An Enchanting Day

A chance encounter with Twig, the wandering fairy the moment we stepped inside the gates. Two little princesses listened in awe to her sweet fairy pipes and held out thier hands for a shiny green fairy stone.

Robin flew in the rigging like a first-rate pirate.

A break for lunch - giant roasted turkey legs, broccoli & cheese soup served in a boule, shepherds pie, onion pasty. We picnicked on the grass under the shade of the trees, soft breeze blowing, sounds of pipes and flutes and harp drifting through the air.

Jesse & Lucy relaxing in the dappled light of the warm spring sun.

Jill, with friends Katie and Barry, enjoying the merriment and adding plenty of thier own.

It was a beautiful, warm spring day. The boys left tunics and tabards at home and stayed cool in their billowy linen shirtsleeves, the girls in drifting silk and linen skirts, hair in braids or blowing in the cool breeze. We watched tight-rope walkers, jugglers and acrobats, a phantom playing the clarion bells, blacksmiths and glass blowers and a very convincing hypnotist; shopped for scented bath salts and gypsy scarves, wooden swords and dragon puppets; ate strawberry Italian ice, a huge roasted turkey leg, broccoli and cheese soup served in a bread boule; sipped blood orange Italian soda with cream, and finished the day sitting on the grass under a tree, listening to bagpipes and drums and nibbling on strawberry pastries and cinnamon buns. It was a moment spent back in time in an idealized world of magic and romance, beauty and art. Yes, a very enchanting day indeed!

Summer Days

I know, I have been absent for a long time. But the days have been so full of summer fun that it's been hard to sit down at the computer. Here's a little glimpse of what we have been up to....

...our days have been busy with new pets, birthday celebrations, midsummer festival, some crafting, some acting (Elsa was in two plays! She was adorable as Cinderella's stepmother and the Magic Mirror in Snow White.) and even some sewing inspired by the ripe strawberries growing in the garden.

Hopefully your summer days are just as full and fun. I will try to post a little more frequently, especially with all the exciting activities going on this month!

Grade 3/4, Math Block week 2

Not a lot to talk about this week. We are really working on memorizing those multiplication tables, so it was more skip counting to marching and singing, writing them out, etc...

Robin made this fun tool that makes different patterns for the different numbers. Above is the 3's. He sanded the wood and pounded the nails all on his own. I wrote the numbers.

We are working on 2's, 3's and 4's right now. We discovered that the threes can be sung to Frere Jacques. Memorizing the times tables is tedious work though, no matter what you do. They just have to be memorized. Even when the concepts are understood, it really just comes down to memorization. So, we try to make it as fun as we can!

Grade 3/4, Math Block week 1

Robin is working on a 3 week math block. We started out working on his times tables and did lots of fun activities to continue memorizing them.
These multiplication clocks were very fun to do. I had Robin draw the circles freehand (also covering form drawing for the week!), then he figured out the numbers and I wrote them. We colored them together and hung them on the wall.
We also did tons of skip-counting in circle time, and marching while skip-counting. He made a multiplication table and filled in the blocks for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, and 12.

Grade 3/4, Week Three

Culture: Southwest
Resources: Keepers of the Night
Mythfolklore.net
A Journey Through Waldorf Homeschooling Grade Three

"Creation of the Moon" (Navajo/Dine) Keepers of the Night

Southwest Culture (drawing of Hogan)

"The Boy Who Became a God" (Navajo) mythfolklore.net

The Origin of Summer and Winter"" (Acoma/Laguna) A Journey Through Waldorf Homeschooling Grade Three

Since we live in the Southwest, this culture is very near and dear to us. We were able to find many resources locally through friends and family. Above you see Elsa picking the seeds out of cotton bolls. We picked the cotton at a nearby farm.

Gramie has tons of experience with southwest cooking, so invited the kids over for a cooking day. She helped them roast chilis and make delicious lamb-stuffed chilis.

Stuffing the chilis.

They were a little spicy for the kids, but Robin and Elsa enjoyed eating the lamb filling with cornmeal pancakes. Yum! Thanks Gramie!!

My sister lives in Gallup, NM and has Southwest Indian culture all around her. She sent me the recipe for Navajo fry bead and beans which we made one night for dinner. So simple, but soooo good! She also sent the recipe for really amazing Zuni bread and a lamb stew. The bread and stew turned out so good!! Thanks, Hanne!!

Grade 3/4, Week One

We are doing a split year with Robin this year as he just turned 9 the end of May. We started the year with a 3 week block on Native American Legends. I have divided the legends up by culture so that we can study the various nations that came up with the legends.

To begin, we read a creation story from the book "Keepers of the Night". This was a great intro to the legends and culture. "The Birth of Light" from the Yuchi. It is our only legend from the Southeast cultures.

Our first culture was the Eastern Woodland. We learned about where they lived, thier shelters, clothing, food, games, and a few of the tribes in the culture.

http://www.nativetech.org/scenes/ has some great pages with illustrations.

"Keepers of the Night" has three great legends from the Eastern Woodland cultures.

"How the Bat Came to Be" (Anishinabe)

"The Great LaCrosse Game" (Menominee)

"Oot-Kwah-Tah, the Seven Star Dancers" (Onondaga)

Of course, we had to build a wigwam! Fortunately, we had already grown some sunflowers into a little room so it was no problem to weave them together into a snug little wigwam.

We also did some form drawing based on designs used in the Eastern Woodland culture, and made a little paper canoe.