Waldorf Wednesday

Last week we didn't do any formal lessons as we were out of town.  However, during the two weeks before we focused on a very fun story from our Enki book called "Sugaring Time."  The weekend before we went to a maple syrup festival, one of yearly traditions, so this story came at the perfect time. 

Unfortunately I didn't catch any photos from our baking day.  We made pancakes from scratch to which we added our newly-purchased syrup -  yum!

I had a special painting project planned, but Sammy came across some shaving cream in our art supplies and begged to do some "painting" with it.  Who am I to say no?  The boys had a wonderful time experimenting with the shaving cream and blue and purple watercolors:

For our beeswax modeling session we made tiny root children for our nature table.  Sammy also made a few frost children from our story as well.  This time we warmed up the beeswax using our heating pad, which the boys thought was very funny:

And because I like sharing photos with you, here are a few I found of schooltime last month.  This was the week we focused on the lovely story by Suzanne Downs called "A Million Valentines."

We used a new shade of yellow, golden yellow, to create beautiful golden tones just like the goldfinches in the story:

There was also cupcake baking and lots of valentine making in preparation for a small party we hosted:

The boys have been spending loads and loads of time outdoors lately.  It gives me such joy to see them muddy and glowing from exploring in our woods.  They always have such big projects - lots of heavy work like digging big holes and then filling them in, or dragging large limbs to make a shelter of sorts. 

I am giving very serious thought to switching over to Enki for first grade next year.  I bought Christopherus because of Enki's price, but recently I ordered their movement books/CDs for circle time and was just so impressed.  Those materials together with the folk/fairy tales and nature stories we already own really make me think that Enki's high price tag is worth it.  I love how multicultural it is, and as I look at 2nd and 3rd grades there will be much less need for me to substitute stories since Enki is pretty secular from what I can tell.  Any thoughts on Enki? 

Ellie's 14th

We celebrated another birthday round these parts recently - Ellie turned 14!  It's hard to believe my baby girl is already so grown-up.  Being the sweet sister she is, she wanted her picture taken with her little brothers:

Unfortunately there was a bit of a snafu with her birthday cake.  The rounds were on the stove cooling, everyone was off doing other things, and our dog Moose is just tall enough...

He said it was delicious. 

Luckily we were able to salvage some of it, and our birthday girl blew out her candles later that evening:

She then woke up the next morning to find that Peter had eaten every last bit of icing off the leftover birthday cake.  Good thing Ellie is forgiving!

Happy birthday sweet girl.  I promise I will hire a security guard for your cake next year.



The Finish Line

I'm not sure if I've shared this before or not, but about a year ago Daniel transformed himself into a runner.  He ran a marathon back in December, a half-marathon most recently, and is currently training for a 50-mile ultra-marathon in August.  Yeah, he's kind of awesome.

Around here we most definately have a "whatever Daddy does the littles want to do too" vibe going on.  So Sammy and Peter have become runners too.  Peter doesn't run very often, but he does love it when Daniel takes him out.  Daniel tells me he does a quite adorable combo of sprinting full force, getting tired and walking for a minute, then taking off sprinting again. 

Sammy, being 6, is a bit better at pacing.  After training with Daddy, he ran his first race last weekend - 3 miles!  He was so excited and proud of himself. 

Here he is crossing the finish line.  I love the expression on his face!

Daniel ran with Sammy during his 3-mile race, then continued on to finish the half-marathon.  The boys and I hung out, cheering on the runners and trying to keep warm.  Peter spent a good deal of time sitting completely covered with his blanket:

He was also in charge of handing Daniel his drinks as he ran by:

 I have a feeling this was only the start of many, many father-son races!

Peter's 4th Birthday

Oh hi!  I somehow ended up taking quite a blog break!  But now I'm back, refreshed, and ready to share pics of Peter's 4th birthday.  I thought it would be fun to also share four fun facts about him.

1.  Peter wears pajamas 99% of the time.  And no, I'm not exaggerating.  When he does wear clothes, he likes to get into Sammy's drawers and wear his! 

2.  Peter *loves* pretending to be a puppy.  He has several different puppy "characters" that he becomes, each with their own names and personalities.  There is Brownie, Lucky, Bosca, and Dusty.    See how his "paws" are up in the air in the photo above?  Yep, he was a birthday puppy.

3.  Peter has carried Stinky (his blanket) around with him since he was 8 months old.  Peter without Stinky is like macaroni without cheese.

4.  Peter is a boy of many nicknames - Pip, Pippy, P-Pie, Peter Pan, Petetse Fly - basically he responds to anything starting with a "P."

Happy 4th birthday sweet boy!

Imbolc Hike

Sorry for the lack of blogging.  Every so often I go through an angsty "why oh why do I blog...does anyone really read it...blah blah...woe is me" period.

Our tradition over the past few years has been to take an Imbolc hike at the same location and look for signs of the earth changing toward spring.  In case you don't know, Imbolc is a Pagan sabbat (holiday) that falls at the midpoint between winter and spring.  It is a reminder that even though aboveground things look dead and brown, below the ground changes are happening and Mother Earth is beginning to awaken after her long winter rest.  I always tell the boys that Imbolc is when the root children begin to stir in their beds.  Imbolc is that little spark of hope that gets us through the rest of the dreary winter.

When we've hiked the last two years the waterfalls at our spot have been beautifully frozen.  Because this winter has been so crazy mild there was no ice at all.  Quite a change, but still lovely.

There is such a comfort that comes to me when I'm surrounded by woods - the same thing at the ocean.  I think it's the reminder that there is something that is bigger and in a way wiser than myself. 

In truth I think that many of our society's problems come from our seperation from nature.  We *need* to be reminded that there is a force more powerful than ourselves.  Humans can prodouce marvelous things, and we can even attempt to recreate the force of nature with our manmade lakes, etc. but we can't create a beautiful sunset, or a boulder covered with moss.  We need a sense of awe and wonder.  We need something that makes us children again.

Happy belated Imbolc!



Waldorf Wednesday (Thursday Edition)

We stretched our latest story "Masha and the Bear" over two weeks because the boys came down with a stomach bug that prevented us from doing school for several days.

 

For our baking day (before the stomach bug hit) we baked a chocolate bundt cake.  We chose to bake a cake because in the story Masha hides beneath a cake in her basket in order to return home.  Sammy and Peter love baking chocolate bundt cake because it requires cracking so many eggs!

The next week Sammy had a homeschool class at the zoo.  It was about bats and very well-done.  He had a great time, and we were able to spend some time together just the two of us before his class walking around and looking at the animals.  We don't get a lot of one-on-one time, so that was really nice.  Peter stayed home with Daniel.

Our handwork took place over a few days.  I got the idea of making a bear cave to go along with our bear story from Almost Unschoolers.  On the first day we mixed up some glue and water and then the boys dipped newspaper strips in it and placed them on mixing bowls covered with aluminum foil:

After letting them dry overnight the boys painted them brown and grey.  They were so proud of their caves:

Making the caves gave us an opportunity to talk about Imbolc (which was last week) and how the natural world is readying itself for spring.  On Imbolc itself I read the boys this cute Groundhog Day story.  The groundhog story was supposed to be our main story all by itself for a week, but with their stomach virus I had to readjust our schedule - and I didn't want to leave the story out.  I'll be posting about our annual Imbolc hike tomorrow.  :)

Homespun Waldorf Winter Blog Carnival

Please go check out the winter blog carnival that I'm a part of today!