

He loved every moment of this activity.  It remains to be seen how much different it actually makes to his retention of the verb conjugations, but I love this approach.  We will continue tomorrow with the “avoir” conjugation — I can’t wait to see what objects his little characters will “have”!

I have to say that I’ve tried to demonstrate the conjugations in a similar manner previously… by explaining to him, by speaking and pointing to imaginary people whiler reciting the conjugation.  The difference is that then, I was the one doing the activity, and he was a mere passive observer.  That’s fine for your pure visual learners, not so much for your kinesthetic ones.  With this project, he was doing the activity, he was internalizing the meaning of the verbs in a more concrete way than rote worksheet exercises.

And most importantly – he liked it.