Homeschooling Archives

Homeschooling :: Playing Teacher

October 27, 2016 | Leave a Comment

I once read that the best way to learn something is to teach it.

As Chilli is getting a little bit older, it’s wonderful to be able to encourage her to take the lead with some gentle Early Childhood activities and lead the lesson for Marlin. She really enjoys to be the ‘teacher’ or the ‘teacher’s helper’ and of course it helps me to be able to leave them together at the lounge room table doing a simple activity together, led by Chilli, while I tend to a home task close by. Often I include this rhythm first thing in the morning if I’m still organising the day either in school or the home.

A good friend also speaks highly of allowing her Grade 6 son to lead the younger aged 4 and 6 children in their family, for some nature studies each week.

I think this is not only really empowering for the older child, but a great balance for the younger child as well and allows a wonderful time of connection between siblings in a different and beneficial dynamic.

Earlier this week, Chilli and Marlin had been out for a morning nature walk and outdoor run. Tending to a few morning farm chores, I then asked Chilli to lead Marlin in looking at some new springtime leaves that were growing on our orchard trees. They collected 2 grape vine leaves each and came inside to settle into an early morning activity while I continued to ready for the day.

I was giving the children some free time of a morning for larger outdoor movement time – running, jumping, hopping, skipping, bike riding and the like. Years ago I remember in a conference call, hearing Beth Sutton of Enki Education talk about how this first thing morning activity of something that gets the heart rate up – primes the brain for learning in morning lesson. I love the idea of this, however it’s been really hard for Marlin to transition from this freer morning time into ‘school’ time. It started to really be quite unkind to him as he’d start every day unhappy, crying and resisting school time for Chilli. I really find I need to ‘hold that space’ quite tightly of a morning and bring the children very mindfully – before they ‘expand out’ for the day – into our rhythm of school.

Therefore I’ve been ‘reining in’ that space with some morning prayer work. After breakfast and getting ready, we tend to a few simple chores amongst ourselves (at which time I have to really mindfully make sure they don’t ‘break off’ in any free play type way!) and then come to our lounge room table to start our day in an informal way. From here I spend some time with Marlin for his nursery school morning circle while Chilli either continues on with her prayer work independently or another small task that I have set her up with. I use this time for things like her writing out times tables, drawing monthly calendar pages or working on bookwork that we need to finalise. We’ve just started our cursive journey, so it will also be a good time for her to practise some of her writing.

Following on from Chilli and Marlin’s early morning Spring walk this week, I had set up the lounge room table with pads, white crayons and green watercolour paint. Chilli led Marlin in some ‘invisible’ leaf rubbings and then some ‘magic’ painting. It’s lovely for Chilli to be able to share these early childhood activities she enjoyed, with her brother. When I ask her to be the ‘teacher’s helper’ she’ll help the ‘younger student’ to either take off or put on shoes/slippers, get his outdoor gear on or off or hung back up, make a small snack for them or help him to lay out his lesson supplies. She really relishes in this sense of purpose and responsibility and takes great enjoyment from saying “Come on Ma, let me help you with that”.

The ‘magic painting’ idea this week was inspired by a member on the Earthschooling forum who was working with the Autumn Earthschooling | pre-school program. These ‘magic leaf paintings’ are an activity to accompany the ‘Anxious Leaf‘ story in Week 4 of the November monthly plan. We’d done this activity in a slightly different way back in April which is our Autumn, but I thought this was a great activity to accompany our budding spring as well.

Do you encourage your older child to take the lead with directing some of your younger children’s lessons through their Early Childhood program?

Food Garden :: Tomato Planting

October 21, 2016 | Leave a Comment

There’s a local lore in Southern Tasmania, that if you want to successfully grow tomatoes in your food garden, you must plant them on the one and only ‘Tomato Planting’ day of the year – otherwise known as ‘Show Day‘. This is the day when the entire greater Hobart region grinds to an absolute halt and nothing other than tomato planting or show going, happens. This whole shenanigans of ‘show day’ was quite the calamity for us ‘just arrived in Tassie’ mainlanders 5 years ago! We were baffled at why we had to live in limbo for a whole day when we first arrived, biding our time at the Hobart airport hotel, waiting until normality resumed on the following day to collect our key from the Real Estate Agent! Yes, show day is a huge thing in Hobart – whether you’re show going or not, because it also dictates the one and only day of the year that you should, if you want any chance of a good tomato harvest, plant your little seedlings into the Earth. A day earlier and you risk Jack Frost pummelling them to the ground, a day later and your harvest will not ripen in time through our short windowed ‘growing season’.

Therefore, like all good ‘lore’ abiding Southerners, yesterday we visited our local seedling growing friend, Lindy of Island Herbs for a good mix of local climate loving tomatoes and also courted some self seeded cherry tomato seedlings from Nanny and Poppy’s greenhouse soils where their boomer cherry tomato plants kept producing right into late Winter, having only just recently given themselves over to returning back into Mother Earth’s cradle.

:: Placing plants around the space in their pots before beginning to plant so as to plan out the area first ::

Marlin and Papa spent a recent weekend converting our simple garden shed into a space with deep filled garden beds made of fallen fence palings on our property. I cannot tell you the number of applications these old abandoned fence palings have been put to good use in. From compost bin bays, to garden borders, orchard net supports, park benches and even a clothing rack to hang and fold clothes on in our bedroom. He’s quite the ingenious man our Papa and we’ve been greatly inspired through the years by some of the creative ideas and notions in Alys Fowler’s book ‘The Thrifty Gardener‘. Alys is one of my favourite food garden authors and my other two favourites of hers are; The Thrifty Forager and Abundance.

We have planted a mix of predominantly heirloom variety fruits with a sprinkling of various chillies and capsicums throughout. A handful of tiny bite size fruits and then the majority being larger ‘beefsteak’ style tomatoes with a few plum/roma shaped tomatoes as well. Our mix includes; cherry tomatoes (I’m unsure of the exact variety of these as they are self seeded), yellow pear, tommy toes, marianna’s peace, amish paste, st. pierre, money maker, apollo, debarao plum, black krim, black russian, hungarian heart and tigeralla. Hopefully the tomatillos will come up again from seed in the garden – I’m sure they’re already doing so underneath the jungle canopy – otherwise we’ll plant a few of those seedlings as well.

Last season we missed out on making one of our favourite condiments for the Winter – green tomato chutney. We normally mix tomatillos and the last of our season’s green tomatoes, but unfortunately last year our tomato crop was less than impressive – bordering on near non existent. I’m guessing we most likely ignored the local lore and thought if we planted a few days either side of Show Day, what could possibly go wrong!

:: I remember reading years ago in a Waldorf article, how the 6 year old child needs heavy duty, meaningful work; raking leaves, wheelbarrowing and carrying fire wood as a few examples. I know that this Grade 3 farming year will deepen this work a little further and I think it will be wonderfully therapeutic for Chilli! ::

Heading into the Grade 3 farming year with Chilli, it’s wonderful to see not only her interest, but also her ability in the farming and cooking tasks around the home, increasing. She’s become quite the little cook, whipping up cakes, muffins, breads and other treats, all on her very capable own. I’m looking forward to journeying into this growing season with her in this more focussed way. Including preserving tasks in her school program, means we should get to a lot more of the recipes we like to include in our Autumn repertoire, but occasionally don’t get to through day to day busyness.

The base of our Grade 3 farming studies next year will be the Seedlings course from Spiral Garden, alongside the Herbal Roots Zine program and also bring in elements from Earthschooling and Christopherus homeschooling programs. Everyday food growing, seasonal preserving, making compost, keeping chickens for eggs and watching springtime sheep shearing are all part and parcel of our daily life. We are deepening our own farming practises over the coming year and also therefore the opportunities Chilli will have for learning more about these activities in her Grade 3 studies. My parents keep sheep and goats for us that we will be raising for meat, we are looking at the possibility of a milk cow homed at a friend’s property, we have begun expanding our chicken keeping to be able to process our own meat chickens and I am hoping we will have the opportunity to attend a farming and cooking workshop throughout 2017 at Fat Pig Farm’s new school and restaurant facility. We’re planning for the year ahead to include building bee hives as well as a wood fired pizza oven. I know that Chilli will also love the Earthschooling Fibre Arts block contained in the handwork program for Grade 3. I’m hoping we will be able to visit a local spinner who also dyes her own wool, as well as a local weaver. I’m envisaging a little bit of a ‘Pelle’s New Suit‘ project for her! The spinner lives behind our first property here in Tasmania and keeps her own alpacas whose wool she spins and dyes. These alpacas were such a beautiful part of Chilli’s early childhood and first experiences here in rural Tasmania, that it will be lovely if we can include these in our fibre block for Grade 3 handwork.

:: Before planting our tomatoes, we headed into the bush areas of our property and collected sticks to fix in the soil and plant in front of. These of course, as our tomato plants thrive through the coming months, will become our stakes for tall growing, strongly supported food plants of beauty and greatness! ::

:: Chilli enjoyed being able to use a handsaw for the first time on her own, in a real world application ::

:: Papa spoke with Chilli about how the water sits on top of the soil and takes a while to filter down to the roots of the plant. They discussed when we water plants, why it’s important to do so with a sweeping motion, giving a light water and returning a few times. Chilli was amazed to dig a little into the soil and realise for all the water she and Marlin had put onto the soil, just below the surface was very dry! ::

:: Our rustic, scrap craft gardening, tomato hot house ::

Welcoming :: 2016

January 14, 2016 | Leave a Comment

We celebrated a lovely quiet Christmas in 2015, sharing our Christmas Eve with dear friends and relaxing on Christmas Day in the heat that gripped our little island home. New Year’s Eve was shared with the same lovely friends, enjoying some botanical infusions I’d made from that long awaited book ‘Wild Cocktails‘ which is a collection of recipes from Lottie Muir and her rooftop bar in London – Midnight Apothecary. It was so much fun to spend the days between Christmas and New Year’s infusing various spirits with produce from our gardens and making all kinds of fruit and herbal syrups in preparation for New Year’s Eve Cocktails and Mocktails.

Our family then enjoyed a few weeks of taking in all the deliciousness of our Southern Summer. I immersed into planning land for a week to put together the first block for our 2016 school year. I am so inspired by the Oak Meadow program for Grade 2. We loved both the Kindergarten and Grade 1 program so I was looking forward to seeing what the Grade 2 program had in store for Chilli this year.

I always like to start our year on Plough Monday. It’s a nice time for Papa to resume his work for the year and symbolically I think it’s a lovely time to return to our school work as well. Summer is still in it’s height here at the moment, but I try to balance some enjoyment of the outdoor delights amongst the resuming of our school year. This year, inspired by a friend on the Facebook Oak Meadow Southern Hemisphere Community Group, I have decided to work a 3 week on – 1 week off rhythm for our schooling. Before I can relax into Advent and the Festive season, I always need to have what I call our ‘skeleton plan’ worked out for the year ahead. I use the Waldorf Essentials Ultimate Planner and with the monthly sheets, I go through and map out our year. Starting with Festivals, birthdays and times I know we will need to take holidays from school – I can then mark out our year with school blocks. I also wanted to finish up at the beginning of Advent this year. Last year we were still schooling through the beginning of Advent and I found it all too much for myself and the children. There were some important culmination and rounding out lessons for Grade 1 that I felt were important to finish with Chilli and subsequently it meant Advent activities got missed and the time was rather busy.

Starting at this time of year, we are able to work our new 3 on – 1 off rhythm and still finish up at the beginning of Advent. We will have the odd 4 week block in amongst the year but I really think the shorter ‘bursts’ of school will be nourishing for us all. When new Mums ask after a rhythm for early childhood in the home, I often suggest to sit back and just look at the rhythm that you see naturally emerging in the home through your days. After I heard of this idea mid last year, it was interesting, because as I watched the cycle that was in our home in regards to school, I really saw that this 3 on – 1 off was really what was naturally happening, or needing to happen, anyway. To keep myself fresh and inspired in the lessons and at my best to present the material as well as keeping both the children fresh for their school time as well as allowing Marlin and Chilli to have a nice balance of free time, I see that this 3 on – 1 off rhythm is what was ultimately happening if we didn’t try to ‘push through’ on a 10 or 12 week term program – which was exhausting everyone. By the end of these longer stints I really found that we were often just ‘going through the motions’ with little enthusiasm or enjoyment. Everyone was tired and unmotivated and just needed some ‘breathing out’ time. When we would do a few weeks of school and take just a short break, we would return to our work refreshed and inspired again. Even with the benefit and convenience of doing school at home, lessons can be exhausting mentally and physically – time to breath out and let lessons as well as school in general, ‘sleep’ is so important. It also gives a nice balance in the home for Chilli and I as time when I am ‘just Mum’ and time when I am also her teacher. This I have seen over the past year since we have started more formal lessons, is really important to both be mindful of and to keep in balance, so as to keep our relationship healthy.

As is our tradition, we started our year with a Rose Ceremony for the children. This was Marlin’s first Rose Ceremony and he planted a yellow ‘Banksia Rose’ which is a climbing thornless rose that is often planted in Waldorf Kindergarten gardens. Chilli chooses a rose to plant for the year to come during the previous Winter. We purchase her rose for the year ahead as ‘bare root’ during that dormant time and it sits there patiently waiting for the year to come. This idea came from the traditional Waldorf ‘Rose Ceremony’ where the Kindergarten children are ‘handed over’ to their class teacher at the end of their Kindergarten years and presented with a rose.

The year Chilli was 5 years old and had to be officially registered to homeschool in Tasmania, many of her early childhood friends from our hometown were heading off to Steiner schools. I wanted to do something special for Chilli to acknowledge that she was now ‘officially’ homeschooling and the idea of the Rose Ceremony grew from both this traditional Waldorf school ceremony and the starting school ceremony in Shea Darian’s book Living Passages for the Whole Family. The first year when Chilli was 5 years old and still in early childhood years, we just presented her with a rose from the gorgeous rose gardens on the property we lived at, in that time. The year she was 6 and started Kindergarten we were here at our little cottage home, so we created a Children’s Garden area and began the tradition of planting a rose for each school year.

It is so lovely to watch the rose after it is planted. I find it so symbolic of the journey the child takes in the year through that grade. At first it struggles a little while it finds it’s feet and plants down roots. Then as the year goes on, it grows and matures and then in the latter part of the school year as spring rolls around, the little green shoots appear and spring forth ‘jumping up to live again’. And then of course as the school year and that grade concludes – the rose blossoms and sends forth her very first bloom. We collect these petals after the flower has finished her spectacular show and we dry them to be used in very special crafts, teas and herbal preparations. In our ceremony to mark the beginning of each school year, we come together in a space at the top of our orchard. We light each of the children’s life candles, sing a song, talk about where the child has come from and what they have ahead of them, we bless them for the year ahead and they receive a small keepsake gift. Chilli always receives a small turtle trinket as this represents the Native American story we tell of how the world that was dreamt into being by the Creator was placed upon the Turtle’s back. This was Marlin’s first year of receiving a gift as our program this year includes a very gentle ‘nursery school’ rhythm for him; a few verses, songs, stories, finger plays, early childhood movement and gesture games as well as some various activities like baking and painting, sprinkled amongst our week. He received a little owl as we just marvel constantly at how wise he is! After receiving their gifts, the children walk over to a ring of stones that stands in front of the archway into the Children’s Garden and they wait to pass through the threshold into their new class, where they are welcomed by their ‘teachers’. We listen to our story, plant their roses and then head into our school room where there is a welcoming chalkboard for the year and some school supplies that each child will need in their grade for the coming lessons.

We started our Grade 2 year with an opening lesson from ‘The Journey of Analise‘ from Earthschooling. I have long been waiting to bring this story and these lessons to Chilli and I felt that Grade 2 was going to be the perfect time. The Grade 2 Oak Meadow program which still in my opinion draws strong parallels at this stage to a Waldorf program, has a strong theme this year of giving thought to what is happening underneath the surface of what we see on first impression. With the fables and with the art we do with the Grade 2 child, we are encouraged to explore how we ‘see’ certain characters when we close our eyes. Things no longer have to be painted true to real life colourings as an example – when we close our eyes, what colour do we ‘see’ that wolf, lion, mouse or person in the story being. All of this tied in perfectly I felt, with starting to take a little venture into the study of temperaments and what is ‘under the surface’ of people. I think these lessons will be really therapeutic for both Chilli and myself and I could tell Chilli was at a nice age and stage to start to explore the topic of temperaments, in this wonderfully age appropriate way through the story Kristie has written of Analise. Our welcoming chalkboard for the year was kindly drawn by Papa and is the opening chalkboard image for The Journey of Analise story. We modified it a little to represent Chilli and Marlin in our own home.

I’d also long been wanting to come up with a name for our homeschool – something that gave us an identity in terms of what we strive to do with our education of the children. Whilst we do use a program for our schooling and we do have ‘lessons’ through our day, so much of what we do is natural learning that happens through the course of our everyday. Having the children by my side, immersed in our daily home rhythm there is so much learning that happens naturally through experience and through the flow of the regular happenings in our day; cooking, cleaning, washing, folding, homemaking, growing food, tending animals, collecting eggs, making compost, preserving the harvest and everything else in the way we live our lives which educates our children with the skills they need for their lives. The program we create for our children draws on several curriculum resources, to provide an enriching ‘lifeschooling’ experience that won’t just merely fill their heads with facts. Instead with the program we create, we hope to place them steadfastly into existence with the most valuable life skills that we can possibly provide them to live the best and most enriching lives they can as they walk their path and live their purpose here in this life. This year we are using a yoga program by Kira Willey and amongst this she mentions Fireflies at some point. When I heard this I thought – “That’s it!” Fireflies and Dragonflies have long fascinated me – not only with their beauty but with their spiritual message they carry as well. The Firefly brings messages of remembering that the light that is within us is what will shine brightest, illuminating us from the inside out. The firefly is symbolic of spreading your wings and flying, holding hope, cultivating patience, living with aspiration, inspiration and illumination, seeking new ideas, being creative, having passion for what you do and living with the heart of a child – holding the magic of believing. Therefore, rather magically and serendipitously – ‘Fireflies Lifeschool’ was born. Chilli and Marlin love being little fireflies through our day and enjoy spreading their wings to fly through our program, being illuminated by our life schooling lessons.

I have been quite amazed at Chilli in the way her Grade 1 lessons seem to have just blossomed in her through our short Summer holiday. Concepts and work that she was still not 100% with at the end of the year, she deeply understands now as we work through some Grade 1 revision, heading into our Grade 2 year. I’ve also been amazed at this seemingly more mature student in front of me in our lessons. Something has really just blossomed inside her and within her own self during our Summer holiday – it is so beautiful to see. As I mentioned, our first lesson for Grade 2 was The Journey of Analise. The following day we then worked on the Waldorf Essentials Grade 1 ‘closing story’ of A New Land. We hadn’t gotten to finishing our Grade 1 year with this story last year, so I wanted to make sure we still used it as I thought the revision it provided was fantastic. I decided then that it would be a nice way to open our Grade 2 year, by gently reviewing some Grade 1 maths concepts. Chilli amazed me in this project and worked wonderfully well with the equations and situations that were presented in the story. This year we are also moving onto Volume 2 of the Living Music from the Heart program and Chilli is really growing beautifully in her music playing from this program. The lessons in this also provide creative elements that allow Marlin to live into the music lessons in his own early childhood way.

Inner Work is something that like so many of us, I have often not prioritised under the notion of just being too busy and not having the time. As I grow a little older and a little wiser, I realise that really Inner Work is something that you never do not have the time for. When we make the time to nurture the nurturer then everything else seems that little bit more effortless, time just magically opens up. I have compiled an Inner Work book to carry me through the year. It contains Kristie’s 2 weekly rhythm focus for each day that comes amongst the Earthschooling material, Steiner’s daily exercises from Melisa Nielson’s planner and the weekly caregiver meditations from the Little Acorn Enrichment Guides. Rising before the children each day and having time to centre myself, practise a little yoga and bring attention to my inner focus for the day, I have found to be so nourishing to myself, our family and our days. The front of my Inner Work book has a beautiful hand lettered piece by Amber Hellewell who illustrates for Waldorf Essentials. The piece is in the Ultimate Planner and it carries my favourite inspiring Steiner quote regarding Inner Work; “You will not be good teachers if you focus only on what you do and not upon who you are!”

Has your 2016 school year started as yet? What grade are you launching into and how do you plan to start the year with purpose and meaning?

Writing :: Crayons

December 11, 2015 | 2 Comments

:: Stockmar stick crayons on the first day of Grade 1 ::

I think the Stockmar stick crayons for Grade 1 writing in Main Lesson Books, can provide challenges that are extremely frustrating for children. In the beginning, new from the store they are quite lovely, but the end quickly rounds and becomes very challenging for letter formation. Have you ever tried to write with a rounded top stick crayon? It is not easy!

:: Stockmar stick crayons in the early days of Grade 1 – about 2 months into the school year. By this stage, you can see the frustrations Chilli was starting to have with trying to form letters using these crayons ::

After the first month or so of Grade 1, I could see that this medium was challenging Chilli and that it was frustrating her with her letter formation. After pondering the issue, I decided that we would finish our alphabet work with the stick crayons and that Chilli could then switch to pencils at the end of our alphabet journey. I believe there is also value in struggling with and mastery over a medium – similar to our beeswax story with modelling the letters. At Chilli’s first frustration with the beeswax modelling medium for her letters, I didn’t instantly race to seek something alternative to use. We persevered and kept working with that medium, but in the end I could see the stress of trying to form the letters out of beeswax was doing more harm than good for her and we switched to a modelling clay. She now continues to use the beeswax in beautiful, soulful, nourishing ways – like modelling forms that come through and to her while I tell a story of an evening around a cup of herbal tea.

:: Stockmar stick crayons by the second term of Grade 1 – Chilli was very frustrated with this medium by this stage ::

Similarly to this above beeswax experience, I could see that to perservere with the stick crayons was doing more harm than good. I had originally, and ideally, thought that Chilli would use stick crayons through Grade 1 for her writing and transition or ‘graduate’ to pencils at the beginning of Grade 2. We tried several different wide mouth sharpeners, trying to form more of a point on the end of the stick crayons – even the Lyra Wachs-Riesen sharpener designed for a similar style stick crayon – but nothing worked. The interesting thing about the Wachs-Riesen is that they are a triangular grip crayon, which I thought for Grade 1 and correct grip formation, this would be perfect. Then a lightbulb moment happened! I had picked up the Micador Early Start Beeswax Triangular Grip crayons for Marlin to draw with one day in the art store. We grabbed out these crayons and tried them in both the Lyra and Micador sharpener and they sharpened to a really lovely point. Unfortunately, Chilli had already started for quite some time to use pencils, but really she has always had very good pencil grip since she was quite young, so I wasn’t overly concerned. However in our ‘garden wall’ we are creating for her end of Grade 1 Language Arts work with consonant blends, we needed to use a crayon to write on these cut outs as a pencil wouldn’t have been readable by the time it was tacked to the wall, higher up where our ‘garden’ is. It was through this process that we realised the value of these Micador crayons and the fact that they can be sharpened to a point for finer letter formation ability. Chilli is over the moon now with this medium – the consonant blend cut outs were really frustrating her again, because she didn’t have that finer point control over the letters she was writing. Many were quite illegible unless she was writing in giant letters!

:: A comparison around the beginning of Term 2 (Grade 1) using the Stockmar stick crayons for the heading words and pencils for the finer writing. You can see the difference in her ability to form letters better and in a more refined way with the pencils ::

Looking ahead to when Marlin starts his letter and writing work I will definitely be buying him a fresh set of the Micador Early Start Triangular Beeswax Grip crayons. They come in a set of 24 beautiful colours which give a lovely spectrum for drawing and writing. The feel of the crayons as they go onto the page is lovely and they have a good balance between that ‘creamy’ feel of the beeswax, yet they don’t wear down quickly as can often be the case with softer crayons. The colour transfer to the paper is lovely as well. As I said, it’s a really beautiful palette of colours provided in this set.

:: Again, another comparison as in the above example – around the same time. Stick crayons for the heading and pencil for the finer writing ::

:: Using pencils for writing now – around the beginning of Term 3 ::

I thought I’d share this experience and alternate beeswax component crayon, which in my opinion has it one up on Stockmar because of the triangular grip shape and also our ability to sharpen the tip to a finer point for writing. We are told that children through the primary grades should use the triangular grip Lyra/Stockmar pencils, so it’s interesting that the Grade 1 writing instrument is round in shape but then they switch back to a triangular grip pencil. My preference would be to stay with triangular grip in these Micador crayons (or the Lyra Wachs-Riesen if you had access to those as well – I assume with the companion sharpener for these crayons that we have, they would perform in the same manner) and then progress to a triangular grip pencil for the remainder primary grades.

:: Term 4 consonant blend work – needing to use something other than pencils on these wall mounted cut outs, we were using the Stockmar stick crayons which was causing great frustration for Chilli, until we thought about trying to sharpen the Micador crayons (pictures below) ::

As always though, different things will work for different people. I still think Stockmar stick crayons are fantastic, and I wouldn’t not have them amongst our homeschooling supplies as there is definite applications where they are the best choice of medium in my opinion. However in our experiences through Chilli’s Grade 1 year, they have definitely not been the leading choice for our daughter’s letter formation and writing work. I think they are great to begin with and I definitely would still use them in those very first letter formation days – but I think the tips very quickly become too rounded without an ability as far as I have managed, to re-sharpen them. We found that to get anything close to a good letter formation with the Stockmar stick crayons after the first month or so of use, the letters had to be quite large. Chilli was wanting to refine and scale down her initial large letter formations and so this provided great frustrations. The Micador crayons, able to be sharpened – provided the opportunity for her to form nice letters in a smaller size, while still using a Grade 1 crayon medium.

:: Work from the same time as the above examples, using the sharpened Micador crayons – Chilli was so happy with her ability to form her letters well in these pieces, after great frustration in the above examples ::

What has been your experience with Stockmar stick crayons and your child using them for writing in Grade 1? I know, the world over, they are used in Waldorf Grade 1 classrooms for writing – but I really struggle to see how it isn’t frustrating for the children in their attempts to form correct shaped letters. Possibly the Waldorf schools do use a sharpener for the crayons that I am unaware of?

:: Term 4 writing, using the Micador beeswax triangular grip crayons, having been sharpened ::

Advent :: Week One

December 10, 2015 | Leave a Comment

Advent, Advent – A candle shines,
Advent, Advent – A candle shines,
First One – Then Two – Then Three – Then Four,
Then the Christ Child is at the door.

The first light of Advent is the light of the stones,
That shines through the crystals, the seashells and the bones.

One little candle lighted in the wreath,
The earth below – begins to glow.

:: Adding our traditional ‘crystal path’ to the stable area. This leads Mary and Joseph into the stable on Christmas Eve ::

It was asked a few times on various forums, what was in our Belle and Boo Advent bags that we have strung up this year. We are also using elements from the Father Christmas pack amongst our festivities. I like to fill our bags with details of our daily activity. Unfortunately this year, we’re still finishing up the final few weeks of our Grade 1 program. I’d hoped we’d be able to finish up at the beginning of Advent to fully immerse in the Festive preparations, but I’ve just scaled back what we’re doing to cap off the final important lessons amongst our Grade 1 year. I find a lot of these final lessons are predominantly revision and review anyway – which I realise are still important, but they can be done in less formal ways and woven into our Advent happenings. Next year hopefully our plan will stay on track and we’ll have the weeks leading up to Christmas free of school to fully immerse in all of Advent’s loveliness.

:: To be honest – living in a Summer climate for Christmas, I normally try to avoid very heavily based Northern Hemisphere, snowy type Christmas images – and these Belle and Boo Advent bags are very Wintery, but I knew my Belle and Boo loving children would just adore them. Possibly I might have to find a way to incorporate them into our Winter Solstice Activities ::

:: The Graphic Designer in me had to make sure the cards matched the bags! ::

Anyway, I thought I’d share the week in review of what was in our Advent bag for each day. The main source of inspiration I use for our Advent plan is The Advent Craft and Activity Book. I don’t follow the daily plan exactly, but I go through and pick out the activities that we’ll do and then weave them into our Advent program.

Saturday (before Advent commences) – Tell the story of ‘Little Parsley’s Star Crown‘

Sunday (Advent begins) – Prepare for our First Advent Sunday and make the Advent Trifle (this dessert is delicious – page 21 of the book I mentioned. It reminds me of my favourite German cake – The Black Forest Cherry Cake).

Monday – Paint watercolour sheets in golden colours which will be our Christmas cards and tags. I told the story of ‘The Solstice Party’ (as it is Summer here) from page 24 of Earthschooling’s Year of Watercolour Stories program.

Tuesday – Stamp the front of the cards with our Christmas stamps and incorporate the Oak Meadow Kindergarten craft of sponge painting. Summer arrives in our home as well with a ‘Summer cave’ surprise and story in the afternoon. We also begin listening to the Sparkle Stories Audio Advent Calendar.

Wednesday – Answer one of the riddles from The Advent Craft and Activity Book before finding out about today’s activity, which is to make Straw Stars. We also made Date Macaroons (recipe in the book) for Christmas gifts.

:: Marlin was my little helper this week – anytime I sat to do a task, he was by my side asking how he could help or saying “Ma pass Mumma this” ::

:: These are clay tile prints, another Oak Meadow craft. The children imprinted a ‘Christmas Star’ onto the clay pendants and we strung them with Festive ribbon as Christmas gifts for friends ::

Thursday – Baking hazelnut cookies for Christmas gifts with the accompanying story (page 49 in the book)

Friday – Make a pentagram star lantern using previously painted watercolour card. We also spoke about Saint Barbara and the story the author gives in the book about her memories of the cherry branch her grandmother always picked on this day. The children picked a cherry branch to bring inside, remembering the message of Saint Barbara.

:: “Ho Ho Ho – Merry Christmas” – Marlin is playing Saint Nicholas with bubbles from the hand wash bowl ::

:: Chilli and Marlin made gifts to leave out for Saint Nicholas ::

:: The Father Christmas pack from Belle and Boo has these wonderful carrot wraps and signs. The children had a great time walking around the property discussing where Saint Nicholas and his white horse would ‘land’ and then which path they’d take to the house. They laid out the signs directing him to the house and of course, at the front door was this ‘animal parking station’. Our ‘farm kids’ also thought St Nic would need a lead rope to tie his white horse up to! ::

Saturday – Another riddle to answer before finding out about today’s activity. Today is Saint Nicholas Eve so we prepared for that, were supposed to bake Lebkuchen and play the Lebkuchen game from the book. When we finally got around to baking our Lebkuchen, we spoke about the history of Lebkuchen and the differences in the various recipes.

:: Marlin’s current ‘modelling’ stage is to cut the medium into tiny little pieces. I remember this with Chilli when she was the same age and I wondered why she wouldn’t model ‘like she was supposed to’! ::

:: I love that Chilli still lives so much in the magic. On Saint Nicholas morning she said “Lucky Saint Nicholas visits us, Mummy would never buy us these things!” Saint Nicholas’ special gifts this year included modelling bathtime fun from LUSH, Phoenix Raspberry soft drink for their new Frosty mugs, giant – red (organic!!! if you can believe it) candy canes and Saint Nicholas chocolates. Yes, she is quite right – Mummy would never buy her those things! 😉 Luckily Saint Nic also brought his traditional cherries and some pistachios for a dose of good health! ::

Sunday – Celebrating Saint Nicholas Day, baking a star cake and making chocolate clusters for Christmas gifts (recipe from the book).

In reality with still working on a few Grade 1 end of year lessons, some of our baking got missed here and there and we’ve had a big ‘bake day’ this Monday just passed – covering off a few of the missed baking activities from last week so we stay on track with our Christmas gift making.

The things that I love about The Advent Craft and Activity Book is that woven in amongst the recipes and activities there are beautiful stories and verses that I use to accompany activities I feel they pair well with. The stories are Saint legends, fables and experiences from the author’s own childhood. These ‘experience’ stories can easily be told as ‘stories’ to the children – “Once upon a time there was a lady who remembered beautiful things about Christmas’ when she was a little girl. One day she was thinking about the time when…. ” I had seen this book for a few years before I decided to purchase it. Sometimes I do have restraint with my book buying! And when I did, it really inspired and transformed our Advent activities and celebrations. Being of German heritage, I connect very deeply with the activities and remember many of the things the author writes about from my own childhood Christmas’. That’s not to say you have to be German to enjoy nor connect with this book – quite the opposite. The activities, recipes and stories the author shares, the legend and history behind so many classic treats and traditions of the time are really quite wonderful, inspiring and very enriching. I remember the year I did have this book to use in our Advent preparations, I felt there was a deeper ‘richness’ to our Advent period that year, and every year forward since I have used it.

:: Do you remember these Frosty mugs from way back when we were young? I loved my Frosty mug and the children were just as enchanted by this start of Advent and Summer gift as I thought they would be. It is a rather amazing thing. I never cease to be captivated by the Frosty mug! ::

What are some of your favourite or most inspiring Advent resources?

Homeschooling :: Spirals

December 8, 2015 | Leave a Comment

I’ve been very much looking forward to our spiral form drawing which is coming in at the end of our Grade 1 school year. I think the spiral is so therapuetic on so many levels and offers much to both child and parent/teacher, as we explore the form, find it in our world and work with the going inward/reflective – coming out/unfolding energy of the form.

On form drawing day we followed all the common form drawing process’; walking the form forwards and backwards, tracing the form with both fingers (opposite eye closed), drawing the form both inward and outward on the pavement, drawing the form with our toes in the sand, drawing the form in both directions with both hands and finding/talking about where we see this form in nature. We spoke about how we felt creating the form with each hand and how we felt in drawing each direction – inward and outward. We also used the Earthschooling spiral form drawing story written by Kristie Karima Burns – ‘Daedalus and the Spiral’. This was lovely to tie back into the story of ‘Daedalus and Icarus’ that we’d used (from the same program) for some of our looped running forms.

Spirals are a form that translate well to any season I feel. In Winter we’re tending to be walking ‘into’ the spiral (hence why Spiral Walks are so powerful as part of our Winter Solstice activities) and in Summer we’re unfolding and coming ‘out of’ the spiral. It’s like that journey of winding into the darkness – reflecting, and then turning to journey back out into the light – unfolding, having transformed from our time held in the cocoon of the spiral. The spiral centre holds this amazing energy for us to ‘unload’ anything that no longer serves us – the ‘darkness’ within ourselves, so we can emerge out cleansed, lighter and transformed. As we emerge, having grown into something anew, we spread our wings and fly off on the Summer breezes.

In prelude to this form, we’ve been hearing a tale about snails in our daily nursery program story (from the Waldorf Essentials Pentatonic series), singing Springtime songs about snails, baking cheesy snails, walking in and out of the curly house of snail, as well as looking at the curly patterns on shells, upon visits to the seaside.

Following our formal part of this lesson, we then went into our pine forest area and began to plan out and create a ‘meditation spiral’ area. I’d read many years ago an article and project idea of this nature from the Tan Family in a Little Acorn Learning Enrichment Guide. It planted the seed in creating a space like this for reflection and meditation and I thought the study of spirals in Grade 1 was the perfect time to create this, bringing a more ‘integrated’ experience into the form exploration and lesson. The area we are creating this in is where we build our Winter Solstice spiral and I thought a more permanent spiral for meditation and reflection through the year would be nice. We can then ‘enliven’ the path at Winter Solstice with our traditional wattle sprigs. The area is so meditative in itself. It is a cleared area in the middle of a beautiful pine forest at the top of our property. There is this nice energy of being ‘held’ in the space when you are there.

We started to rake the area, clearing fallen pine needles and rake a little ‘reflection area’ space under one of the pines that the spiral naturally leads from/into. This task was fantastic will cultivating work for our Grade 1 daughter! Our nursery aged son will cart logs, haul stones and collect pine cones all day – but the Grade 1 daughter needs some help with the motivation to continue on with a task at times! Such is the wonderful ages and stages our children move through! I remember when she was 3 years old and similar to her brother would happily; weed, rake and cart firewood all day, thoroughly content! Sorting the stones, pinecones and wood pieces we’d collected into piles as well as a rough division between larger and smaller pieces, was also a great way for her to revise Kindergarten and Grade 1 ‘categorising’ work.

We collected some stones to create a nice pathway into the reflection space and decided pinecones, which we have an abundance of on the property – would make a nice path for the spiral itself. We brought a little log over that seemed to have a nice natural ‘seat’ shape and also brought into the reflection space our Christmas log from a few years ago that we’d planted some trees in at the time for our Festival table. The challenge would just be to find something to plant in it, which the pademelons won’t eat. Apparently violets are good for that and we picked up a few pots on the weekend. So far – so good!

Of course, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was our meditation spiral! We’ve been heading into the space most days for our nature walk time and adding a wheelbarrow load of pinecones per day to our spiral path. In the meantime though, we’ve started to use the space and it was the perfect area for Chilli to sit and do her ‘Sound Mapping‘ activity the other day.

It’s lovely to be able to create these little nooks of serenity at our own home. I always say that I feel so blessed that my ‘happy place’ is in our very own backyard! A few years ago we created a ‘children’s garden’ area where Chilli plants a rose each year as she starts a new grade. Over the years the space has grown around these roses to also become a medicinal garden, as Chilli is very passionate about herbal studies and natural medicine. She enjoys to grow the plants, harvest and make preparations from them. Graham has also built a lovely wooden ‘park bench’ in the space for us and it is a beautiful area to sit, reflect, meditate and ponder. It really is my ‘happy place’ – right in my very own garden! It’s also lovely to reflect back and think about how just 2 years ago, this space was nothing but a dusty little slope with an overgrown tin tub in the corner. I’m excited now to see what this meditation spiral area will grow and blossom into over the years ahead.

Do you have a space of reflection and meditation at your place?

Festivals :: The Scent of Advent

November 30, 2015 | Leave a Comment

In the centre of our school table is a candle for the children as a tool for focus during lessons. I have a ‘teacher’s candle’ which helps me to bring my focus and mindfulness to our lessons. Of course candles, naturally in themselves, bring such a lovely energy to a space and I’ve written before about making our own beeswax candles and why we like to burn beeswax candles in the home through the year. Sitting around the children’s candle is our guiding crystal of the month. We bring mindfulness to the crystal properties and the Archangel associated with that crystal. The third element in our school table centre candle trio is an oil burner. Again, in that post I linked to above, I talk about why we have oils burning in the home daily. In the school room I particularly like to have oils (sometimes the children have a pre-made blend they have put together in an aromatherapy lesson) that help with concentration, focus and centring. I do have to say that these elements, in my opinion, help wonderfully within the school space as I generally find the children calm, centred and focussed in their time within this space.

As November is drawing to a close and December’s crystal will be emerging through tonight to greet the children in the morning, we had a little impromptu lesson as we came to our school table this morning. I find Earthschooling’s ‘Kid’s Can Heal’ program wonderful. The lessons and basis for/philosophy behind the lessons are easy to weave into every day life, without them actually feeling like ‘lessons’. I often find these little ‘impromptu’ lessons arise in opportunity through the day when I least expect it. Having the material ‘within’ me, it’s easy to draw on the foundation of those lessons offered in the program, to bring these natural therapy modalities to the children at many moment through daily life. It is an area of passion for our daughter as well as an area of interest for our whole family.

Firstly today, we recalled the properties of the Emerald crystal and then spent a moment thanking the crystal, the associated Archangel and the full moon of the month. Before putting our daily oils into the burner, we spoke about ‘The Scents of Advent’. I asked Chilli what Festival season we’d just moved into and asked her what ‘smells’ she identifies with the season. I was surprised at her answers, and it gave me the opportunity to add a few more oils to my intended ‘Advent mix’! Here are Chilli’s answers and what we discussed…

• Peppermint – because I love the candy canes that the angels bring!

• Pine – just like the tree we bring in to decorate…

• Rose – Chilli said rose, surprisingly which was one of the oils I had chosen out (and she can’t read the bottle label, it’s in a really hard to read script!). Chilli didn’t know why she thought of rose, she said possibly because the roses are starting to bloom in the garden at this time of year – which I thought was a really lovely symbolism to tie into the Summer season happening around us here in Australia during Advent. I had chosen rose oil because we have a Jungebad oil of Rose-Gold that we have used on Chilli through her early childhood. It is beautifully calming and relaxing – great for after bath time when children are getting into their pj’s, particularly after busy or highly spirited days! For this reason, rose and gold seem intertwined to me, so I chose rose to symbolise the gold of the Three Wise Men. Then Chilli and I spoke about the symbol of the roses blooming in our gardens at this time and we spoke about how the season of Advent is like a budding, unfolding rose that blossoms on Christmas Day. We also spoke about how Thumberlina was found in the middle of a rosebud just like a baby is born at Christmas as the rose of Advent unfolds. It was a nice visual, the rose bud unfolding slowly over Advent to reveal the Baby Jesus in the middle of the rose bloom. Quite Grade 1, fairytale realm, appropriate – and it tied the Advent Festival season in nicely to our Nature season of Summer here. We also spoke about how rose-quartz is a crystal of love and the heart and it is one of the main crystals Chilli and Marlin use to create the ring around the stable during this mineral week of Advent.

• Myrrh – Having spoken about the gifts of the Three Wise Men, we also brought in the oil of Myrrh.

We passed the oils around, waving them back and forth under our nose and spoke about the scents. Are they light, heavy – more of the Earth or Air element. We then also spoke, after we’d smelt them all, about which was the softest and strongest. We lined them up according to this characteristic and then spoke about which oil we’d put more drops of into the burner, and which we’d put less of in. Chilli then suggested the number of drops in a wonderful descending order! Great Grade 1 maths revision! 😉 We added; Rose – 6 drops (this is 10% PEO in a carrier), Myrrh – 4 drops, Pine – 4 drops and then Peppermint – 2 drops.

Over the coming weeks as we add these daily, we’ll talk about the characteristics of each individual oil by smelling that oil on it’s own, discuss the properties of the scent – how we feel when we smell it and then the therapeutic properties of that oil. I think we’ll focus on 1 per week, starting with rose in week 1. We might even tie in some of our Herbal Roots Zine work for that plant during our time in our nature walks.

For the program on our monthly guiding crystal and full moon we use the Little Acorn Learning Enrichment guides. I also find the ‘caregiver meditations’ in these guides are wonderful. I researched the information online about which Archangel is associated with each crystal so that we could weave that into our monthly studies as well.

What does Advent smell like to you?

Language Arts :: First Readers

October 13, 2015 | 2 Comments

The final trimester of Grade 1 Oak Meadow (2014 publication) suggests for the child to create their own first readers. The introductory information in this trimester talks about how the child will always be able to pick their own (as an example) written K out of a long line of hand written K’s that seemingly all look the same. The child has a connection with their own writing and can more easily read their own writing. Hence, the program suggests the child creating their own first readers by summarising stories read or told to them.

I thought deeply about exactly how we would approach this activity. There is no specific guidelines given in the OM program for this activity, just the suggestion of creating these self made books. I think it is a fantastic idea and really see the merit in them as well as the information as to the why behind them. When we worked with a traditional Waldorf block rotation program, I had always planned to finish Chilli’s first grade year with a block on fairytales. Obviously the first grade Waldorf year brings many fairytales into lessons throughout the entire grade 1 program, but I wanted to also just round off that year with some more of the tales that we didn’t get to, as a kind of ‘closing out’ on that year so enriched with the fairy tales. I hadn’t thought about the how and what we would do with this block, so this self made first reader activity seemed the perfect vehicle to do this fairytale final grade 1 ‘block’ through.

I got to thinking about what fairytales we would cover. I asked friends who are seasoned Waldorf parents and teachers and had a variety of responses come back. Some recommended fairytales they thought of as ‘must-studies’ for Grade 1 and others recommended more a collection of tales. I considered Russian fairytales as we have some beautiful vintage booklets of those tales that we picked up many years ago that I have amongst our school resources to be used in our schooling. Then as I discussed it with people further, I realised Russian fairytales are nice covered in Grade 2. I did look quite seriously as well at Scottish fairytales and thought about weaving in Scottish folk medicine studies which interest Chilli greatly into the block – but again, I felt this better done more thoroughly in Grade 2.

And then I saw Chilli immersed in one of her favourite books asking for another ‘Fairy’ to be read to her and it all just became obvious. The book ‘The Fairy Bible‘ is one of Chilli’s favourite books and she’s also started asking to have read to her the book about Reverend Robert Kirk’s Fairyland experiences. The Fairy Bible has a wealth of fairy information in the beginning of the book and then has stories following on many fairies, separated out into elemental sections. So then it just seemed obvious what we would use for our stories to create first readers from!

We will start week 1 of our term with a general introduction to the world of fairies. Chilli has then chosen from each realm in the book, a fairy to study each week following. Each of the fairies has a folk legend accompanying their description, with also a little paragraph about the meaning of the story which is handy for me when I am discussing the story with Chilli. We will work on our first readers each morning in our lessons and Chilli will draw a picture on the left hand side page of her main lesson book and then write a short, simple sentence that she creates about that picture on the right hand side page. I will tell the story each Sunday night before she goes to bed and then on the Monday morning we will recall/discuss the story. Chilli will then recall 5 main parts of the story and we will each morning draw a picture of that part and write a simple sentence, summarising that part of the story – over the week, creating a mini storybook of that folk legend.

I thought I’d share the introductory program I have put together from this reference book to use in this block of grade 1 study. Of course, you would need The Fairy Bible book to accompany the plan if you think it would be something your children may be interested in also doing in their final project of Oak Meadow Grade 1 Language Arts. What follows below is just a rough outline of my plan referencing what we will discuss each day and the page in the book where detailed information on this topic is.

::Saturday evening::

Watch ‘Fairy Tale – A true story‘

::Create a main lesson book titled ‘The World of Fairies’ for this introductory week that we work in each day however we feel inspired to::

::Monday::

Introductory information on cities of the fairies etc, (page 11) – discussing the fairies.
“What are the fairies and how/where do they exist?”(page 8-11)
Encounters with fairies – ask Chilli about encounters she may have had. Talk about Cottingley, Rev. Robert Kirk, Findhorn. page 13 :: Read ‘The Secret Lives of Elves and Fairies’ each evening together.
Where do you see fairies? Discuss; connection to nature (page 20), Honoring the Holy in Nature and tie back to study with Martin as well as discussing Machaelle Small Wright – Perelandra and her book ‘Behaving as if the God in all Life Mattered‘ (page 22) :: work with bead making kit to make beads to leave out as offerings as we ‘connect’ through the coming weeks.
Discuss the quote on page 16 regarding woodsmen and farmers.
Talk about ‘connecting’ with v’s ‘hunting’ for fairies. Where do you feel connected with the fairies the most? Go walking to connect.

::Tuesday::

Discuss the ‘in between’ concept; locations, times, in the yearly rhythm (page 24-26) and The Fairy Festivals (page 62)
Choose a notebook from our home collection to use as a ‘Fairy Journal’.
Talk about meditating to connect and the essence of just ‘being’ – do meditation for connection (page 26/27 and 31)
Discuss protection from bad fairies.

::Wednesday::

Discuss attracting the fairies, ask Chilli what she thinks attracts fairies (page 29-30)
Do the relaxation meditation on page 35 and talk about the meditation mind space – letting go of the ‘control’ over our minds and just ‘being’ – closest connection to the realms of the spiritual/fairies etc.
Make our fairy altar and add to this space each week from the various element as recommended in the related section (page 36)

::Thursday/Friday::

Discuss the realms of the fairies and the four elements. Talk about the cities and draw a picture from what we discuss. Write down the names and the associated elements/directions (page 46)
Talk about the various aspects of fairy life; food, clothing, music, language, trees, flowers/plants, animals, time, possessions, travel, transport, gifts, protocol (page 53-98)

In the weeks following, we will study the story related to the fairy Chilli has chosen from each of the sections and create our first readers from these stories. What stories did you use with your child in creating these self made first readers at the end of Oak Meadow grade 1 Language Arts?

Food :: Teaching Children

July 31, 2015 | Leave a Comment

I once read something that made me chuckle on a community forum where people looking to relocate to Germany could ask natives questions about living in the country. The topic of homeschooling had come up and in a country where this practice is still illegal to this day, one forum member had shared his or her view that the only reason people would want to homeschool their children was to brain wash them with their own religious beliefs! I had to laugh at the irony of that, considering – to the best of my knowledge, it was Hitler’s doing in the Third Reich that further tightened the schooling laws in Germany by adding criminal penalties to ensure all children attended an approved education institution where he could indoctrinate his Hitler Youth!

As we enjoyed the associated activities I planned for our recent Healthy Living Lesson, I was again quietly amused when this comment sprang to mind. Food really is a ‘religion’ as such in our family and as I tailored this lesson to create fun and informative activities for Chilli that are inline with our food beliefs I thought – “well, I guess I really am brain washing her with my own religious beliefs!” 😉

The Oak Meadow homeschooling program has a wonderful Health curriculum called ‘Healthy Living from the Start :: A Health Curriculum for Grades K-3’. I honestly cannot speak highly enough of this program. I have read mixed reviews on various forums about Oak Meadow’s former Health Program ‘Growing, Growing, Strong’, but I have heard so many glowing reports of people’s experiences in their homeschooling with this new program, and we are really enjoying the lessons it brings. Just like Oak Meadow’s Grade curriculums, the program has 36 lessons to progress through in the school year. In the Healthy Living program, each lesson has 4 levels; Kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 2 and then Grade 3. Each level explores that topic in a little more detail and depth than the previous year. There is much to love about this Healthy Living program, but one of the things as a parent that I love about it, is the comfort in knowing that the program has been developed in a very mindful way that honours age appropriate discussions and lessons on certain topics. As a parent – homeschooling or not – it can be difficult to know at what age to discuss certain topics with children regarding; health, life and safety. And then there’s the consideration of how much detail is appropriate around particular topics at certain ages – it’s a fine line to find that balance between; raising informed and aware children – and ensuring that we aren’t counterproductive in these teachings with our children and scare, cause unnecessary concern or anxiety within them. Oak Meadow is very generous in providing with their preview of this program, a full index so parents and educators can see the topics and various depths these themes are explored in through the years. There is also a sample lesson in the preview so one can view the way these ‘levels’ are presented through the years on various topics.

We are currently working on Lesson 14 regarding ‘Food Choices’. It’s perfect timing as we’ve recently had a little ‘getting back on track’ with our eating values and goals as well as adjusting slightly some of the things we do eat. The Bulletproof Diet and That Sugar Film have been quite influential to us of late. Chilli has also recently been very interested in helping out more and more in the kitchen as well as being very interested in helping in a bigger capacity with grocery shopping and meal planning. Recently we bought her The Nourishing Traditions for Children Cookbook. While not all of the recipes in here are ‘Bulletproof’ – they’re still very similar to a lot of these eating values.

The Kindergarten level of the Food Choices meal presents the activity of ‘mix and match meal cards’. I loved this idea and decided to take it one step further in exploring a little deeper our food values and the balance of what creates an optimal meal.

I used the concept of a rainbow. We took 6 pieces of coloured construction paper; red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Chilli and I spoke about what red was on the rainbow. It is the top colour and the largest arc – therefore the foods that were on the red cards should comprise the largest amount of our meals. We worked down through the rainbow, discussing each colour and associating it with a food category. The category and colour partners we came up with are;

Red – Vegetables (NOTE – this just says ‘vegetables’ not fruits and vegetables!)
Orange – Proteins
Yellow – Starches
Green – Oils and Fats
Blue – Fruits and Sugars
Purple – Spices and Flavourings

Just as a small note here, ‘starches’ are not a ‘big’ part as such of the Bulletproof Diet, they are something you eat minimally and with mindfulness, however when looking at ‘The Rainbow’ in a ‘quantity’ way on our meal plate, you’d most likely have a bigger ‘quantity’ as such of say rice than you would butter or coconut oil or whatever healthy fats are in the meal. This concept was to give Chilli a really powerful ‘visual’ as such for the ‘balance’ of a meal when she looks at the final dished up plate.

I pasted our construction paper to some card we had and we cut the 20x20cm square into 8 20x5cm cards. On the reverse side where the plain card was showing, Chilli wrote the food category in the related coloured pencil. Then on the colour paper side, she used a gold pencil to write some foods that are in this category. I was impressed with her knowledge of foods we eat from each of these categories, but we did need to still work through quite a few ingredients together with me giving her clues and discussing certain meals etc. I tried to empower her as much as possible to think for herself of the ingredient rather than just telling her the food item. We covered each little card with contact, leaving a border pressed together around the edges – this makes them ‘kitchen friendly’. I then quickly sewed together a little pouch, using up a bunch of ‘patchwork squares’ she’d set about entertaining herself with cutting out through the holidays! The pouch has pockets for each set of cards and a little flap that folds down to encase the cards before folding the wrap up and tying. These cards live close by her NT book and she can use them to create meals, or check the ‘balance’ of meals she is thinking of.

The foods we listed on each colour card are as follows;

Red; Greens, Zucchini, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Cucumber, Celery, Artichokes.
Orange; Grass-fed Beef, Grass-fed Lamb, Grass-fed Pork, Grass-fed Chicken, Wild-caught Fish/Salmon, Pasture-raised Eggs, Collagen/Whey/Gelatin, Avocado (which normally would be in fruits, but Bulletproof uses avocados extensively and we use them as a protein food)
Yellow; Pumpkin, Carrots/Parsnips, Beetroot, Sweet Potato, Onion, Rice, Banana, Tapioca/Arrowroot.
Green; Grass-fed Butter, Olive oil, Coconut oil, Cacao butter, MCT oil, Nuts/Seeds/Nut Butter, Egg yolks, Lard/Suet/Grease.
Blue; Raw honey, Stevia, Xylitol, Berries, Citrus, Apples, Olives, Coconut/Maple Sugar/Syrup (not Bulletproof, but something we use minimally on occasion)
Purple; Apple cider vinegar, Mustard, Ginger/Turmeric, Earthy spices, Fresh/Dried Herbs, Coffee/Cacao, Vanilla, Himalayan Salt.

In the coming week, I’ll be encouraging Chilli to put together many of our meals using her cards and recipe book. She’ll also be keeping a food log through the week so she can reflect back at the end of the week to see how the ‘rainbow’ spanned through her overall week’s food consumption.

While the ‘Food Group Faces’ suggestions in the Food Choices lesson (#14) weren’t appropriate for our food values, we’d recently made ‘egg faces’ one morning for breakfast and the children really enjoyed those. For lunch on lesson day, I prepared a plate of garnishes and made ‘devilled eggs’ using a mix of the Bulletproof mayonnaise and honey mustard sauce to blend into the cooked egg yolks before spooning the mix back into the cooked egg white ‘bowls’. Here’s some of the creations our family came up with and then checked against the ‘rainbow food balancing’ idea.

Over the years we’ve journeyed through many different eating values and ideas, but they have always focussed around whole, organic foods. I like the Bulletproof Diet, because I think it is a really lovely blend of Paleo and Nourishing Traditions and has the mindfulness of the foods impact/reaction within the body, akin to ER4YT.

How would you ‘phrase’ your family’s eating philosophy and what fun activities are you doing in your homeschooling to educate your children with good food values?

Whole to Parts :: Learning Maths

July 23, 2015 | Leave a Comment

I’m not going to pretend at all like I understand even an iota of the depth to the ‘Whole to Parts’ theory with Waldorf Education. I know it permeates so much of how they teach and it’s one of the things that I love about Waldorf Education – the ‘wholeness’ to the way lessons and topics are approached.

My basic understanding is that it focus’ on that concept of ‘wholeness’ that the children come here with. In a sample of her Maths curriculum, Melisa Nielson (Waldorf Essentials) talks about how until around age 7, the child sees (as an example) the family as a ‘whole’ unit – not Mum and Dad as separate, but the family as a ‘whole’. I think it’s also about educating the ‘whole child’ and representing our ‘wholeness’ as such. When I was reading some information online, I found a few small sections in various articles about the topic. A piece by Enki spoke about the spiritual wholeness and rather than representing lots of collected bits – focussing on the wholeness of the topic/subject before breaking the experience down into parts. Another article by Waldorf Resources spoke about the wholeness in a spiritual way, with the physical and etheric body companionship. It really is a topic I would like to research more and understand, well – more ‘wholly’ I guess!

One of the most common places people are familiar with the ‘whole to parts’ concept in Waldorf Education is in the way maths is taught. It is my understanding that it is at the core of much of the way many lessons are taught through the years. At the moment our Social Studies block with Oak Meadow Grade 1 is starting to explore the world. I love how Waldorf education starts ‘where the child is’ for this – in their very own room and home before branching out into the child’s neighbourhood, suburb, town, city, state etc, etc. It is such a beautiful reflection of the way the child comes here – and slowly as they incarnate, they ‘reach out into the world’.

Getting back to ‘whole to parts’ in regards to teaching math, I thought I’d share a little about how this journey started for us today. I remember always being a little confused by the ‘whole to parts’ way Waldorf taught maths. I had a basic understanding of it and probably could have brought it to Chilli ‘well enough’ but it hadn’t really ‘clicked’ inside of me as such. Late last year as I prepared for Grade 1, I was watching some of Eugene Schwartz’s videos and his Grade 1 arithmetic video does a fantastic job of explaining the whole to parts way that Waldorf approaches maths. He gives very clear examples of the children’s work and around the 9 minute mark onward, he focus’ on the concept of whole to parts in a way that just made the lightbulb go on for me. Now as I said, I definitely don’t claim to understand ‘whole to parts’ in a deeper, all around type way, but in regards to the Grade 1 maths, it really just ‘clicked’ when I watched this video. I do honestly believe that the lessons we bring to our children are really so much more ‘alive’ when the lessons themselves, the stories and the concepts really ‘live’ within our own being first. I was deeply appreciative for this video Eugene shares and there was so many wonderful little pointers about the way math is brought to the child in Waldorf Education that I picked up from this enriching video.

When we ‘met’ all of our maths gnomes earlier in the year, I briefly introduced Great King Equals. He has always been there with all the maths gnomes, however our main math work to date has been with understanding the character of each of the four ‘process’ gnomes. Using the Oak Meadow story in Grade 1, Trimester 2 – we heard a little more about Great King Equals and why he has the special sign on his crown that he does. I told this story to the children as they sat quietly and had their morning snack. Chilli was captivated – it was so beautiful to see. I often find that a way to draw her more deeply into the story is to stop and ask her a question or ask her to recall something form a previous story that ties into this story. This seems to really allow her to live very deeply into the stories as I tell them, and I can see she is busy creating rich and beautiful inner pictures while she listens to the words. For this reason, I have also used very minimal props or puppets in our storytelling for her Grade 1 lessons since we have started with the grades. In the early years, I believe the story puppets and props provide a beautiful tool for the child to live into a story. As the child reaches grade level, I really feel it is important for them to not always be presented with the images, but for them to be allowed the opportunity for their own inner pictures to germinate and blossom within them.

Once I finished telling this story, I stood up and showed Chilli very simply with my hands how Great King Equals always has the same number in each hand. When we were studying our numbers at the beginning of the year, we heard a story suggested in our Earthschooling curriculum – “Two Ways to Count to Ten“. This was a beautiful story that Chilli had really enjoyed. I recalled this story with Chilli and we spoke about how just like there is more than one way to count to ten, there is also more than one way that Great King Equals could have ten in his hand. This seemed to really ‘click’ with Chilli and we moved straight into our lesson of the day.

Graham had made for us a fulcrum. I had looked at various ones as well as scales online, but we decided it was just something simple that we needed to demonstrate this ‘equals’ concept. I had hoped that the fulcrum would balance with smaller weights, but we need to work with it a bit more to make that happen – possibly a counter balance? This simple device though worked well for the lesson and concept we needed it to in working with the lesson of ‘equals’. We could tilt the arm down when one ‘hand’ had a certain number in it and then balance the ‘arms’ back out again once the correct number was added to the other ‘hand’. We worked with Great King Equals and the math gnome Plus on this day as well as our collection of gumnuts that we have been using as our manipulatives in maths lessons so far. Chilli interchanges the ‘name’ she gives these gumnuts on certain days to suit the story we have heard. Some days they are nuts the gnomes are helping to collect for the animals through the winter, other days they are gems collected for the King and some days they are cookies that are being shared amongst all the gnomes or marshmallows going into hot chocolates! Today they were rainbow coloured gems that Great King Equals was holding in each hand.

For our first lesson, Chilli drew a picture of Great King Equals with his hands outstretched. I had set the example out with a balancing of the number 7. We then worked out the various other ways we could ‘balance’ 7, with our manipulatives. Great King Equals was standing in the middle of the scale. On one hand he had 7 gems and then in the other hand we needed to make sure he also had 7 gems. I’d set the example with 4 gems on one side, Plus placed after the 4 gems and then 3 more gems (or gumnuts!) following to ‘balance’ the 7 in the other hand. We drew this as our main picture and then Chilli had fun moving Plus up and down the line of 7 gumnuts in Great King Equals’ second hand – exploring one aspect of all the ‘parts’ that could make up 7. We made a little table on the facing page and Chilli delighted in writing and illustrating her findings. It was such a wonderful way to visually have the ‘horizontal format sum’ laid out right in front of her using the gumnuts, Great King Equals followed by a few more gumnuts, the maths gnome Plus and then the remainder gumnuts to make up 7. It was great for Chilli to also see the pattern that emerged in the numbers once she had gone past that ‘mid point’ of the second set of 7.

In the afternoon, I told Chilli the story of the temperament friends from Earthschooling’s Sixth Sense math program. I changed the friends from children’s names to be the maths gnomes. Each gnome represents one of the temperaments anyway, so it was a nice way to explore in more detail the character of each gnome. I adjusted the start of the story to tell the tale of what the maths gnomes like to do when Great King Equals gives them the day off. I asked Chilli what she thought they would do and she was wide eyed and intrigued to know just what these hard working gnomes do when they have a free day! The story I told today was the part of the temperaments story that focus’ on the melancholic Plus. After we finished the story, we again went into our lesson room and on the school table, laid out the fulcrum, Great King Equals, Plus and the necessary gumnuts. This time I asked Chilli to choose a number from 10-20 and she chose 18. Again, she delighted in moving Plus back and forth along the line of gumnuts in Great King Equals’ second hand – exploring many different ways that she could also have 18 as well as the patterns that emerged amongst the numbers as she explored them.

As we progress through the other process’ in exploring the ‘whole to parts’ of maths within horizontal format sums over the coming weeks, I plan to continue on through the temperament stories within the Earthschooling Sixth Sense maths as well as weaving in, perhaps when we branch out into the vertical format – the stories which are also from Sixth Sense maths, about The Fairies of each season. Perhaps I’ll use the stories as is, or perhaps I’ll weave the stories into tales about the favourite season of each math gnome that we have come to know so well.

Have you used manipulatives in exploring maths with your children in their homeschool studies? Which manipulatives and creative stories really helped maths to ‘jump up and live’ for your child?

::Please excuse both the terrible quality photos snapped quickly during lesson with my iPhone and the ridiculously messy sewing table in the background, desperately needing a clean up::

Homeschooling :: Vowels

July 20, 2015 | Leave a Comment

There are many different ways to ‘bring the alphabet’ to the child, and even amongst the Waldorf modality – it is done in numerous and varied ways. There is also many differing views on the stories and creative ways behind how the vowels are brought to the child.

Here is how we experienced the vowels in our alphabet journey. We journeyed through the letters in alphabetical order, omitting the vowels. As we progressed through our Alphabet main lesson book (MLB) we would leave the vowel pages blank and as we modelled each letter of the alphabet to stick to our ‘alphabet window’ we would leave the spaces where special ‘Angel Letters’ were to later come. The anticipation within Chilli of these ‘special letters’ was beautiful. As we completed all our consonants – we journeyed through the vowels. I blended many different programs into our ‘experience’ of these letters.

The ‘foundation’ for our vowel journey was taken from the Waldorf Essentials Grade 1 curriculum. The first time I read the way the vowels were brought to the child in this program I just loved it and knew it was perfect for Chilli. I know there is much written by many a Waldorf teacher about why they believe the Angels are not the best way to bring the vowels to children, however for us, this just felt like the perfect and right way to experience the vowels. We are using a ‘container story’ of a family journeying through the year and the Grade 1 lessons. The little girl in our story is called ‘Anna’. Great King Equals met Anna in the Gnomes cave and each of the Math Gnomes had a key for Anna. Great King Equals presented his key first as he explained to Anna what would happen. There were 5 golden keys and a door on the wall of the cave just behind where Great King Equals’ throne sat. Anna couldn’t believe that she had never seen this door before, she’d been working so often in this cave with the math gnomes – but never before had she noticed this door in the wall of the cave.

The Waldorf Essentials program brings together the revision of the Roman Numerals 1-5 in association with the keys and which lock they fit into. In turn each gnome came forward over the duration of our vowel journey and presented Anna with a key which fit one of the locks. The ‘door’ to reading was slowly unlocked.

With the turning of each lock, an Arch Angel appears. Each angel presents to Anna the letter they are the ‘keeper’ of and the sounds associated with that letter – the long and short vowel sounds as well as the name of the letter. As the angel almost ‘sings’ the sounds of each vowel – the angel was doing the Eurythmy gesture for each vowel. We would be standing and also did this gesture as we made the various sounds associated with each letter. We brought attention to how the letter felt as we made the various sounds and where in our body the sound was coming from. We also looked at each others mouths as we made the various sounds, noticing the shape of the mouth and the position of the tongue. We would also try to make the sound with an opposite mouth and tongue position. As an example, if the shape of the mouth is quite a tight contracted gesture, we would try to make the sound with our mouth open wide like another letter. It was a lot of fun and a really nice way to bring mindfulness to how the sounds are formed in the mouth. Each angel has a story for Anna which was the story from each vowel given in the Waldorf Essentials Grade 1 program.

We re-jigged our rhythm a little on these ‘vowel days’. Normally we do our letter verses associated with the letter we are studying in Morning Circle at the beginning of the day. When we were doing the vowels, we left doing these letter verses until after the letter had been presented. The verses we used were a blend of the letter verses from Earth Schooling’s ‘Sixth Sense Language’ program and Oak Meadow’s Kindergarten and Grade 1 letter work. Earth Schooling has some lovely verses that emphasise the various sounds associated with each vowel and Oak Meadow has some great tongue twisters for the letters. Each day we would also do the associated letter activity from Oak Meadow Kindergarten curriculum such as making A’s out of tied bundles of twigs. We also modelled all the vowels out of white medium for our alphabet window.

Our Chalkboard drawing would be ready each day for the letter that was going to be presented. The Chalkboard drawing as a base remained the same and was inspired by a Pinterest picture I had seen. I loved the gesture of giving that the angel was in and the hands ‘presenting’ the letter. I adapted the colourings of the angel each day to correspond with the Arch Angel that was presenting that letter. When Chilli copied the drawing and letter into her book, we wrote a sentence that emphasised the vowel from that angel and ideally both the long and short vowel sounds.

As an overview – here is how we presented the vowels;

At the end of our alphabet journey
Using the Arch Angel stories and concept from Waldorf Essentials Grade 1 program which also ties in the Maths Gnomes and revision of the Roman Numerals 1-5
In association with the Eurythmy Gestures for each vowel
Exploring the sounds of each vowel with Earth Schooling’s Sixth Sense Language verses as well as Oak Meadow’s Kindergarten and Grade 1 verses and tongue twisters
Creative projects from Oak Meadow Kindergarten program
Chalkboard drawings inspired by a Pinterest pin

In my opinion, leaving the vowels until last, presenting them in a reverent way and exploring them in ways that differ slightly to how the consonants were brought – all help to bring that necessary ‘specialness’ to these 5 letters.

After leaving the vowels to ‘sleep’ for a little while now – we have started to spend a little more in-depth time with the various sounds each vowel makes. We have explored these through the ‘long and short vowel sounds’ lessons that are in the Oak Meadow Grade 1 program. I told Chilli a short, simple story along these lines; Because there is always a child somewhere in the world learning their letters (I spoke about friends who had learnt letters before her, then when she was learning her letters and now friends that were still learning their letters and would soon learn the angel letters) … Well, the Arch Angels are so busy going around taking their letters and stories to all these children, that they need to have helpers that look after the sounds of the letters. Sure, the angels when they first present the vowels, give the children the Heavenly sounds that come with the letters, but of course the children need to practice the different ‘long’ and ‘short’ sounds that each angel letter makes, so the angels have helpers…

Long Lance looks after the long vowel sounds and Short Seth (who we thought later probably should have been called Shawn for a better rhyme!) looks after the short vowel sounds. We drew a picture of each helper – everything about Lance was long, his; hair, body, legs, arms, feet, shirt, sleeves, pants even his finger nails (I had a bit of a Struwwelpeter image in my mind!) But Seth, well everything about him was short; he is short, his feet are short, he has short arms, short hair, even his shirt is short! We explored the short a.a.a. and the long a—— a—– sound and then I read some words (a mix up of the suggested long/short ‘A’ sound words in the Oak Meadow curriculum) and Chilli told me whether it was a long or short ‘A’ sound. I made sure to focus in the beginning on really pronouncing the ‘A’ sounds well as long or short to emphasise that aspect for her, but by the end she just knew these sounds so well amongst the words I didn’t have to emphasise much if at all. After that she thought up 5 words that either had the long/short ‘A’ sound at the beginning or within the word. I was really surprised at how well she did with this and her understanding of these sounds. We’re still currently working through each vowel in this way with these lessons from Long Lance and Short Seth.

How have you made these 5 vowel letters ‘special’ in your homeschooling journey?

Homeschooling :: Finger Knitting

July 8, 2015 | Leave a Comment

… Here’s a post from the archives in the days of an old blog I wrote many moons ago – Where Wild Strawberries Grow …

“Was on a rainy afternoon,
As all inside we were,
Rose piped up and said “Today, I’d like to finger knit”
So we knit, knit, knit, knit then we knit some more.
We knit, knit, knit, knit
And Rose could finger knit!”

Rose (A name Chilli insisted she be called for a few years between the ages of 4-6 years old!) has always enjoyed to be by my side whilst I craft, with her own pieces to create and bring together her own unique creations. Recently she has been wanting to knit gifts for people and the other day a friend asked if she could finger knit as yet. I asked if it was appropriate to be teaching Rose this as yet and she said that from this age on it was ok for the children to start to play with finger knitting (Rose was 4.5 years old at the time). This afternoon at midday rest time, Rose asked if I could sit with her and we could do some finger knitting. I drew on my trusty old finger knitting verse inherited from Patricia all those years ago when I learnt to finger knit, and coupled with a bit of inspiration from ‘A Child’s Seasonal Treasury’, we were underway.

I showed Rose first how to do her slip knot, by holding the yarn ‘snake tail’ between Mr Thumbkin and Peter Pointer. She kept using both hands together, so we reached our right hand up to the sky and had ‘twinkle fingers’ away with that hand whilst the left hand was down with the snake tail and Mr Thumbkin and Peter Pointer were holding on tight. Then we brought ‘twinkle fingers’ down to the yarn snake, on his ‘body’ and between Mr Thumbkin and Peter Pointer on our ‘twinkle fingers hand’, we brought our two Mr Thumbkins and Peter Pointers together so they could kiss and then there was ‘surprise’ a little yarn cave above the tail and the body. We held the ‘meeting place’ or ‘bridge’ in our first Mr Thumbkin and Peter Pointer, while our ‘twinkle fingers hand’ went in through the cave and with our little pinchers, took hold of the snake and brought him out of the cave, pulling him up to form the snakes head and then the little slip knot, or the snakes ‘neck’.

Then we used our verse;

Run round the log, (wind yarn around Peter Pointer finger, front to back)
Jump off the tree, (lift the first snake head up and over the new snake head, letting him ‘jump’ off the end of the tree – making sure Mr Thumbkin and Peter Pointer hold tight to the new snake head)
Swing on the vine, (twinkle fingers hand pulls gently on the snakes tail [the yarn tail end]…still making sure the other Mr Thumbkin and Peter Pointer hold tight to the new snake head)
Fly home to me. (Mr Thumbkin and Tall Man High come down to hold the snakes neck [the top knot just created of the finger knitting] while Peter Pointer points nice and straight and Mr Thumbkin and Peter Pointer on twinkle fingers hand gently pull the snakes body down toward the ground)

And such is the way that Rose learnt to finger knit. I was so proud of her as she also was of herself. She has made quite a length of rainbow finger knitting that I am going to combine with my pink/orange tone piece that I did whilst teaching her how to finger knit. We are going to sew the two pieces around into a little mat for Rose’s dressing table to remember always her first finger knitting piece.

I promised Rose that if she was able to finger knit, she could order some wool to keep doing her craft with. Consequently as soon as she realised she could finger knit successfully, she was wondering over which colour yarns she would like to order for herself. She settled on rainbows, mermaids and lollipops in 20 ply (which is the thickness she was using with ease this afternoon) from Indigo Inspirations.

:: An update to this archive posting – we found that the 20 ply was WAY too thick and the 16 ply was more than ample for her to knit with, even at this younger age. Below is the little mat we made for her dressing table which did take me nearly a year to stitch together! (I find the delicate stitching together of the finger knitting quite tedious!) ::

Festivals :: Saint Patrick’s Day

March 18, 2015 | 2 Comments

:: Can you believe I accidentally deleted this photo off our camera? It captures so perfectly the character of both our children. Lucky my IT savvy husband was able to retrieve it from the jaws of IT nothingness ::

In her book ‘Traditions :: Reviving Victorian Family Celebrations of Comfort and Joy’, when speaking about Saint Patrick’s Day, Mrs Sharp reminds us of the Irish Proverb “There is no fireside like your own fireside”. How true that is. As much as our family loves our camping and adventuring holidays we take through the year at various times, it’s also lovely to arrive home to the warmth of our own fireside. After a lovely long weekend spent camping in the gorgeous Mount Field National Park with a few very close friends and relatives – to celebrate Marlin turning 2 – it was also lovely to arrive home and re-settle into our everyday rhythm. You can imagine how topsy-turvy our recent weeks had been as we busied ourselves with party preparations and camping organisation. Of course, every single moment of time spent dreaming, planning, creating and organising is beyond worth it when one sees the children’s joy as they enjoy the Teddy Bears’ Picnic we held to celebrate Marlin’s birthday, it was also nice to ‘get back to rhythm’ yesterday and what better way to ease back into school than with a Festival!

Despite our celebrations of this Irish Saint being a far cry from the days of pub crawls through The Rocks with the boys drinking copious amounts of Guinness – the festivities we enjoy now-a-days are still surrounded by shenanigans that I am sure have the scent of Leprechauns at work! Mrs Sharp tells us that 40 million Americans claim Irish Heritage, but on March 17 – that number increases dramatically! How true that is! I have to say, this Festival has to be amongst one of my favourites, it is such fun to plan and celebrate. I think many people dig deep into their Ancestral roots on March 17 to find any reason to celebrate the calamity of this mischievous day honouring a wonderful Saint. The children delight in the mischief of the Leprechauns and just quietly, I think it’s a day that they subconsciously channel their inner Leprechaun; running amok, laughing heartily, playing pranks, being cheeky and having a jolly old goof of a time. It’s a real ‘let-your-hair-down’ day and I think that’s lovely for not only the children, but ourselves as well.

:: Chilli picked this delightful end of Summer flower bunch from amidst our food gardens and arranged it so perfectly in this very appropriate green vase that she chose from the cupboard on her own ::

We always scour our wardrobe for any items that are green and we pull together, sometimes some of the most uncoordinated – but fun all the same, outfits. Marlin did indeed look like a little Leprechaun yesterday in his green outfit, and to be honest – it’s probably a very fitting character for him – he’s quite the cheeky little one, our very own Leprechaun indeed!

Green food is always a must for the day; For breakfast we juiced new season apples with carrot tops from our food garden – bright green ‘Leprechaun juice’. We foraged in the garden for greens and of course the mix included clover from our food garden paths. Boiled eggs from our ladies were sliced in rounds and arranged to look like shamrocks a-top our fresh Leprechaun salad. Lunch was ‘Green Soup’ – lots of onion and garlic fried around with a few zuc’s from our abundant supply in the food garden at the moment, a splash of stock (but not too much as I like this soup quite thick), salt and pepper, then whizz it up once the zuc is cooked through. As far as quick and easy meals go, this one is top of the list. I love the way the zuc’s take on the onion flavour so beautifully, it’s a little like a French Onion Soup – just green! With dinner we served fresh steamed beans and mustard from our food garden and mixed some of our flourishing chives through the butter. I love that our cooling Autumnal days make the weather so conducive to a real hearty Irish meal. Irish stew was our meal of the night, prepared by Chilli and I earlier in the day and left to slow bake through the afternoon. Normally we make Dublin Coddle which is another of my favourite Irish and Winter meals, but we’d just had that the week past when we were camping (makes an easy camp meal!). Of course no Irish stew is complete without a good Irish Soda Bread to accompany it, this year we made ours in the shape of a Shamrock and used our favourite bread baking book recipe (although I sub in our natural baking powder instead of bicarb soda, the bicarb gives quite a sharp, zesty flavour otherwise. So maybe our Irish Bread isn’t so ‘soda’ after all!)

:: Sometimes it seems like overnight, the children just ‘grow up’ with certain abilities. Chilli has always loved to help me cook and has from a young age been very able with kitchen tasks, but yesterday I marvelled at her attention to, ability with and neatness of peeling/chopping the garlic ::

Irish Music is always played throughout the day and my favourite album is ‘Celtic Woman :: Songs from the Heart’. Amongst the songs in this collection are some of my all time favourites and the women’s voices in this group are phenomenal – goosebump and tear evoking!

:: Yes, that band-aid is from a felting injury! ::

:: Despite her look captured here, Chilli was quite chuffed with her felted clover fashioning it into a ring to wear around for the rest of the day ::

For school on Festival Day, Chilli needle felted a Shamrock using a cookie cutter and then we made a Triquetra design on the front, adding a fleece wrapped pipe cleaner to the back as the stalk. (There’s something I love about the Triquetra form and design – it’s actually on my engagement/wedding ring!) Marlin had lots of fun with potato stamping and then the children both headed outdoors to collect supplies for, and build their Leprechaun Gardens.

With our evening meal we said an Irish Blessing (there is so many beautiful Irish Blessings to choose from) and played a fun ‘Leprechaun’s Family Game‘. I wrote out the activities as well as our blessing onto cards created from one of Marlin’s stamping artworks from the day. Following our meal, we each took a stone the children had painted green and I’d painted little shamrocks onto. We held the stone, made a wish and put our breath onto the stone and wish before placing the little wishing stones into the children’s Leprechaun gardens.

To cap off our evening, we enjoyed fresh apple pie with new season apples, while listening to a great Saint Patrick’s Day story from our favourite storyteller Sparkle Stories. The story we listened to was a Martin and Sylvia story, titled ‘Saint Patricks Day’ which is week 36 (or week 10 on a Southern Hemisphere feed) in the ‘Martin and Sylvia’ subscription series. Marlin is coming to an age where he really enjoys the stories now – he spent most of the story doing this funny little belly laugh that he’s recently started doing, it was quite amusing indeed!

:: Saint Patrick is a simple peg doll, the sheep is made from roving wrapped around a basic pipe cleaner frame, the snake is a roving covered pipe cleaner twisted around to look like a snake and the pig is an Ostheimer one the children had amongst their play things. Saint Patrick’s hood lifts up and down to change him from the young boy in Ireland to the shepherd and then the Bishop. The wooden driftwood stick ties into the side of his cloak with a strand sewn there for that purpose and changes the young Irish boy into the shepherd and then becomes his staff as he becomes Bishop ::

When the children close the curtains over for the evening on their gardens outside, they say a prayer to the Leprechauns and hope for a little bit of gold to be left when the Leprechauns pass through to enjoy the gardens they leave out for them. Sure enough, Leprechaun dust was to be seen this morning all over the gardens, and as usual, they did leave the children a piece of gold. However because those cheeky little, mischief loving Leprechauns can’t ever just do anything straight forward, they always leave the gold in a little pile of honey! Sticky Honey Money! This year, I helped the Leprechauns with a little Saint Patrick’s Day gift I’ve had my eye on making for a few years now. I finally got around to making a ‘Saint Patrick’s Day Story Bag‘. It was quite simple, easy and fun to put together in the low light of a quite home once the children had settled last night. I think it came together quite lovely and would like to explore the idea of using this for the Saints we study in Grade 2 next year. I also think we’ll make a Leprechaun trap next year. I think Grade 2 is a nice age for this activity and Chilli is excited to think about this through the coming year and create some great trap ideas!

There were smiles all around this morning as these parting Leprechaun gifts were discovered. Chilli always delights in the Honey Money, Marlin seemed a little concerned why the money was sticky – but enjoyed immensely the story bag, while Chilli flicked through a simple book with lovely illustrations and short stories about the life and legends surrounding Saint Patrick.

What is your favourite part of Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations?

“May your Troubles be less
And your Blessings be more

And nothing but Happiness
Come through your door”

:: Irish Blessing ::

Autumn :: Apples and Easter

March 1, 2015 | Leave a Comment

Who would think an apple,
Red, gold, green and round,
Would have a secret deep inside,
When cut it can be found!

I thought this secret only shone,
In deep and darkest night,
But when I cut my apple,
It shines with five points bright!

And now you know the secret,
Where shining stars are found,
In every crunchy apple,
Red, gold, green and round.

Apple Secrets :: Betty Jones

Easter in Autumn is such a beautiful celebration. I remember when Chilli was a wee bubba, approaching her very first Easter, I attended an evening talk by our playgroup teacher – such a wise woman who was a wonderful mentor to me in those early years. Much of our home rhythm, traditions and celebrations have grown from her inspiration in those first years. Following on from that evening, I purchased the book ‘Easter in Autumn‘ by Collette Leenman, and now, to be honest – I couldn’t imagine celebrating Easter in any other season. I have no doubt the energy of Spring is so beautiful to the message of Easter, but amongst our own Southern Season, there is such strong archetypal messages and activities that we can bring to share the story of Easter gently with wee ones.

One story and activity that is synonymous of Easter to Chilli is related to a favourite and iconic Autumnal fruit – Apples. As Easter approaches each year, I know that Chilli looks forward to and is always excited when we have the story of the ‘Little Round House’. When she was a young child, it was told every Easter at her playgroup, with a slight variation to the end. I brought the story into our home in the weeks that it would be at playgroup and now it is just entrenched in our Easter traditions. You’ll find many variations of the ‘Little Round House’ story online, but I couldn’t find a link that told the story in the way we do, so I’ve created a downloadable file for you with the story as we tell it.

As part of our ‘immersion’ in this theme, we often go out to watch the night sky. As the moon waxes to the final full moon before Easter, it’s lovely for the children to each night, see ‘just a little more’ of the Easter Hare ‘hopping across the face of the moon’. You might even like to look to the stars while you are out there and ‘look for the new baby stars’ that were born from your apple stars! We’ll definitely be doing that this year. I know the children will have such fun looking for the ‘new stars’ they can see each night.

A lovely activity to accompany this story and time of year is of course apple stamping. We cut the cheeks off the apple for snacks or apple and blackberry pie and then cut the core ‘block’ through the middle and reveal the ‘stars’. The ‘blocks’ then make handy little ‘stamps’ to create beautiful ‘starry night’ scenes.

This beautiful little story and apples are always such a treasured part of our Easter celebrations. Are you celebrating Easter in Autumn? What are your favourite Autumnal Easter celebrations and traditions?

Field Trip :: Foraging

February 21, 2015 | Leave a Comment

At the end of an old, dusty, country road that Chilli often rides along is a beauty of a mulberry tree. Gnarled and heavy with twisted branches that reach down to the grassy meadow below, it’s the kind of tree you only have to stand under for a moment to hear the echo of the many years of laughter that have rung through the ears of this masterpiece of nature. As children have climbed her limbs, reached for her fruits and no doubt shed tears as they fell from her leafy bower trying to reach that plump looking mulberry that was just*over*there, you know you are sharing in the bounty of a harvest and wild foraging legend that spans many, many years.

Our day of foraging started out with mulberries from this little beauty. I must say that mulberries in Tasmania are definitely not as plump, elongated or sweet as the ones I grew up on and stained many a school uniform with, in summer on the mainland. These are more like a mulberry crossed with a blackberry. Even the leaf structure and tree shape is different to mainland mulberries, but mulberries they definitely are.

Following our mulberry picking, we journeyed to one of our favourite local beaches to pick blackberries. We’ve been a bit behind in our blackberrying this season and so we thought we’d better get a start on it, even if only for a small basket full that was nibbled for snacks over the following few days.

As we were leaving our blackberrying, we were delighted to find a whole bank of samphire! We’ve been wanting to try samphire for a while now ever since we saw it on a local blog and then read about it in our wild foods book. We had searched a few times for it, but to no avail. Needless to say we were elated to find such a supply of it and immediately set about harvesting. I think we’ll cook our samphire with lemon and olive oil alongside some smoked fish. Although the way it is done on Hugo & Elsa looks good as well.

Onto another stop and we collected driftwood in tiny, thin lengths so as we can create a fish skeleton on a watercolour painting we recently did. We’ve been reading about the legend of Mousehole in England and immersing in all things seaside, fish and summer at the moment. Chilli and Papa are planning a fishing expedition to catch our dinner one evening when they can figure out where they’d like to put the canoe in. Papa is very particular about these things! Amazingly, Chilli found some fish bones still intact on the beach as we fossicked for driftwood ‘bones’ so she decided to use the bones to match up the sizes of driftwood she’d need.

Our last item on the foraging list for our Field Trip was some ochre rocks. We’ll be doing some Aboriginal style paintings in a few weeks and I thought we’d do a background wash with ochre paint. Chilli and Marlin had fun testing the colours of the rocks on a flat, light coloured boulder where we were gathering and Chilli was interested that the colour of the rock didn’t always reflect so identically in the colour it drew out with.

It was so lovely to visit both these beaches together again. One was right by the house we lived in when Marlin was born and the other by the house we lived in for a short time when Marlin was a baby. In the Winter when we lived by the second beach, I would walk most days with Chilli along the beach, Marlin snuggled up in the sling as he drifted off to sleep and slumbered as we explored that shoreline. Other days I would sit in a camp chair on the sand, rugged up in layers and bundled under the ‘Nanna Blanket’ my Mum had knitted Marlin when he was born. Chilli would spend the hours lost in her own imaginative world playing amongst the treasure filled shoreline of that beautiful beach. I wonder if he’ll always feel a connection to this area where he spent so many of his babyhood days nestled into a cosy nest while the breezes of the bay whispered in his ears and caressed his newborn cheek. I know I’ll always hold this place special in my heart for that very reason, it sounds like such an idyllic way to spend those precious newborn days, and I have to say it honestly was – I always feel extremely blessed for that gorgeous opportunity of immersing so deeply in baby land.

Late Summer is a time that I identify so strongly with foraging. The wild holds so many treasures for us, but particularly at this time of year there seems to be such an abundance. Papa gifted me a book for Christmas by one of my favourite authors – The Thrifty Forager. It’s a very inspiring read indeed. What are your favourite things to forage for?

Field Trip :: Learning the Letter B

February 14, 2015 | Leave a Comment

:: Chilli mused as we wrote B/b on the chalkboard that on it’s side a capital B looked like the wheels of a bicycle! (Apologies for the out of focus, terrible quality photo here) ::

Living on a little island known the world over as ‘The Apple Isle’ and being right close by the heart of the valley producing these world renowned apples, I thought it only fitting that our Alphabet Journey begin in a way that wove in the story of our local area. We are learning our letters in alphabetical order, leaving the vowels to come back to at the end. We are working on the sounds of the vowels amongst our morning circle work, however we will come back to these special ‘Angel Letters’ to learn them together at the end of our alphabet studies. We are also learning the capital and lower case letters or ‘Mumma’ and ‘Baby’ letters alongside each other. I saw this recommended in the Waldorf Essentials curriculum and with Chilli being an older Grade 1 child, I thought she would most likely handle it well so I decided to give it a try. She definitely seems to be taking in both forms well and learning each letter thoroughly; Mumma and Baby letter as separate forms as well as the sounds of each letter and being able to think of examples of words that begin with each letter we study. At the beginning of the year when we started our first block, knowing we would learn both cases of the letters alongside each other, I presented the short, basic sentences we were writing in this way – rather than just all uppercase writing as is often the way in Grade 1 Waldorf. I think this gentle start with looking at both upper and lower case forms in this way, as well as starting to feel a sense for the spacial relationship between the two forms, has been beneficial to Chilli before coming to the letters themselves as lessons.

Our first letter in our journey, was B/b. I am using the fairytales to bring each letter to Chilli, but for the letter B/b, I decided to write a short, sweet, gentle introductory story for our Alphabet Journey. We are using a ‘container’ story to carry us through the year and the family we are ‘travelling along with’ was about to start off on their journey to find the letters, when Mumma suddenly realised she’d left her hat in the gardens of the last place they’d stayed. As they were walking out of a forest and their path would go quite near by this cottage they had stayed at with a lovely lady named Sarah, they could easily stop back in and collect Mumma’s hat. Well…. when they arrived there was quite a kerfuffle happening. They could hear Sarah crying in the orchard “Oh my beautiful Bramleys, they are all bumped and bruised.” You see a big blustery breeze had come barrelling through the orchard and had bumped all the Bramleys onto the ground bruising them. Sarah was most upset but she spoke about her favourite things to make with her Bramleys – which are a cooking apple. This story then tied in with many of the meals we enjoy our homemade apple sauce on through the year, particularly roast pork which comes from a friend’s farm that we visit weekly. Chilli had made her very own ‘Bramley Jam’ last year – buying from our local co-op, peeling, coring, cutting and cooking down the apples. Mrs Bramley is also one of her favourite characters in the story ‘Christopher’s Harvest’. I liked the opportunity in this short and sweet story to weave in many aspects familiar to Chilli. One of the aspects of Waldorf Education I am continuously mindful of and try to remember in my lesson planning is the importance of ‘linking back’. Finding links in the lesson you are presenting, to lessons you have previously had – creating a ‘net’ of concepts for the child – showing a relation of many concepts and similarities between the lessons, times, countries, places etc that we are studying. With apples being such an iconic part of our local area, and Bramleys being such a beloved apple in our home from Chilli’s early childhood, I thought this was a beautiful opportunity to create that woven ‘net’ in the beginning of our alphabet journey.

:: The Apple Museum has this amazing wall with alphabetically named places for all the apple varieties. It is out of season at the moment so just some regular display apples filled the spaces, but the Smith family has quite an extensive Heritage Orchard at Grove from what I’ve heard and I assume in season these shelves are filled with the varieties indicated in each space. Matthew Evans’ book ‘Real Food’ has a picture of what I think may be this display with apples in their correct spaces during the season ::

In the heart of the Huon is a wonderful little space that is dearly loved by the locals. The Smith family has been farming their land for generations and the most recent chapter in their story saw the conversion of the orchards to be organic. The Smith family orchards joined the organic movement in Australia quite a while back and the products they produce are amazing. The Smith orchards are the national supplier of organic apples to one of our biggest supermarket chains – Woolworths. That is definitely no small feat and they still have beautiful apples to sell to us locally on their roadside stall. A few years back, The Smith family orchards which were known at the time as ‘Raw Organics’ rebranded under the name of Willie Smith’s – honouring one of the early generation men amongst the farming family. They not only produce fresh apples, pears and cherries, they also produce cider and have renovated an old apple museum to become the ‘Apple Shed’. This place is a thriving hive of activity with local cultural, community and foodie events through the year. In all the times (and I can assure you it is many!) that we have visited the Apple Shed, we’ve not really taken the time to wander through the museum. Therefore, I thought a field trip to this memorial place of a family and community who has been so important to our local area through the years gone by would be a lovely little adventure.

Our time in the Apple Museum definitely didn’t disappoint. Woven in through the story of the Smith family from their arrival in Australia in convict times to the present day, was the story of numerous men and women who worked in, developed and made famous the apple industry that our little Apple Isle became so well known for. The story told through picture, words and exhibits of machinery, tools and other apple picking paraphernalia is wonderfully interesting and Chilli was at a lovely age to really absorb the story and be interested in the information. Marlin enjoyed himself immensely as well – standing on the scales, sitting on the rungs of old wooden ladders, turning the crank handles of a juice press, looking into the old apple picking bags and rummaging in any old wooden crate he managed to find his way to. There was something for all of us there.

:: My little organic girl was disgusted at the spraying equipment used back in the day and wasn’t too interested
in looking at it! ::

Of course, at the completion of the museum we most definitely needed to sit for a minute, and would you believe it – this delicious looking slice of apple pie made it’s way to our table! Mmmmm – Mmmmmmm…. It was REALLY that good!

Back home in our school room, we had been doing all the usual form drawing and pre-cursor activities; walking the form laid out in twisty ropes, drawing the form in the sandpit with our toes, exploring the sound of B/b with creative verses and movement gestures, hearing and recalling our story, creating a free drawing, writing a sentence emphasising the letter we were learning, drawing a picture that held the letter abstract and then finally discovering the letter in this drawing. We drew the form on each others backs, in sand trays with thin driftwood ‘pencils’, in the air, on the chalkboard and then in our Main Lesson Book. Once we’d learnt the letter B/b we modelled both the forms (upper and lower case) out of coloured beeswax to stick on our ‘Alphabet Window’ where slowly through the year we will create the entire alphabet out of beeswax letters.

:: Our capital B was in the mouth of the cloud (which ended up much lower on the drawing than I’d anticipated! And the lowercase b was down the right hand side of the tree trunk and around the apple laying at it’s base ::

Are you currently learning the alphabet with your children? What are your favourite creative activities to help them experience the letters?

Field Trip :: Japanese Culture

February 7, 2015 | 3 Comments

One of my favourite aspects of Waldorf Education and something I think can be so deeply and wholly honoured in homeschooling, is the immersion in a particular topic. As homeschoolers, we have the benefit to permeate our ‘immersion’ topics into so many aspects of not only our schooling, but our everyday and family life.

The last story of our first Grade 1 block (which was of course Form Drawing) was from the Earthschooling curriculum – ‘Moon Flower’. We used this story for bringing the form of a circle to life and the opportunity presented amongst the theme of not only this story, but also the continual story of a family’s journey that carries us through our year – to immerse in the Japanese culture. The story of Moonbeam is a traditional Japanese Tale. It is a gentle, sweet and inspiring story.

I am using a ‘base’ or ‘foundational’ story through the year of a family that is on a journey together. Through this journey, many opportunities and experiences arise that ‘meet’ the little girl ‘Anna’ in our ‘family’ with her lessons for the year. This ‘base’ story idea comes from the Waldorf Essentials curriculum and I also think it is mentioned in Eric Fairman’s Grade guide. As we approached the tale of Moonbeam, our ‘family’ met a Japanese Lady. The children enjoyed talking to her about the culture, what foods she liked and used to cook with her mother as a child, as well as the lady’s name and the meaning/origin of her name. ‘Sakura’, the lady our ‘family’ ‘met’, told the ‘family’ the story of Moonbeam, as it was one of her favourite stories when she was younger.

Following on from this part of our Form Drawing for circles, we concluded this first Grade 1 block with what I like to call an ‘immersion’ – really diving deeply into a topic or theme and having it permeate as much of our daily/family life as is possible. On Saturday morning, Chilli and I went shopping together – just a Mumma and Daughter shopping adventure. We purchased the ingredients we needed to cook a special ‘Japanese Feast’. That afternoon we set about preparing the foods we needed to bring together the Japanese Fare that Sakura had mentioned were her favourite meals when she was younger. It was nice that Sakura had reminisced about cooking these dishes with her mother when she was younger – as Chilli and I were now cooking them together! During our cooking and dining time, we listened to a beautiful collection of Traditional Japanese Music. Amidst our cooking and preparing, Chilli also relished in the opportunity to get out her cuisenaire rods to work out certain measurements along the way.

The dishes we made were; Yudofu, Tempura with sweet rice, Anko to put into Dorayaki for dessert and then of course Green Tea. We found a really wonderful Japanese Cooking site with handy videos and clear instructions. The green tea was actually a gift from a Japanese friend who visited and stayed with us last year. It was in a really sweet little metal tin with the gorgeous Japanese paper labels and fancy Japanese writing that many special Japanese products have. I often think that certain Japanese products look so pretty the way they are presented. Whenever we receive a gift from our Japanese friend, it comes wrapped in the most gorgeous natural packaging and then gift wrapped by the store it was purchased in. Everything is mindful and beautiful.

Chilli delighted in going about setting up her very own ‘Japanese Restaurant’ to serve Daddy and Marlin in for dinner that evening. We set the table together, made a menu board and then Chilli put on her ballet ‘Character Shoes’ as her ‘high heels’ because “All waitress’ in restaurants always have high heels on Mummy!” We chose our Japanese names for the evening (we actually just used the two lady’s names from the Japanese Cooking 101 videos!), lit the candle, and invited our guests to dine. Our guests came dressed very well to the restaurant as well!

The next day we ventured out to our favourite Tea House! (Any excuse – I know!) This time there was guidelines around what we could order – we were there for tea, and this in my opinion is the best place in Hobart to go for tea. The tea menu is extensive without being exhausting. Mathew and Shae know their tea – that’s for sure and they’ve recently put together a retail range of teas, so we were eager to try some of these. Between us we selected 4 of their different teas, and conveniently Shae had made a Matcha Cashew Cream Cake for the sweets that day – so of course we had to try a piece of that! It was all delicious.

Following on from our tea adventure, we went on to another of our favourite Hobart destinations – The Japanese Gardens in the Royal Hobart Botanical Gardens. At any time of year this space within the Botanical Gardens is breathtaking, and this Summertime trip was no exception.

Handwork :: Advent Calendar

November 26, 2014 | Leave a Comment

Recently, the Father of one of our daughter’s closest friends, suggested the girls should make each other Advent Calendars this year. Ever since, it’s been something Chilli speaks about often. I was a little overwhelmed by the idea, however as I browsed through resources, along with odds and ends I’ve bookmarked and collected through the years – planning our Christmas activities, I noticed a rough hand sketch I’d made many years ago when Chilli was a wee one. The sketch was made during a Steiner Playgroup Christmas evening where parents conscious of how and what we bring to our children at Christmas time, gathered together to listen to a beautiful, seasoned Steiner Teacher who was involved in the foundation of our local Steiner School when it began. The heading on the sketch read “Simple Advent Calendar for Kindergarteners”. I knew Chilli would love this handwork piece and would be extremely excited in making a Calendar to gift her friend as they had discussed and planned.

I wanted to say a quick word at this point about planning for Festivals, especially something that spans a larger time like the season of Christmas. Having said that, the same is true for shorter Festival periods as well – and it is regarding how much we as parents, educators and planners try to cram into our programs and homes. There is a plethora of inspiration these days to totally lose yourself in and be overwhelmed by. After 7 years of doing this homeschooling/homemaking Mumma thing, I’ve finally realised that less really is more. My focus now as I approach a Festival, especially something like Easter or Christmas is to be mindful not to become lost in all the wonderful things that Pinterest shows me I can do. Instead I sit and browse for a small amount of time through resources; books, online places like Pinterest, Facebook groups and blogs as well as pieces I’ve collected and saved through the years on my computer. I save in boards, Evernote and other resource places, things that interest me. To be honest, all through the year I’m bookmarking things in this manner, so that when a Festival rolls around, I have the resources all there ready to briefly flick through for inspiration in our planning. But here’s the thing… I highly recommend being mindful about what you are planning to incorporate and how much you incorporate. It sounds simple enough – but it is all too easy to think you’ll get a whole bundle of things done and then all that happens is yourself and your children end up frantically moving from one thing to another without any real meaning or mindfulness to what you are actually doing.

This year with Christmas, I really thought about the activities we would do. What were their purpose, what did they mean to me in the celebration, what message will they share with my children and our family about this holiday season. Having a wee one again has really made me pull back in a mindful way and embrace the ‘less is more’ philosophy, which brings deeper meaning and mindfulness to the well thought out, purposeful activities that we now incorporate into a Festival. My advice is – don’t have yourself so tightly planned that time for snuggling on the couch, reading a wonderful Festival story together while sipping a nice cup of some beautiful herbal infusion, eludes you. These are the real moments that hold beautiful treasures for our children. Moments of togetherness, calmness and times, as well as activities – imbued with meaning.

Onto this Advent Calendar then. The sketch I had was simple and rough. Inspiration at its best! On a piece of paper, I’d sketched a window in each of the four corners. There was a window to represent one of the Kingdoms through each week of Advent. In the middle is a larger window with a ‘two door’ type opening which is a special one for Christmas Morning. Here is how we made our Calendar;

We took two watercolour paintings from through the year – ‘The Three Kings Followed a Star’ for the front of the calendar and ‘The Rose and The Violet’ for the backing of the calendar (the piece the windows open to.) These Watercolour Lessons are found in the Pre School and Kindergarten Watercolour Lesson Book from Earthschooling. I like to use watercolour paintings for this as the pictures are beautiful and soft – perfect for the calendar, and the paper has a structure to it that once doubling the front and back together, will give great form to the calendar without the need for a mounting board.
In four corners of the star we traced around one of the circular shapes from our Rainbow Stacking Disc set. We flattened off the outer edge of each of the circles. In the centre we traced around a larger disc, again flattening off both the sides this time, as well as drawing a line down the centre of the circle. The line down the centre was cut through as well as the the circular part of the shape on this central window. The two outer sides that were flattened off were just ‘scored’. This makes a ‘double door’ opening.
I carefully cut with a scalpel on a cutting matt, around the circular part of each shape and we then ‘scored’ the flattened part of the shape with the back of the scalpel and a metal ruler.
We then erased the light pencil marks we had used as our guides for these windows.
Placing the top over the backing – we lightly drew around where the windows would sit on the backing.
Chilli then set to work making a little drawing in each window space we’d marked out, on the backing paper. In each window we did the following; Window/Week 1 :: Mineral Kingdom – A star drawing with glitter glue over the star, a gold foil snowflake centred on the star illustration and a tiny crystal chip fixed in the middle of the gold snowflake with a wee ball of Stockmar sticky wax. Window/Week 2 :: Plant Kingdom – A Christmas tree drawing with a mini wire and netting flower tacked again with sticky wax, onto the tree. Window/Week 3 :: Animal Kingdom – A sheep drawing with a little of the fleece from the animals we watch sheared in the Spring glued onto the sheep. Window/Week 4 :: Human Kingdom – A drawing of Chilli and her friend together with little woollen bows tacked onto their dresses. ‘Merry Christmas’/Central Window – Drawing of Mary and Joseph in the stable with the baby Jesus. Hay from the paddock next to a house we lived in once, tacked around the manger.
Before mounting the two pages together, Chilli relished the opportunity to put her new writing skills to good use! She numbered each window so her friend knows which window to open each Sunday and we also put the Kingdom name above each window. On the central window Chilli wrote ‘Merry Christmas’. Above and below the main window, she wrote ‘Advent Calendar 2014’ – she also wanted to sign her work of course! I loved this project for Chilli at this age – it was perfect for her. She had a real sense of achievement, something she’d made that was really functional for her friend. That’s what I love about Waldorf Handwork – the attention to purpose and function. We don’t just decorate a paper plate with pretty tissue paper squares to hang on the fridge – there is a purpose and function to the handwork the children and ourselves undertake. Not to say we don’t make decorations for Festivals and the like – some things are made and hung to look pretty, but it’s always with purpose.
Our final pre-mounting step was to thread the ties through the windows. I strung wool through with a thicker needle, knotted it and created ties on the door and where it met the card as it closed.
Glueing the two together, we were careful to ensure the windows were positioned correctly and then we tied closed our windows, ready to be opened by a very dear friend through the weeks of Advent to shortly come. I made sure to place glue all around the windows as well as the outer edges of the card, pressing all these points together well.
The final touch was to finger knit a short cord which could be attached through two hole punches at the top of the calendar, allowing the piece to be hung somewhere special amongst the Festivities of our friend’s home.

I say this whenever I write about Christmas… At that very same night when the foundation of how we as a family would celebrate Christmas was laid, this wonderful Steiner Teacher who was a beautiful mentor to me in those early parenting days said; Even if we are not religious, go to church regularly or no matter what our beliefs about how the world was created are – bringing these Archetypal stories that have such deep meaning in them, to our children is such a powerful and nourishing way to celebrate Christmas, not just for our wee ones but for ourselves as well. I have always held those very simple but wonderfully inspiring words in my heart and mind about the celebrations we create for our family. Watching the meaning that Mary and Joseph’s journey through our home each year to arrive at the stable that has slowly ‘come to life’ over the four weeks of Advent, has for our daughter and will as well have for our son, is so humbling. Every year I can’t hide nor help the tears of joy that roll silently down my cheeks as I witness the reverence and meaning our celebrations have to our children.

It is my hope that your celebrations bring just as much mindful, meaningful and memory making moments to your family as we experience with the rich traditions the Waldorf way has brought to our family.

Experiencing :: Number Three

November 22, 2014 | Leave a Comment

Since Chilli turned 7 recently, we’ve been doing a very gentle introduction to numbers in this final Kindergarten term. We’ve had so much fun with the Earthschooling ‘Sixth Sense Maths’ program – exploring the numbers in different ways through their Physical, Mental and Spiritual dimensions. Once we’ve finished the numbers 1 – 10, I’ll try and find the time to photograph Chilli’s number book and do a post about how we explored each number. In the meantime, I wanted to put together this brief post to share our experiences with Learning the number Three this week.

This year, Chilli just learnt the letters of her name, however since turning 7, she has been copying some very basic sentences from my writing, relating to her lessons. She is very excited about learning all her letters next year.

In the traditional Waldorf way, we’ve been exploring each number through;

Laying out ‘twistys’ on the floor and walking – forwards, backwards and eyes closed along the form
Drawing the form with our ‘finger pencil’ both in the air and on each other’s backs
I lay out the twisty somewhere hidden for Chilli and Marlin to go on a ‘number hunt’ with their homemade toilet paper roll binoculars
Shaping the form with either bread or play dough
Drawing the form with sticks on unsealed ground when we’re out on nature walk
Finding the form in nature
Discovering that number through our daily lives – in writing, signs and clusters of items both in the home and in nature

When I feel Chilli is ready to try writing the number, we first take our chalk boards to write the form a few times in a ‘semi-permanent’ way. I think this step is really important as it’s a gentle ‘easing into’ the written form for the child. I actually remember as a younger child, feeling a lot of pressure as I went to take pencil to paper learning to write. It’s a very permanent ‘no mistakes’ kind of medium. That’s definitely not to say I expect no mistakes of Chilli when she does take crayon to paper, but I think there’s a nice gentle ‘easing into it’ when the first written form is in a casual space. Whenever we come to the chalkboard or the paper, we always ‘practice’ first – in the air with our finger pencil and then on the board or paper with our finger pencil, before we put the chalk to the board or crayon to the paper. I think this step is also really important. The air practice re-inforces the form and the finger pencil practice on the platform before the medium meets it, helps to bring a spacial relationship between the form and the page. I’ve watched Chilli many times with her finger pencil get to the bottom of the platform only halfway through the letter or number and say “Oh, hang on”, starting again. I find 3-5 times of finding the form on the platform with the finger pencil really brings that spacial relationship nicely before actually writing the number or letter. When we are drawing the form on the chalkboard, we often will turn the number or letter form into a picture for fun.

This week with the Number Three we have been discussing objects around us that have the word ‘tri’ in them – meaning ‘three’. The triangle we ring each day for start of school, the tripod Daddy uses for the camera occasionally and the trinity on Mummy’s wedding ring. It’s so empowering when children remember, realise and make connections with things mentally on their own. Chilli was excited to think about how the clover has three petals and remember the story about Saint Patrick plucking a clover from the grass to speak about the Holy Trinity. It’s said many times through Waldorf literature how important this early childhood foundation of story and verse is that we lay in those first seven years. Watching this all blossom, unfold and live so deeply in Chilli is really magical. I have a friend who often says to me how blessed we are to be the ones bringing this curriculum to our children – to not only share the experience with them, tailor a program that meets our child exactly where they are, but also to see the magic that lives in them and the connection, realisation and neural pathway spark just ‘light up’. What an immense blessing and phenomenal privilege homeschooling truly is. We also spoke about the three horned dinosaur – ‘triceratops’ and the name for three babies born at once – ‘triplets’. We haven’t done a lot of reading on dinosaurs as yet so Chilli found this concept of a three horned dinosaur really bizarre and surreal.

The main reason I wanted to post here however was to share a really wonderful resource for Learning Three. The Spiritual discussion on Three in our Earthschooling Curriculum mentions Goldilocks and The Three Bears. Today I asked Chilli if she could think of a Fairytale or Story she remembered that had something about the Number Three in it. After a few moments of thinking, she said “Goldilocks and The Three Bears!” Again, that connection of story in the early years that makes concepts ‘Jump up and Live’ in the child. We sat together and read this book – I really love Gerda Muller’s works. Her stories are beautiful and her pictures just gorgeous – classic illustration at its best. Now most often in Waldorf Lessons, we will tell a story through either puppet scenes or in a Grades Lesson, by bringing the story to life via illustration on the chalkboard. However what I LOVE about using this book for the Number Three is the thoughtfulness of Three throughout the book’s illustrations. Each page, after we read the story, we would count the things we could see in threes. And there is a bounty of items grouped in three through this book – it’s brilliant! Three tree trunks together, three branches coming out of a cluster together on the tree, three squirrels running up the trunk, three snails together on the ground, three butterflies flying around – and of course then once you’re inside the bear’s cottage there is a whole new world of three: bowls on the table, brooms in the kitchen, umbrellas by the door, chairs, beds, money boxes and dressing gowns. We had such fun counting all the threes in this book.

In essence, this is what Waldorf Education is all about for me – especially in these early years and elementary grades. Making the lesson really Live in the child and not having a concept that stands separate to them as a foreign ‘thing’ to be ‘learnt’. In bringing the lesson as an ‘experience’ so that the information lives within them, we make this knowledge a part of their being. Education should not be something that is separate to a child, it should be something that is integrated into every aspect of their being, something that has a life of it’s own that the child experiences rather than has to ‘learn’ as a foreign concept.

:: We giggled to realise that even what Goldilocks did once she saw the Bears was in three – jumping out of bed, grabbing her shoes and running outside! ::

This introduction to numbers 1 – 10 is very gentle and basic. We will of course be revising the numbers next year through a formal Grade 1 block and bringing together the number forms with a very gentle introduction to the matching Roman Numeral form as well as the written word for each number. We’re all wonderfully excited about the program we’ll be doing next year. Marlin is at a really beautiful age that harmonises wonderfully well with being able to bring deeper, more focussed lessons to Chilli. I’ve said many times that even if we’d sat down and mapped out ahead of time exactly when we’d have our children, considering their correlating ages along the way, we couldn’t have planned more perfectly the age Marlin would be as Chilli was starting the Grades. Today while we immersed ourselves in Three, he immersed himself (by our side) in his latest obsession. A little bowl of water in the sink of ‘Pumpkin House’ to tend to the daily washing up. I can’t even begin to count and tell you how many changes of clothes we’re going through on a daily basis at the moment. A hand wash bowl, a small cup of water, a sink if someone stands with him and allows him to indulge in that privilege or the hose if he is close by when the gardens are watered or a can is being filled. He’s definitely our water boy little Marlin!

How is your planning for the coming school year going? I’ve just laid the foundation of blocks, rotation and concepts on how each lesson subject will be brought to Chilli. There’s still lots of work to be done, but it feels exciting to have that foundational direction laid. Hopefully I’ll have the time at some point to put together a little post about the planning I’ve been working on and the concepts we’ll be using for Grade 1 lessons.

Fairy Garden :: Peach Blossom Cottage

July 30, 2014 | 4 Comments

When scouting a space to allow the magic of a Fairy Garden to weave itself together here in our new little cottage grounds, there really was only one suitable place – protected with the fruit trees in our enclosed orchard amongst the food gardens here on our island home. Our property abounds with wallabies, possums and one rarely spotted – but resident all the same, echidna. And while all of these animals we are sure would love to frolic with our resident Fairies, they’d also like to nibble greedily on their garden plantings, leaving nothing but stumps within a few hours. Within the orchard rows was a little corrugated iron tub. Standing low enough for little arms to reach in – but high enough to prevent fuzzy little burrowing bandicoots from pottering amongst the roots. So there in the community of Apple Grove, right by the only peach tree in our orchard – ‘Peach Blossom Cottage’ was named by a little girl and born with great love, excitement, imagination and wonderment.

Whilst watching the countless hours, conversations and festivities my children have shared there at ‘Peach Blossom Cottage’, amongst the Gardens and with the Fairies – perhaps my very favourite part of this experience was watching Chilli and Papa one Sunday become totally absorbed together in the magic of dreaming up, creating and bringing to life little pieces of hand made necessities and furniture for the Fairies Cottage and Garden spaces. The bonding, the giggles, the helping each other and the joy in bringing these pieces to life in the home there at ‘Peach Blossom Cottage’ was truly heartwarming to watch. I loved their ingenuity in including natural native Australian treasures such as gumnuts for lamp posts and a dotta vine jumble wrapped around a fallen branch of melaleuca for an arbour. Papa remarked afterward at how impressed he was with Chilli’s creativity, as apparently most creations – including the walnut shell larder shelves – were her dreamed up inventions.

Friends have visited and shared adventures with the Fairies, brother and sister have tended this little home lovingly through the changing seasons – playing happily together in only that magical childhood space that children exist. The Easter Hare visited and parents, grandparents, godparents as well as family friends have witnessed silently this wonderment that is the magic of Fairyland play amongst sweet, happy, inspiring young children.

Through the past year as ‘Peach Blossom Cottage and Gardens’ have been birthed, tended, cared for, loved and grown, I have delighted in the many little random Fairy Gardens I find built -here, there and everywhere. Groves in bowls for the Mermaids, Circles of Rainbows for the Leprechauns to visit and tiny little nooks on every part of our property that become spontaneous places to offer tiny delights for the Fairies. As I walk past ‘Peach Blossom Cottage and Gardens’, I always enjoy to stop, be marvelled by and smile at the sweet little creations that have sprung up through my children’s play; acorn tea cups filled with pansy pudding, a clothes line pegged with leaf towels and beds made snuggly soft by petals of sweetly scented rose blooms. I love to see where the bike has been ‘ridden’ to, who has ‘stopped in for tea’ that day and which little folk are currently ‘at the park’. It is always interesting to see what the ‘larder’ has been ‘stocked with’ as well. These are the things that make for wonderful childhood memories, and these are the moments that I will look back on fondly with a warmth in my soul when they’re both off living their own adult lives one day and have flown this tiny little family nest of ours. Hopefully they’ll always carry the magic of these early years in their hearts.

I invite you now to come on a little journey through the Gardens at ‘Peach Blossom Cottage’…
(Please click the first thumbnail below to enable the slider with image captions, telling the story of our Garden)

Are there magical tiny folk that live in your garden? I’d love to know if you’ve written about the adventures in your wonder filled Fairy Garden.

This post has been written to not only share the story of our All Season Fairy Garden Adventures with you, but also as submission to The Magic Onions 2014 Fairy Garden Contest. To Donni and her gorgeous family as well as the community of supporters bringing this opportunity to life – we thank you for inspiring great wonderment through this encouraging of Fairy Garden creations the world over.

Celebrating :: Turning 35

May 26, 2014 | 1 Comment

::Heading out for one last wild food forage this Autumn
Heather Pace’s Fudgy Coconut Layer Cake from her Carob Desserts book | Father and Son::

Recently I celebrated my 35th birthday. From the moment I opened my eye’s that morning until I climbed back into our warm family bed to drift off to dreamland that evening, my day was filled with immense gratitude for the beautiful and blessed life I have.

::Surprise iris’ | Boobie time | Car ride nap::

My dear family treated me to a wonderful day, one of the very best kind – pottering around on our property harvesting the last of Autumn’s bounty, preparing for the Winter ahead – which I’m starting to think may never actually arrive. A friend who shares my birthday pointed out that it may have been the first time in quite a while that Father Sun has dominated our day rather than Sister Rain and her water fairies. As we pottered outside in warming Autumnal sun, Graham decided to take a voice recording of me saying “I just don’t reckon Winter’s going to arrive this year, it’s never this warm by my birthday” – he plans to play it back to me when it hits freezing in the not too distant future!

::The last hips | Collecting hips | Summer has faded::

Our day comprised of Graham undertaking all the cooking – which was a lovely treat; Continental breakfast, Antipasto lunch and Baked dinner with a RAW carob cake I’d selected and requested for dessert. We foraged in the fallen leaves for hazelnuts we hadn’t managed to pick earlier in the season, harvested kiwi fruits (135 if you can believe it – from one home food-garden vine!) and removed the last of our tomatoes off the plants for green tomato chutney.

::Harvesting kiwi fruit | The last clinging hazelnuts::

I’m an Autumn baby through and through – there’s no other time in the year that I’d rather celebrate my birthday. When I thanked Graham in the afternoon for such a wonderful day he replied “That’s okay, I didn’t do much” to which I said “If we’re harvesting food in our gardens and making preserves and potions, you’ll always know I’m happy!” When my Aunt rang to wish me a happy birthday just before dinner, she couldn’t believe I was outside picking tomatoes on my birthday! I was in my element and so happy. A truly wonderful birthday.

::Colours of Autumn | Ripening feijoa’s::

We also took a little trip up the road to collect one last jar full of rose-hips to make infused honey for the Winter that may or may not come. As we sat around the lunch table we had a herb lesson we’d missed the day before – learning all about sage, then we went on to make our two remedies; sage and rose-hip both infused separately in locally collected prickly box honey.

::Cleaning and de-seeding rose-hips | Layering fresh sage | Pouring honey::

::Herbal Infused Honey::
Recipe by Elke at Another Day

This recipe is one of the most basic of all time, one that I’ve seen done in many different places and something we’ve been meaning to do for a while now. People do this in all different variations, google ‘infused honey’ and you’ll find a myriad of herbs and spices to infuse honey with; rosemary which is wonderfully refreshing, lavender for use in calming applications, turmeric which is reported to have fantastic expectorant effects, onion for anti-bacterial use – the list goes on and on. Honey in itself is a wonderful health promoting food with fantastic natural health and healing properties.

Ingredients:

• Fresh herbs (dried herbs can also be used, but I think you would need to reduce the amount of herb – we haven’t tried dried ourselves. Some people worry about bacterial spores growing in the infusion due to water activity from fresh herbs being used. If you are concerned about this – do your own research and perhaps look to other recipes that specifically talk about this issue and using dried herbs.)
• Honey that can pour (If your honey is an unheated, thick set honey – you can sit the jar in a pot of warm water for a half hour or so to loosen it up enough to pour. Remember to be mindful of applying heat to your honey though, our preference is just enough to make it run. Heat will start to reduce the beneficial properties of the honey.)

• A glass jar with a tight fitting lid

Method:

• Neatly arrange your fresh herb in the bottom of the jar, filling half way up.
• If you are using rose-hips, make sure you have pinched the stem and spent flower bloom from each end. Rose-hips will also need a good wash to remove excess prickles and hairs. Once clean, carefully slice your hip lengthways down the middle. Scoop out the seeds and wash again. You will just be left with the ‘shell’ of the hip. Dry these off well in a tea-towel before placing in the jar.
• Fill your jar to about 2″ down from the top. Give the jar a good stir around making sure all the fresh herbs are immersed well in the honey. Then fill the remaining space in your jar with honey.
• Put the lid on your infusion and leave for around 2 weeks to meld together.
• We leave the herbs in the honey and just use the honey out as we need.
• Sage honey is good to have on hand for any mouth or throat afflictions that creep up; it’s soothing for tonsillitis, coughs, mouth ulcers and the like. This page has some lovely info on sage as well as other infused honey’s.
• Rose-hip honey is handy to have ready for any viral Winter surprises. It’s high vitamin C content makes it great for colds and flus. There’s some great information here on the humble rose-hip’s amazing power.

What herbal infusions have you tried recently and have you ever made infused honey? If so, I’d love to hear about what herbs you used in the infusion.

Learning :: Odd and Even Numbers

May 7, 2014 | 2 Comments

There’s a sweet little verse in the May section of Earthschooling’s Kindergarten curriculum. If you have a Lifetime Membership, or have purchased the May curriculum, you’ll also have access to this verse in the wonderful new month-by-month lesson plans The Bearth Institute is currently releasing. These are making a world of difference to my planning. Even though I may not use the plan exactly as they have laid it out, to have this foundation provided as a springboard for my own planning, is wonderfully valuable. I’m finding it terrific the way they have given each week a seasonally related theme and developed their curriculum around that. In the planning I do, we always have a theme to our weeks. I work our homeschooling rotations, normally in a three week block – with the view of flowing harmoniously along with how each block is received and allowing flexibility if the need arises for a block to be more deeply explored. Having this willingness to bend and flow freely, I feel, is important to offer Chilli the opportunity to fully live into each block and theme as well as the offerings of projects, verses and stories I have put together as her curriculum. Recently I wrote some of my thoughts and views on the Earthschooling Facebook group page in reply to how often a story should change. These words below also relate to the block theme as well as topics, subjects and projects we bring to our children through homeschooling curriculum. Isn’t this the beauty of homeschooling? In a classroom setting, if one or two children were really living so deeply into say, a story – but as a whole the larger part of the classroom seemed ready to move on, then this is what the teacher needs to be directed by. However in the place of homeschooling, we can be guided wholly by the sole needs of our own child/ren.

Just starting this year (K) we are now doing one story a week. I could tell our daughter was ready for that, she would ask when there would be a new story toward the end of each week. In early years though, we would try to keep a story set up for around 3 weeks for a few reasons. Firstly – in early years, (nursery/pre-school ages) it’s most likely that you’re not ‘doing school’ every day, the children most likely only hear the story around 3 times a week. Secondly, I was once told that three weeks is a nice rhythm for story changing to nourish hands, heart and head. (1 week for the hands, 1 for the heart, 1 for the head). I always remember reading that we as parents will be ‘over’ telling a story before our children are ‘over’ hearing it! On that note, I would advise you to watch and be led by your child. Tell the 1 story in as many different ways (as a puppet show, sitting with eye’s closed, as hand gestures, by ‘building’ the story together with play pieces, by your child telling you the story, by drawing the story, by acting the story out together) and let your child eat up every last bit that he or she needs from that story before going onto another one. You will see the signs when your child is ready for a new story, you will get the sense when a story is ‘done’. If you do this for a while, you will, I am sure, notice a natural rhythm emerging of how long a story needs to be kept the same for your child. That being said – some stories have many layers that need to be peeled back, lived into and explored – while others are less complex and are finished in less time. Have your next story ready to go so you’re prepared when the current story is ready to put to sleep, but let them truly ‘live into’ each story fully, without worrying about moving on to a new story for the sake of a scheduled time ideal.

I have, here in this post, digressed from the main topic, so I will go back to topic – promising you that I will very soon, share a post on how I plan and the main considerations in my planning. The task of planning is one of those daunting aspects that can really engulf a homeschooling parent with panic and overwhelm. However, when broken down into manageable pieces, planning really becomes an enjoyable and welcomed experience.

Back to topic – learning odd and even numbers. If you are a homeschooler, you will relate to the fact that the very best homeschooling and learning moments often come from inspired whims rather than well planned out projects and days. There really is something to be said for the whole un-schooling movement! Yesterday during morning circle while we were working with the verse about odd and even numbers, I had an inspired thought that Chilli just so deeply absorbed, loved and ate up with great enthusiasm. I must mention here that Chilli is an older Kindergarten child – so bringing more awareness to the verse in this way is quite appropriate for her. I am this year, weaving in very basic and gentle first grade themes as well as projects and awareness’. This awareness to the verse would not be so appropriate with a nursery or younger K child, however you could also bring this awareness and flow on activity from a verse about odd and even numbers, into a first grade environment.

I could see Chilli was a little distant to the verse we were doing – it wasn’t actually ‘meaning’ anything for her but she wanted to understand it. I asked her – Do you know what odd and even numbers are? She shook her head. I looked to my right and there lay the basket of wooden interlocking blocks. I took out two of the 2-prong blocks and laid them out as ‘houses’. I then took out two bridge pieces, because they looked markedly different to the 2-prong pieces. I could have used 3-prong pieces but I wanted a noticeable difference in the two different items. The bridge pieces became our ‘people’. I explained very simply to Chilli that if a number is even, we will be able to put the same amount of ‘people’ into each ‘house’. Even means equal – the same. We went through the verse; 2-4-6-8-10. Each time I added 2 more ‘people’ and Chilli counted the blocks before seeing if they would fit ‘evenly’ into the two houses. Then we started over again and went through the odd numbers 1-3-5-7-9. Each time we tried to fit the ‘people’ evenly into the two ‘houses’. “No – they don’t fit” Chilli would say each time with such enthusiasm. We then did a bit of impromptu practice. I would take out a handful of ‘people’ without counting them. Chilli would line them up, count them and then try to divide them between the two ‘houses’. Each time announcing if the number she had started with was an odd or even number. The lesson really came ‘alive’ for her and she wanted to go on and on with it. At lunch time, she revelled in the opportunity to explain to Papa how odd and even numbers work and show him the process for figuring out if numbers are odd or even.

In her curriculum, Kristie talks about ‘Sixth Sense Maths’ – a process by which we really bring math ‘alive’ for children in multi-sense ways and let them live into the math rather than math being some abstract, separate experience from the child. There is an often quoted story about Rudolf Steiner walking into a classroom where children were learning the 2x tables by jumping up stairs in lots of 2’s. The story went on to tell of how Dr. Steiner then proceeded to throw the children roses in lots of 3’s and hence the 3x tables came to be for the children in an alive and relative manner.* I can definitely say that this little game honestly helped the math of odd and even numbers to live so wonderfully and in a ‘real’ way for Chilli.

As we packed up this activity, I thought this might also be nice with the multiplication and division numbers – just increasing the number of houses in a relevant manner. That’s definitely a game though for next year and a truer first grade curriculum. If you don’t have the wooden interlocking blocks, you could use any manner of objects for this game. Just choose 2 identical pieces for the ‘houses’ and use a different piece with multiple same’s for your ‘people’. Even two little rocks and a bundle of twigs would work perfectly fine for this process.

I hope you enjoy this little inspired game that came from our homeschooling journey, and that it might add some value to your working with odd and even numbers. Tell me – have you had something impromptu in your homeschooling this week that has had a wonderfully enlivening effect on your child’s learning?

* Full story can be found in ‘Child and Man’ Vol.2 No.1

Silence :: Slow Blogging + A Colour Story

April 27, 2014 | Leave a Comment

There’s a movement apparently, emerging in the blogging community that I quite unintentionally have wholeheartedly embraced the values of. It’s called slow blogging and I only heard of it the other week when reading a post Jodi had written about the topic. As I was setting out with the intention of giving Another Day a little make-over, these were exactly my thoughts about this new space. I didn’t want to be a slave to a digital online family journal – to feel I had to write every day and keep a ‘complete’ story going. I just wanted to come to this space when I had the time to sit and write, inspiration to write on a particular topic and something of value to say or share.

::Watching the sunrise on Easter Sunday::

My recent silence however, has been longer than anticipated. We’ve been preserving of course; apples, pears, more quinces and chutney’s. We’ve been admiring the changing colours of the turning seasons and we’ve been collecting gorgeous Autumn leaves for a variety of crafty endeavours, today – leaf crowns. Our quiet Easter somehow seemed busy, as Festivals tend to and after four days of celebrations we’ve enjoyed some quiet time – knitting, reading and playing. As the colours of Summer flowers start to fade, we’ve been taking a last few photo’s of the children enjoying time in the Fairy Garden for submission into The Magic Onions Contest. Although not our first year of building a Fairy Garden, it’s our first year of entering The Magic Onions competition so Chilli is very excited. That’ll be a post all of it’s own coming up shortly. I debated uploading the archives of the old site to this space but then I thought – how far do I go back, and what a huge barrel of work that I honestly don’t have the time to undertake, aside from the fact that this new space has it’s own energy, which I’d like to let grow into it’s own little story. I must admit, it was fun though to take a scroll back through all our journal entries, re-living the memorable moments as well as the everyday happenings. Goodness how our two little cherubs have grown and blossomed, it makes me such a proud little Mumma.

::Leaf crowns – a simple, yet fun and effective, Autumn activity::

I’m currently working on a submission for the next Sakura Bloom Sling Diary – Chilli is super excited and has made sure that I’m entering both of us in the casting, as she too would love to share her Sakura Sling stories and pictures! Bubbling away in my mind periodically as I wash the dishes or prepare meals is a free little downloadable book that I’d like to put together shortly. I won’t give away too much – only to say that you’ll be able to use it for helping children learn a wonderfully precious handwork skill. Can you guess what it will be? Anyone who’s seen my instagram feed will most likely be able to guess. And if a seemingly lost package every emerges from the depths of the USPS, I might be able to share an organic living post with you that might be of interest if you have a budding young ballerina in your family, but don’t want to compromise on organic and natural fibre clothing for their uniform. In the meantime, I’ve put together a little downloadable resource with a story I wrote, about a tiny little spark of light. This story is good to use with an older Kindergarten child when exploring the colour yellow – either with crayons or paint. In this instance we had used the two Stockmar yellow watercolour paints. Exploring yellow is a lovely early Autumn activity as we head into the golden season and the theme of the story – a tiny spark of light finding her inner glow – is very appropriate as we journey into our darker time of the year. I actually wrote this story for our Candlemas celebration at the beginning of Spring last year. The story also has a therapeutic thread woven through it that is supportive to the 6/7 year change. You can download that resource here.

::Apple Stars – one of my favourite stories all year to tell the children – ‘The Little Round House’. We traditionally tell this story leading up to Easter and there is a little Easter Hare surprise at the end of the story::

In the meantime, please do visit both my instagram and pinterest pages. I find instagram a wonderful social media platform. To share a simple little photo of something through our day with a few creative or explanatory words is a handy little tool. When one may have in previous years made a blog post to share something simple from their day, now an easy upload of an image to instagram serves the same purpose in a much more convenient way – leaving blogs free to be deeper places, for more meaningful pieces of well thought out creative writing. I know many are opposed to the expanding myriad of social media outlets – and to be honest I can’t even get my head around the explosion of just how many different platforms exist, but I do find a few of them quite useful. Pinterest, I always say, is a total answer to my prayers. I was privately doing what pinterest offers in a much more time consuming way – saving links on my computer in text files, sorted in folders – archaic I know. Why didn’t I think of inventing pinterest?

::Hunting for Easter Eggs::

What do you think about the changing face of the social media world? Do you write a blog – if so, what’s your mindfulness about how and what you write in that space?

Herbal Studies :: Calendula

March 30, 2014 | Leave a Comment

Over the Summer we had an on-going herbal study. I love the Bearth program for the inclusion of this component in their curriculum. It was one of the influential factors in us choosing the Earthschooling program for our home school. This project flowed through the Summer with various activities that all complimented each other beautifully for a really holistic, gentle learning experience. It included;

A sensory tea experience – smelling, talking about and tasting flower teas. Calendula was amongst the several teas we explored that day.
Picking and hanging to dry, bunches of the golden sun flowers through the Summer. (Chilli didn’t know what the flowers were being dried for – she just knew there was a special ‘surprise project’ she would find out about one day)
Seed saving from the calendulas. We call the calendula’s ‘fairy seeds’. They are perfect seeds for children to plant; easy germination, quick growing, gorgeous foliage structure and pretty ‘sun’ flowers. Great for a fairy or children’s garden.
Watercolour pencil drawing of the calendulas form a few stems picked and arranged in a vase (or recycled organic apple juice bottle as the case may be!) on the drawing table. Experimenting with this medium was a lot of fun (This part of the project was inspired by the Little Acorn Learning Curriculums)
Then for the ‘special surprise project’; We took an old calendula ointment jar that we had finished and washed up – Filled the jar with the dried petals – Then poured into the jar organic almond oil (this was a really nice natural learning experience as well “But the jar’s already filled with petals Mumma”… “Hmmm, let’s pour in the oil and see what happens, I think it might just work” … “Oh WOW! The oil does fit, it goes down into all the little gaps between the petals!”- We secured the lid and placed the jar on the windowsill of our learning space where the sun streams in through the window, for the oil to infuse (This was inspired by Delphine of Prairie Flower Children’s Centre in the Early Childhood video from the Lifetime Membership files – found under :Extra Video’s:) – Within just a few days the oil had infused into a gorgeous golden colour – We left the oil there for about a few weeks to really infuse well, it was lovely to check the progress of the infusion every so often – Now the oil lives in our healing basket and is used anytime there’s a bump, bruise or scrape.

I loved the way this project theme wove itself beautifully into so many aspects of our Summer program. It was achieved little-by-little over the Summer and we had a really nice completed project at the end of the Season.

What’s in your healing basket? Do you have any favourite healing verses or songs you sing as you soothe a bump or scrape? I’ll be posting our healing basket contents soon.