Flowing With My Ducklings

Starting (Pentatonic) Flutes!

2012-01-25T15:58:00.000-08:00

FINALLY (only a month and a half behind schedule!) we started flutes today!

I have had such a mental block about the flutes because I don't know how to play (yet) and this is the first thing I've taught that I don't know, so I think I was/am nervous about keeping up with our schedule and staying ahead enough to actually properly teach.

I now finally understand all the comments about how can you teach things you don't know. In the past, I've answered this with a confident, "You learn, or find someone who does know to teach it." The you learn part seemed reasonable and easy enough, but now I'm outing myself as feeling anxious teaching things I don't know well :)

The good news is that the intro went really well and the kids loved the first day of flute! Elie joined us today, but, for the most part, my husband will play with Elie while I do flute with Yoav.

The resources I'm using are:
* "Teaching Yourself and Your Child the Pentatonic Flute" by Marsha Johnson
* "Playing and Teaching the Pentatonic Flute" by David Darcy
* "Playing with Choroi Flutes - an Introduction" by Thomas Pedroli and Dietmar Bloch
* "Pentatonic and Interval Flutes for Kindergarten and the Early Grades" by Par Ahlbom, Anne Widmark, and Maja Knierim
(the first two I recommend most)

and for music, I have several small books:
* "Pentatonic Songs" by Elisabeth Lebret
* "Quintenlieder" by Julius Knierim
* "There is a Path" by Channa Seidenberg
* "Clump-a-Dump and Snickle-Snack" by Johanne Russ

This is a great Youtube video by David Darcy on how to hold and blow the flute with a suggested first song.

There is also a useful Master's thesis online by Linda Ann Ledbetter Eterman titled "An Approach to Music Education based on the Indications of Rudolf Steiner".

We are starting out with Interval Flutes, which only have one hole, so it's a good way to get kids comfortable with simply holding and blowing into the flute and learning pitch recognition (without concerning themselves with finger placement). We'll play a few games with the flute:
1. I will play a note on a pentatonic flute and Yoav will try to match the note by using the three interval flutes, with and without the hole open.
2. He will play a note on his Interval Flute and then I will play notes on the pentatonic and he will tell me when we have a match.

There are a lot of games you can play with the interval flutes if you have six or more kids. I only have one, so my games will be pretty simple ;)

Silliness with Interval Flutes

Failed Start to Vowels

2012-01-23T07:45:00.000-08:00

I was planning to start a two week mini block of vowels today, but things don't always go as planned :)

I had a doctor's appointment in the morning and, though Yoav was relaxed and happy for the two hours out of the house (we went out for bagels before the appointment), the second we got home, the dog jumped up on him and got him (slightly!) wet and it was downhill from there.

Looking back and thinking about things, I'm wondering if I need to connect and collect as he's getting out of the car. The car ride is certainly a mild separation. I also needed to be more organized to get him transitioned faster to form drawing, which I wanted to do first, but he started drawing as soon as we got in and then got Elie drew on his drawing him while I was in the laundry room getting new clothes, and, well, it took a long time for us to recover :)

So I ended up just nixing the day and we had lunch and spent part of the afternoon outside and the rest drawing.

We're doing Marsha Johnson's drawing class together (me and Yoav). Each week she announces (on the WaldorfHomeEducators Yahoo group) a new thing for us to draw. We're a day behind on our week three drawing, but we did it today.

My bird for Marsha Johnson's drawing class

Yoav's bird for Marsha Johnson's drawing class

Language Arts Block 2 / Week 3 - letters

2012-01-22T12:10:00.000-08:00

This was our last week of consonants. The story for the week was "The White Snake", a Grimm's tale. Yoav really loved this story - the ability to hear what animals say - what could be better than that for a boy who loves animals :)

I shifted our schedule this week by a day so we could go up North on Monday to visit a homeschooling family I've known online for two years. It was really fun. They have a boy a bit older than Yoav and a girl Yoav's age and a girl Elie's age. Elie really doesn't play together yet with other kids, but he had fun playing trains and being with me. Yoav had a lot of fun (though he was asking me to leave for the first hour). He brought his Stockmar crayons and ended up drawing for a good hour or more with the girl his age and then played a bit with balloons and random silly things with the older boy. He says he wants to go back and he added them to our very short list of friends here.

So I told the story on Tuesday and revealed the drawing on Wednesday. I was really tired on Tuesday night and very much NOT in the mood to do a chalkboard drawing, so this is the best I could muster :)

My chalkboard drawing for "The White Snake"

Yoav's drawing - he was also rushing a bit because it took him SO long (ie, much angst and frustration!) to draw the duck and then he had to rush to finish before leaving for his horseback class. I told him he could finish later in the day, but he really wanted to finish. He's very much a man of ritual and wouldn't want to do his Main Lesson drawing at a different time of day :)

Yoav's drawing for "The White Snake"

On Thursday, I revealed the letters. At this point, Yoav understands well the game and he was guessing what the letters were before I revealed them. He got the K and S.

My chalkboard drawing for "The White Snake" with letters revealed - King, Queen, Snake, Duck, Horse

And then he drew his letters. He was very excited to do five letters again and made a list of all the letters he knows so far to show Aba (who was traveling) on video phone at the end of the day.

Yoav's letters

For craft, we made calendula salve. I based our method on these instructions. We used two little glass painting jars, which are the perfect size. We skipped a step by using calendula oil that we had made a few months ago with the instructions in Aviva Romm's "Naturally Healthy Babies and Children". We set up a pan for boiling water (to make a double-boiler) with two stainless steel measuring cups inside - one for beeswax and one for oil. In the bigger one, we put olive oil, lanolin and lavender essential oil. When the beeswax was fully melted, we just poured it into the oil, mixed and then poured into our glass containers to harden. The salve came out really well, though we should have put in more EO as the lavender scent is too faint. Yoav put his little bottle by the bed and used it on his eczema before we went to sleep.

Making salve with a double-boiler set-up - oil in the larger measuring cup, beeswax in the smaller one.

Finished salves

Dyeing Playsilks with Vinegar (stovetop method)

2012-01-12T12:22:00.000-08:00

Today for our craft, we dyed playsilks. This has been on my to-do list since this summer when I got the playsilks from Dharma Trading.

Last time we did this, I didn't post about it and didn't write down what I did. I remember thinking it was really easy (particularly since before that we dyed a few with natural plant dyes) and I found the directions easily online, so there was no need to bother.

But I've had these silks waiting to get dyed, and several of our current ones are torn, and I wasn't sure which tutorial to follow. I remembered doing something on the stove, but couldn't remember what.

I found this tutorial which has most of what I needed. I still don't remember exactly what we did last time, but this time, I pretty much followed the directions in the linked tutorial. The only significant difference is that I brought the colored water to an almost boil in an old pot on the stove before adding the silks and then we swished it around until we liked the color. I used about 15 drops of color for each bath and used the least amount of water necessary to fully cover the playsilk and have a little room for swishing (we're super water conscious over here!!) To save water, I also dyed purple after blue using the blue water bath as a start and dyed the orange after red using the red water bath as a start.

We used the 30"x30" Habotai silks from Dharma. I like that size the best - the kids greatly prefer them to the 22" square ones.

My red isn't so red - I guess I needed more dye for that one, or more time in the bath. If there are any complaints, we can always put it back in for more dye later...

Yoav dyeing playsilk

Food dye colored playsilks

Language Arts Block 2 / Week 2 - letters

2012-01-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

The rest of the week went smoothly. We're mostly back into our rhythm, although twice this week (including today) my husband took Elie during part of the morning, which helped immensely :)

Yesterday we revealed the letters:

Letters for The Princess in the Tower - Light, Cat, Princess, Ziz, oX

At the last minute, I added the X for oX. It's not an ideal method, since I'm not using the first letter, but it bothered me that I we had all the letters except X and I thought it would be better this way than for Yoav to just "take it on authority" as Eric Fairman of "Path of Discovery" says to do with remaining letters (it's the standard, I'm just quoting him because I like his terminology).

And Yoav drew the letters:

Yoav's letters for The Princess in the Tower - Light, Cat, Princess, oX, Ziz (N was from previous week)

Yoav was beyond excited to do five letters. After drawing these letters, he wanted to find out how many letters he has left, so we made a list (from memory) of all the letters we've done so far and discovered that there are nine left. Yoav was oddly giddy to find out that we would be doing the remainder of the letters in the next two weeks and that in two weeks he would know all the letters. He was literally shaking with excitement. Gotta love homeschooled kids! :)

We did a drawing activity yesterday - we're participating in Marsha Johnson's drawing class (via her Yahoo group, waldorfhomeeducators). The class is intended for parents, but I thought it would be fun to do it with Yoav (and it is!) Each week, for a total of eight weeks, Mrs. M will tell us what to draw and we then send in the drawings to her to be uploaded to the Yahoo group so we can see them all and discuss and get pointers from her. This week the subject is "moon". And here are our drawings:

My drawing of a moon for Marsha Johnson's drawing class

Yoav's drawing of a moon for Marsha Johnson's drawing class

Today was Watercolor Day. We did an exercise from Live Ed (borrowed from a friend). I told a story about how Blue was playing in the forest (painted around the edges) and then Yellow came to play (painted in middle). Blue and Yellow don't know eachother, so they don't want to play together. But they were both happy to play by themselves for a while... (continued to add paint) Said that as they got closer to eachother, they'd feel a little scared (so that's why the paint is darker further away). Then Red came to play. Red is good friends with both Yellow and Blue, so she played a little with Blue (painted between the yellow and blue and then mixed a bit with Blue) and then Purple joined in the play! Red also played with Yellow and as she was playing with Yellow, Orange came to play!!! Such a fun exercise, and they came out beautifully:

Yoav's watercolor painting

We made muffins this morning and then in the afternoon, we dyed a rainbow of playsilks (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) with food coloring. I'll post that separately with the method we used once they fully dry and I take photos.

The kids have been happily playing in the playroom for an hour and a half. I'm embarrassed to say that it's already 8:30pm. Usually we go upstairs for bed no later than 7pm, but my husband is working late and this is the most fun the kids have had together in a few days, so it's hard for me to end the fun... But now I must...

Language Arts Block 2 / Week 2

2012-01-10T04:44:00.000-08:00

We're in Day 2 of Week 2 of Block 2 :)

This week I'm using a Jewish version of Rapunzel called "The Princess in the Tower" in the book "Leaves from the Garden of Eden" by Howard Schwartz.

Monday I actually forgot to do Form Drawing :( Too bad, because it usually goes well. I told the story and then we did candlemaking in place of beeswax modeling. Yoav has had a hard time with the past few attempts with modeling wax. Part of it is that it's cooler, so the wax really has to be held longer in our "ovens" (armpits - I forget where I learned this, but it works well and it's fun to talk about what temperature we put our ovens to while we're waiting); part of it is just that it's difficult and has always been frustrating for him. Once in a while, he makes something that he loves (like the acorns we made recently, which he really enjoyed), but mostly it's an experience in extreme frustration :(

Today we made our weekly Shabbat candles in place of the modeling wax time (the Morning Activity). I thought it was a fairly good substitute, especially because he made little wax shapes to attach to the candles after they were completed, which gave him the desired experience of shaping the wax.

Yoav's beeswax candles

Today (Tuesday), Yoav and I together told the story to Elie (this works well as a recall method for us, since Yoav is much more excited to tell the story to DH or Elie than to me, since with me he prefers for me to tell the story LOL). Then I revealed my drawing and Yoav worked on his.

My chalkboard drawing for "The Princess in the Tower"

Yoav and Elie drawing

As you might have noticed, I've temporarily moved us into the living room for our school time. We started in the sewing room, then I moved us to the playroom when Elie got fidgety and bothersome in the small-ish sewing room, and finally now, I'm finding it difficult to move the kids down to the playroom in the basement (particularly Elie), so we've been doing our Main Lesson in the living room for the past few days. If we stay in the living room, I'l get some pillows together so we can use the coffee table the way Waldorf bench desks are used.

Yoav got stuck on the bird (a fictional Ziz, which I'm using for Z) and is now taking a break from his drawing. I'll ask him if he wants to try again later, but I won't push.

Yoav's unfinished drawing for "The Princess in the Tower"

Language Arts Block 2 / Week 1

2012-01-04T14:25:00.000-08:00

So, we're somewhat back in the swing of things after two weeks off. We started off very easy this week as it's always hard for me to get back into our rhythm. I think (know) that it's more me who has trouble adjusting than anyone else. Yoav does not do well with breaks and he is more than ready to start again after a two week break.

We're on our second Language Arts block, which I'm happy about. Yoav loved the first LArts block and the format of it suits me well - the fact that each day builds on the previous day helps force me to stick to the schedule. I tell the story on Monday; re-tell on Tuesday with a drawing; re-tell on Wednesday with the letters revealed and then we do watercolor painting on Thursday and work more with alliterative verses and games based on the letters of the week.

This week our story is the Grimm's "Nixie of the Mill Pond". This was a great story for me to do after the break because it's fairly short and was very easy for me to memorize.

My chalkboard drawing

I found this drawing online to help me draw the rabbit.

Yoav's drawing

Yoav had a lot of difficulty drawing the rabbit. He's never drawn a rabbit before and he is a perfectionist when it comes to drawing, so he was fairly overwhelmed by the prospect of drawing a rabbit (when he saw my drawing). He drew the rest of the drawing and then used scrap paper to practice his rabbit. After a long 45 minutes of tear-filled practice, he finally managed to draw one he liked. I pulled out my "Coloring with Block Crayons" book and saw their suggestion to draw a rabbit as two ovals, so I drew one in that format on scrap paper with the block crayons for him to use as a model.

The letters revealed

His letters

"Walking the Forms"

On Wednesday, after we drew the letters, we did some alliterative verses with the letters and played a few letter games - one was to take turns saying a word that starts with said letter; the next was to tell a story in which we take turns adding a sentence to the story and each addition must have at least one word that starts with the new letter - ex (this is similar to our story - far from creative genius, but the point is to get the letters in LOL) - "I Ran outside and saw a Rabbit. The Rabbit was Red. He saw a River and Ran to the River. He heard a frog say Ribbet."

Tomorrow we'll do watercolor painting and we'll do some more games with the letters and alliterative verses (from Eric Fairman's "Path of Discovery").

Tree Block Menorah

2011-12-20T00:46:00.000-08:00

Chanukah is starting tonight! The basic story of Chanukah is here. A description of the menorah is here along with the proper lighting procedure.

This year we made a tree block menorah. We cut eight 1" pieces of tree blocks from a fallen bay laurel tree. The wood from bay laurels seems to be ideal for tree blocks for those who live in Israel. We used a mitre box to cut the pieces straight. Yoav and I shared in the sawing. We then glued on (with craft glue) metal "candle holders" that we found in our local craft shop (which was filled with Chanukah crafting items) and glued each tree block onto a piece of spare wood. I think it would be prettier if the base was a thick branch with the top and bottom cut (horizontally) to make it flat on both sides and a similar shape as the base we used. But that would have been a lot of sawing for us.

Newborn knitted hat and mittens

2011-12-15T05:15:00.000-08:00

Finished a tiny set of newborn mittens and a hat. The patterns are from Louisa Harding's "Natural Knits for Babies and Moms". The yarn is Purewool 100% merino wool. I've made the hat a bunch of times so far and the mittens a few times, but this is the first time I was organized enough to make the i-cord to keep the mittens together!

Our Blooming Forest

2011-12-15T04:52:00.000-08:00

Winter is the time of rain (not nearly enough, but at least there's some) and growth here. Still gets cold at nights, but it's comparable to a NY spring, but warmer during the day.

The forest behind our house is so beautiful right now! These photos don't nearly do it justice.

Za'atar - often used on toasted pita

Zutar - makes very yummy tea - I think it's part of the mint family

I'm told that these are endangered, so we are very fortunate to have them!

I'm so very grateful for the series of events that led us to a home in the forest!

Math Block 1 / Quality of Numbers - continued

2011-12-14T14:44:00.000-08:00

We're still plugging away on our math block, although I have to admit that I'm having a MUCH harder time with this block than with the Language Arts block. For the LArts Block, each day is critical - Day 1 - story, Day 2 - draw picture; Day 3 - find/draw letter; Day 4 - painting (not critical), but for math, no day is more critical than the next, so it's too easy for me to skip days or just throw in the math lesson at some point in the day, but not complete with Circle and verses and all...

We spent the first two weeks learning the first ten numbers, drawing them and now are slowly working through drawing pictures with the numbers and with that number of something in the picture (like one person, two trees, etc.) Yoav started seven and eight today, but got frustrated when his eight apples looked more like hearts and I decided to wait until tomorrow to try again (because he seemed overall to have had enough).

My favorite day was the learning of addition (which of course he knows, but I'm referring to addition in the whole-to-parts way I'm teaching it, based on the ideas in Ernst Schuberth's "Teaching Mathematics for First and Second Grades in the Waldorf Schools"). We picked a number and then broke it down into parts. Yoav enjoyed this and was very quick with it. It's great because there is no "right" answer - we just talked about finding ways to make a ten (and then twenty). Yoav marveled at all the ways he came up with.

We are also doing verses to learn the twos, threes, fours and fives times tables - little songs that we say as we walk and on the second/third/fourth/fifth step, we say that word much louder and stomp.

Quick and Easy Baby Quilt #4

2011-12-14T14:32:00.000-08:00

Just finished my fourth "Quick and Easy Baby Blanket" from "Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts" by Joelle Hoverson. It's listed as a 2-4 hour project, which is about right. The cutting always takes me a long time (this is my fourth one - here's one, here's one and the other I forgot to take a photo of) and at the end, you make little embroidered stitches every 4" to hold it together (see last photo) which takes a long time to first measure and mark the locations and then to do all the stitching (by machine, but still slow...)

The front fabric is Cloud 9 Organic cotton, backing is organic cotton (front and back from Organic Cotton Plus); batting is organic cotton and thread is organic thread from Near Sea Naturals, so it's truly a 100% organic blanket :)

This one measures 34" x 45" - I used up all the cloud fabric I had.

I honestly don't love the fabric, but it's sleepy-themed and organic and there's nothing else I can think to do with it other than a baby blanket, so it had to be done...

I know it needs to be ironed! But I'm afraid to do it until the vanishing marker marks vanish for fear that heat might cause them to set.

Elie's 4th Birthday!

2011-12-06T06:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Elie's 4 Year birthday. I can't believe how big he's getting!

We have our birthday routine down pretty well now and I'm really happy with it.

Prior to the birthday, starting on four days to his birthday (since it was his fourth birthday), each day when he woke up, he got four kisses and I'd tell him it was x days to four (4 days to 4, 3 days to 4, etc.) and I told him stories about his birth/baby-hood/toddler-hood.

On the day of his birthday, when he woke up, we (Yoav actually started singing first!) sang our special birthday song that I've been singing for a few years - it comes from Magic Cabin (slightly modified below):

It was four years ago, Today, Today;
That Elie came down from the Heavens to stay;
He came to bring gladness and joy to the Earth;
Good people and angels were here for his birth;
So let us now join them in singing;
With beautiful birthday bells ringing;
Happy Birthday Elie. Happy Birthday Elie.

Then, I ran downstairs to light candles on our "candle lake" and then sang the Magic Cabin song again as Elie came down the stairs and I met him to put on his birthday crown.

Elie got downstairs to find the candles in the Candle Lake and his presents at his spot at the table:

We sang Happy Birthday (Yom Huledet Sameach) and he blew out the candles:

And started opening gifts (only the handmade ones are from me/us - the rest are from grandparents and aunts/uncles/cousins)... First wooden Ostheimer animals that Jeremy picked up in Neve Tzedek at Omer:

Then the doll's crib from Ikea (with it's horrible cotton/poly bedding - I made new bedding while the kids were playing with all the new toys):

Yoav got one too as I knew it was too special to be just for Elie... Yoav put his together himself and Elie and I put together Elie's:

Here they are finished with the new bedding. I made pillows, pillowcases and mattresses (with quilt batting inside). The quilts were gifts from a few years ago (here for the D9P one - I didn't post about the other).

Then a doll cardigan and hat I made with Purewool yarn. The cardigan pattern is from Shelley Caskey at Waldorfmama. The hat is my standard - the infant hat in "Natural Knits for Babies and Moms" by Lousia Harding.

Yoav helped Elie with the buttons:

Here are both dolls in their cardigans and hats (Yoav got one too - that story is here). I also made a new skirt for Elie's doll using the Oliver & S Lazy Days Skirt Pattern.

Then a Debresk tow truck also from Omer:

Yoav was just as happy as Elie with that one ;)

That was about it for the birthday excitement. We didn't do school - just played with the new things and had a relaxing day with Yoav's horseback lesson (and lunch at the amazing restaurant at the ranch) in the afternoon.

Happy Birthday Elie! We love you!!!

Math Block 1 / Quality of Numbers

2011-11-30T13:32:00.000-08:00

I changed my plan for this math block after getting Ernst Schuberth's "Teaching Mathematics for First and Second Grades in Waldorf Schools" in the mail.

He recommends a much faster introduction of the letters than my previous plan (which is similar to Christopherus, Live Ed, Marsha Johnson, etc.) He says,

"I recommend a rapid introduction of the Arabic numbers. Neither the reciting of numbers nor their writing down on paper is a methematical activity. THe math curriculum has to include both these conventional elements becasue they are required for communicating, but they should not take up more room than is their due. Therefore, we should not waste time on slowly introducing the written numbers.

The second reason I like to introduce numbers quickly and without pictures (unlike the consonants) is that their pictureless nature reaches toward the musical and rhythmical realms. In anthroposophical terms, we say that numbers are characteristically inspirative and not imaginative. We honor this by practicing numbers rhythmically and musically. In the end, the root of our ability to grasp amounts of spatially arranged items is a movement process."

This sentiment is similar to that in Ron Jarman's math book, which seems to be very popular amongst Waldorf educators. I don't have a great explanation for my switch, just that I devoured the book and Schuberth's ideas somehow feel right to me. Yoav knows how to count by twos, fives and tens and knows quite a bit of the multiplication tables, so I'm also just a bit antsy to move on with him. Jarman and Schuberth both think math is quite different than language and can and should be taught at a quicker pace than most Waldorf curricula. Schuberth (and I've seen this elsewhere as well) says that, whereas there is not a correlation (statistically) between age at which a child learns to read and reading ability in upper grades, with math, there are definite windows in which learning must happen. One example (that I think is in the Jarman book - I'll look when I have time for the quote) is that multiplication tables should be learned by third grade for them to be ingrained in the child and for the child to easily be able to quickly and easily recall any individual multiplication pair.

Anyway, so I'm using the basic structure for the first math block as laid out in Schuberth's book.

The first day I introduced the roman numerals 1-5. For each number, we discussed where the number exists in nature. Examples we used:
1 - G-d, sun, world, moon, me
2 - eyes, ears, hands, feet
3 - head/body/legs, thinking/feeling/willing, finger has three parts, insects have three segments
4 - seasons, legs for dogs/cats/etc., people in our family
5 - fingers, toes

On the first day, I drew the roman numerals (one by one) on the board and he practiced in the air and the drew on his main lesson paper. The second day, I wrote the arabic letters (one by one) and he practiced in the air and then on scrap paper and then onto the main lesson page. The number two was particularly difficult for him to write - he kept making a semi-circle and then trying to add the line at the bottom rather than a semi-heart... At the end of the second day, he wrote out the five numbers with a stick crayon. Then, on his own, he decided it wasn't so beautiful and wanted to write them in rainbow colors, but even then, he thought the numbers looked lonely I guess and was compelled to draw a picture around the numbers ;)

Yoav's roman and arabic numbers 1-5 for his Main Lesson Book

Yoav's 1-5 Number Drawing

Wednesday I introduced the roman numerals 5-10 and on Thursday we'll do the arabic numbers 5-10. Associations we discussed for the higher numbers:
6 - six legs on insects, people in my and my husband's families
7 - days of the week
8 - days of Hanukkah
9 - months of average pregnancy
10 - fingers, toes (Yoav said 10 10s is 100, which makes ten special)

We are also including a lot of rhythmic math-related verses - like poems in which we stomp and say a word louder ever second step or every third step as well as poems about numbers. I like a lot of the verses in Eric Fairman's "Path of Discovery".

Elie tunes in and out during our Main Lesson. He was interested in the roman numerals and particularly liked the three (since he's three). It's very sweet to see him sitting alongside Yoav and drawing alongside Yoav. I actually posted about this on the WaldorfHomeEducators Yahoo group (run by Marsha Johnson), as I'm concerned about exposing Elie to too much, especially given how cautious I've been with Yoav (and how thrilled I am with how things are unfolding with Yoav). Luckily Elie has not been interested in the Fairy Tales or the letters (I think because the Fairy Tales are over his head, so he tuned out most of the Language Arts block). Since I'm not doing stories with math (which work to dis-engage Elie), he is so far sitting at his desk for the whole of the lesson. I'm going to have to trust that he is learning at a very different level of understanding and the experience won't be too awakening, although I'll certainly have to monitor over the coming months and years...

Elie's Roman Numeral Three

On the plus side, Elie has finally started to draw, surely because he's been practicing during our Main Lesson time.

Yesterday, for the first time, he drew a picture of an actual thing and it was himself! It was so sweet to witness - he drew a picture of himself and then lifted it to show me and beamed, "Look! I made me!"

The top picture is him with arms and the bottom one is with fingers - he drew the fingers and said, "I have a pinky!" Oh and as he was whipping out his drawings (he made about ten with different variations, some with two people), he turned and said to me, "I'm a really good draw-er!" :P I love love love (as I know only a mother would!) the pictures. They are so endearing to me even though they're archetypal images and are probably very much like most other toddler's drawing of themselves ;) Actually I just read this, that indicates that Elie's right on schedule - drawing a tadpole-like drawing just as he's about to turn four ;)

Knit Cardigan

2011-11-24T02:54:00.000-08:00

I finished the first of Elie's birthday presents. His birthday is Dec 5, so I'm doing well time-wise (unlike past years!) I made the cardigan designed by waldorfmama and the hat is a newborn hat I've made a bunch of times from "Natural Knits for Babies and Moms" by Louisa Harding. My doll must be a bit bigger than Shelley's (waldorfmama) because the cardigan is much less of a cardigan than hers, but it's still really cute and fits well enough and I'm sure it will be well-loved. The yarn is purewool - the color is too bright (IMO) to use as a baby gift so it was a perfect use. It's bright but not too bright for a doll... Now she needs a little skirt. Her only other outfit is a dress that doesn't fit under the cardigan.

Yesterday when I finished with the cardigan, I showed Yoav thinking that he would appreciate the knitting and would think it was cute, but he surprised me - when he saw it, tears came to his eyes :( He cried that his doll needs a cardigan too - it's getting cold and his doll will be cold without one. I told him he got different things (handmade tool belt with tools, a handmade knitting bag and a doll hat) for his birthday but he would hear none of it. So I guess I'll make one more. It's a quick fun knit - I just have to find three more buttons that will work. Eventually I'll also replace Elie's buttons because I only had two matching ones.

Math Block 1 / Quality of Numbers

2011-11-22T05:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we started our first Math block. Such a funny thing - Yoav didn't even know the word "math" - I told him yesterday morning that we were starting math this week and he said, "Huh, what's math?" Meanwhile, last night lying in bed in his semi-sleep state, moments before falling asleep, he mumbled, "two 30s is 60, two 40s is 80, two 50s is 100. Mom, two 40s is 80 and two 50s is 100, right? So two what's is 90?" The human mind is a beautiful thing indeed!

For some reason (maybe because I have too many books and different ideas!), I am having a really hard time planning out this block!

The materials I'm using are:
* Ron Jarman's "Mathematics in Rudolf Steiner Schools"
* Ernst Schuberth's "Teaching Mathematics in Grades One and Two"
* Roy Wilkinson's "Teaching Mathematics"
* Dorothy Harrer's "Math Lessons for the Elementary Grades"
* Eric Fairman's "Path of Discovery - Grade 1"
* Marsha Johnson's "Quality of Numbers" block - available free at WaldorfHomeEducators Yahoo group
* Christopherus First Grade Curriculum
* Earthschooling's "Six Sense Math"
* Ancient Hearth's Quatlity of Numbers blog post
* help from a friend who's using Live Ed

Each one of them has something useful and valuable, but each is different, so forming something that takes the best of each (best for me, that is), that will work well for Yoav and meet my needs and values, erg - I found that difficult!

In the end, I'm doing very similar to the Ancient Hearth blog post and am using verses from the Harrer book for Circle and ideas from Earthschooling for more substance and deeper understanding.

Yesterday I told a story about Julius and Lior (Yoav and Elie's middle names) who went out for a walk in the forest (insert lots of detail about the forest and animals here). They saw a little white rabbit for a limp and ran after him. Soon the rabbit came upon a hole, which he jumped into. Yoav tried to catch the rabbit, but when he reached in to get the rabbit, he fell in too. Then Elie tried to pull Yoav back up, but, in trying, he too fell in! They came upon a bleak landscape, so different from the forest - greys and whites all around. They walked and walked and eventually came to a large stone mountain. Up in the mountain, on a ledge, they saw what looked like two eyes under a pile of skins - they thought perhaps it was the bunny, so they climbed up to see it. When they got there, they were surprised to see that it wasn't a bunny at all, but rather an old wise woman covered in skins. When she saw them, she asked if they wanted to enter in to the secret door on the side of the mountain. Of course the boys did. She told them that, to enter the door, they would have to answer ten questions, one each day. Each time they correctly answer a question, they would receive something that would help them to unlock the door.

The first question was: What is ONE? They must think about it during the night and must have the answer ready by sunrise the following day.

So, that was yesterday (Monday).

Today (Tuesday), we did our walk and Circle (which included a few math verses from the Dorothy Harrer book and I think also some from Eric Fairman's POD) and then came into the school room.

We did some recall of the story and we remembered the wise woman's question from yesterday. I asked Yoav if he had any ideas what answers Julius and Lior might give the woman. I had to guide him a bit, as it started with, "One, two, three.. " and more general talk about numbers - him basically saying that one is a number. So I asked what is there one of? He said: "One lamp, one chalkboard, ... (a few other things in the room), then one world, one Israel, one United States, one Connecticut, one Atlanta ... (he went on and on with this), then there's one ME!" That was really what I was looking for, as next we'd be drawing a picture about one... I also added a few - one sun, one moon, one Hashem.... I said that all of those were right and that Julius and Lior told the woman one me and she gave them the first part of the key.

Next I attempted the idea that Ancient Hearth did - I had a piece of paper hidden under sand in a glass tray and gave the boys paint brushes to brush away the sand. The sand was damp though from all the rain (it was stored outside in a semi-rainproof bag) so it didn't work so well. But they enjoyed it anyway and were full of wonder.

I misjudged Yoav a little on the next part - I had the forms drawn on the chalkboard but planned for him to draw the "one me" part by himself. He was really disappointed when I revealed the chalkboard drawing (just the right side of the below picture), so I told him to play for a bit with Elie so I could draw him also so he'd see just how to do it on his page.

So here is the final drawing:

Drawing of Yoav (one me) on left; four forms of the number 1 on the right

Yoav's drawing

After the drawing, I told the story "Alef is Chosen" from "Lights Along the Path" by Rebecca Schacht.

Tomorrow we'll walk the forms during Circle - I think ideally it would be done before the drawing of the number, but the kids woke up today and ran downstairs to play, so we started a little later than usual and we needed to finish up...

Painting Day

2011-11-17T11:59:00.000-08:00

Today was a rainy Painting Day. I'll make this quick because I have a lot to do, but I really enjoyed the painting exercise. It was an idea from Marsha Johnson (of waldorfhomeeducators Yahoo group). She suggested an exercise with red and yellow going around a corner and bumping into eachother. I added a little by telling a story: "Yellow was out for a walk today and was strolling along enjoying the day... Red also was out taking a walk in a different area... They both were walking around, looking at the trees and flowers, etc. Then Yellow turned a corner and bumped right into Red! And what a surprise for them then to see their friend Orange!" Yoav enjoyed the painting like he always does. This one really looked amazing when it was wet, but it dulled when it dried and isn't quite the same, though I still like it very much...

Language Arts Block 1 / Week 4 - continued

2011-11-16T05:59:00.000-08:00

Today was our third day working with "The Golden Goose". Elie actually surprised me and asked earlier in the day if I was going to tell the story about the goose again. I'm glad I picked this simple one (versus "The Goose Girl") - I did it hoping he'd like it, but still am pleasantly surprised :) So I told the story again with just very brief recall first (asking each kid what their favorite part was). Then I revealed the letters from my Golden Goose drawing and drew them to the side so Yoav could see how I drew them.

My drawing for "The Golden Goose" with letters revealed

Then Yoav traced the letters on the chalkboar, drew them on his chalkboard, then traced them in the air and over the paper and finally drew them:

Yoav's letters from "The Golden Goose" - form from Audrey McAllen's "Handwriting for Children"

I have to admit that I skipped our Morning Activity today (word games). I'm knitting a cardigan for Elie's doll for his birthday and knitting and productivity do not go well together for me! It's a work in progress (becoming less obsessive about hobbies, not the knitting ). We'll do some of the verses I had planned and will walk the forms of the letters tomorrow, since tomorrow is Painting Day and is a light day.

For our craft today, we made the "Doll in a Matchbox" from "Feltcraft" by Petra Berger. We had so much fun making them. Elie picked out his colors but I mostly made his (although he surprised me (again) by doing some of the cutting fairly well). Elie's is the dark purple one and Yoav's is the red one. The pattern includes a bonnet, but the kids decided they didn't want bonnets for their dolls...

"Doll in a Matchbox"

Elie's "Doll in a Matchbox"

This craft showed me for sure that Yoav is out of the 6/7 Year Change! He's so through it, he barely resembles his previous self! Well, the good features are the same, but so much negativity is gone! I'm sure much of it is my Gordon Neufeld studies, but I think it's definitely a combination of leaving the 6/7 Year Change and my own inner work. One of the key behaviors I saw during the Change was that Yoav wanted nothing to do with toys. This makes sense in terms of the Change, as children go through a period of leaving baby/toddler/little-kid-hood and moving on to the next stage, when they are ready to learn to read, do math, knit, etc. So, in the midst of the Change, Yoav fiercely refused any type of play - he adamantly said he "didn't play" and wouldn't even consider making a toy much less playing with it!

Today, making the doll, Yoav had SO MUCH FUN! He enjoyed choosing the colors for the bed and the doll and as soon as it was finished, he ran up to show his Aba and then he and Elie drove the dolls around in a truck. I'm very happy to have this phase of his life squarely behind us!

Language Arts Block 1 / Week 4

2011-11-15T03:25:00.000-08:00

This is our last week of this block of Language Arts. We've both enjoyed this block so much! It has such a perfect order - I love that about it :)

We started woodworking this week. We're going to try to do woodworking once a week. We got wood a few weeks ago at a wood shop in Yishi (five minutes away!), but Jeremy hasn't been able to do the woodworking when I had it planned (Thursdays), so we're going to try doing it on Sundays since he doesn't usually work on Sundays. They're using the book "Carpentry for Children" by Lester Walker. It's a fantastic book - it starts with a list of materials and tools needed and then has a series of projects to help you advance in woodworking. The first project (started this week) is to build a woodworking table. Yoav really enjoyed it and did pretty well with the sawing!

I'm going to branch away from Marsha Johnson's Form Drawing Guide for now because I want to move on to some more advanced forms. I'm reading Ron Jarman's "Teaching Mathematics in Rudolf Steiner Schools" and he recommends that first graders do some mirror forms early in First Grade, so I want to at least get some mirror forms in during the first semester. I love Mrs. M's book though for showing me how to use stories to introduce the forms.

The story I made up this week for this form (form from Ernst Schuberth's "Form Drawing for Grades 1-4") is:

Yesterday as we were taking our morning walk, I was watching the ants going toward the forest to find pieces of straw and then carrying the straw into their home. When they were looking for the straw, they looked around for a good piece like this (draw the first 1/3 of the form), then when they found a piece they liked, they headed straight for the house (draw middle 1/3 of the form). When they got close, to find the entrance, they walked around in a circle like this (draw rightmost 1/3 of form) until they found the house and could bring the straw in.

Yoav's form drawing

I'm very much enjoying the chalk drawings for this block. I'm feeling much more confident in my drawing - I love that chalk can be erased and drawn over with other chalk - it's a very forgiving medium! I think I mentioned this before, but I'm using the crayons sold at Paper, Scissors, Stone on this page on the top right called "Blackboard Chalks". They are much more vibrant (and more pleasing to draw with) than the Prang chalk that I also got based on recommendations.

This week our story was "The Golden Goose" (Grimm's). My friend R, a very talented artist, emailed me her chalkboard drawing to use as inspiration. I did my best to copy her goose and then used "Coloring with Block Crayons" by Sieglinde De Francesca for help with the tree (I still need a lot of tree-drawing practice!). The hidden letters, which I'll reveal on Wednesday are a T in the tree and a G as the goose's little nest. The G is more obvious than past letters I've done, but it's how R did it and I like how it looks and then the full form of the G is semi-hidden (rather than just a C, which would have been all I could have hidden simply with the goose). Again, I'm using the form of the letters in Audrey McAllen's "Teaching Children Handwriting" - it's not standard, but this is the form she recommends for the letter G.

My chalkboard drawing for "The Golden Goose"

A few months ago, when my in-laws were visiting, we got Yoav a gold stick crayon from Omer (near my in-law's apartment). I didn't include it with his school crayons since it's not really a recommended First Grade color :) But, for the golden goose, I put the crayon in his crayon basket and he was so excited to see it and to be able to draw the golden goose with a gold crayon!

Yoav's crayon drawing for "The Golden Goose"

Learning from Gordon Neufeld - Part I

2011-11-13T02:15:00.000-08:00

I promised several people that I would write a bit about my Gordon Neufeld parenting class, so I'm going to do my best to share some key things that I've learned and to point the way to further studies.

First, I will share that I read his book, "Hold on to Your Kids" when my oldest was no more than two or three-years-old. At the time, I was not particularly enamored with the book, as it is primarily focused on peer-orientation, a situation in which kids' primary attachment figure (which should be a parent), becomes another child, which, Neufeld says, is like the blind leading the blind :) I fully understand this and think the book provides wonderful exposure to a little-known phenomenon for people who's kids go to school, but my experience tells me that peer-orientation is very rarely a risk for homeschooled kids. However, what I missed in my first reading was Neufeld's depth and research and ideas related to the healthy development of all children, even those not at risk of peer-orientation!

For those whose kids are in school, I highly recommend reading the entire book; for homeschoolers, I recommend starting with Part I (general background about peer-orientation and the all-important chapter "A Matter of Attaching" describing the six ways of attaching) and Part III (particularly Chapters 16, 18, 19, and 20). IMO, the key chapters are Chapters 2 ("A Matter of Attachment"), 16 ("Collecting Our Children") and 19 ("Discipline That Does Not Divide"). I have read these three chapters several times over the past few months and I especially love Chapter 19. My husband recently read only Chapter 19, and from that chapter alone, he gained a much deeper understanding of Neufeld's teachings (I stumbled on this fortuitous encounter - for months I tried to get him to listen to this API Live audio and/or to read the full book - finally it occurred to me that I should start small and I have been more than happy with this relatively small step!)

I am now taking one of Neufeld's "Power to Parent" course. I've just completed the first section of the course (The Vital Connection). I'm going to try writing some of the most important things I've learned, but I highly highly recommend hearing it all first-hand from Neufeld! If you can afford the class, it is well worth the cost!

Session One - Our Hidden Source of Power

I was made aware of another blogger who has posted summaries about each of these lectures, so I'll include links to her blog for each lecture. For more on this lecture, see here.

In this session, Neufeld teaches that a well-attached child is a child who is easy to parent. Period. This is the golden key to parenting. By attachment, he does not simply mean the attachment-lite eight principles of Attachment Parenting! He says that attachment is "that drive or relationship characterized by the pursuit and preservation of proximity."

Session Two - Becoming Attached

For more on this lecture, see here.

From Chapter 2 of the book, the six stages of attachment are:

1. Senses - "The child needs to sense the person he is attached to, whether it is through smell, sight, hearing or touch. Nearness is pursued and attempts are made to preserve it."
2. Sameness - "...seeking to be like those she is attached to and attempts to assume the same form of existence or expression, by imitation and emulation."
3. Belonging and Loyalty - "To be close to someone or something is to possess it or claim it as one's own."
4. Significance - "...we feel we matter to somebody. To find favour, or to be dear to someone, is to ensure closeness and connection. The attaching preschooler seeks ardently to please and to win approval.... Such children live for the happy face of those attached to."
5. Feeling - "...warm feelings, loving feelings, affectionate feelings.... the pursuit of emotional intimacy becomes intense. A child who experiences this kind of emotional intimacy with the parent is able to tolerate much more physical separation and yet still manage to hold the parent close."
6. Being Known - "To feel close to someone is to be known by them. In the pursuit of closeness, a child will share his secrets... Parent-oriented children do not like to keep secrets from their parents because of the resulting loss of closeness."

To be emotionally healthy and develop a strong attachment, a child must reach level six of attachment with his parents. We need to help our children attach by determining at what level they're at and helping them attach at deeper levels (higher numbers are deeper).

Neufeld has a wonderful picture of the gift (and responsibility) of a strong parent/child attachment - the picture is of a heart with the words "Adult" and "Child" surrounded by shield with the words "Attachment" and arrows shooting from the outside but not penetrating the shield of attachment. This picture is worth a million words for me. An additional piece of the puzzle is that a child has no shield from the parent to whom they are well-attached. So, if we shame a child, or cause separation (physical or through ignoring) or alarm, the child HAS NO PROTECTION!!!

I think this is one of the most important pieces that I've learned from this course so far. This type of situation results in "defensive detachment" which means "when being close to someone sets us up for a vulnerability too much to bear, the brain can reverse the attachment instincts, resulting in resisting proximity where one should be pursuing it." If you hear a child say to a parent, "yeah, whatever" or "I don't care" - that's defensive detachment - it means the child is afraid of getting hurt by the parent so he becomes defended against vulnerability - he protects himself from feeling vulnerable by putting up a wall.

That might not sound so bad, but it's imperative that a child's heart remains "soft" (not defended against vulnerability!) to become or stay deeply attached, and as you might remember from session one, the full attachment is what makes the child easy to parent :)

So, our primary goal as parents is "to make it safe and easy for our children to attach to us." This means at the most basic level, reducing separation (physical like time-outs, verbal like yelling, non-verbal like ignoring) and increasing attachment (he discusses later how to increase attachment).

Session Three - Harnessing the Power of Attachment

For more on this lecture, see here.

The three ways we harness the power of attachment are through Collecting, Giving something of our's to hold onto and Inviting Dependence.

Collecting is fairly well explained in Chapter 16. However, the piece that wasn't so clear to me from the book is that we have to collect based on the child's level of attachment. So, to collect a one-year-old, we use touch - we hold the baby and make sweet sounds and we immediately get the eye contact we seek; to collect a two-year-old, we might talk about how we both have blue eyes. You would not (necessarily) collect a 10-year-old with physical contact and you certainly wouldn't collect a baby by sharing a secret :) So it's important to know at what attachment level your children are so that you collect them based on their level of attachment.

He explains in the course as well as in the book that you must "collect before you direct". If you want your child to do something, you must collect them first. I was turned off by this when I initially read the book because it seemed formulaic to me. In practice, though, it doesn't have to be (though strictly-speaking it certainly can be used in such a way). Slowly, with practice, you can learn to collect your kids before making requests (verbal or otherwise).

One of the amazing things about Waldorf Education is that much of Neufeld's teaching is built into the Waldorf Method (the same could be said, though to a lesser extent, about Judaism). In Waldorf, we collect our kids with a song when we wake up; each time we ask our kids to do the next activity, we do so through a connecting song; meals are begun with a song and prayer; we collect with Circle Time before we start Main Lesson; Main Lesson itself begins with a verse during which we're standing making eye contact, etc. Each transition song helps to collect our kids before we begin the next activity.

Neufeld discusses giving the child something to hold onto in Chapter 19, so I'm going to skip it here.

I love his discussion of inviting the child to depend on us. This is something that is so very poorly understood in our world today. People think that we will spoil a child by doing things for a two year old, much less a five year old. Neufeld says that to spoil meat is to leave it out of it's proper environment, the refrigerator; likewise, we spoil kids by taking them out of their safe environment, ie, proximity with their parents. He tells a story about the parents in Provence, where parenting is much more instinctual and nourishing - he says you would never see a child in Provence going into the refrigerator to get themselves food - this is for the parents to do and, by doing so, they invite dependence! Of course, we don't have to prepare every single meal for our kids, but it is certainly food for thought (pun intended!) The more we invite our children to depend on us, the more safe/secure they feel, and, in Waldorf terms, it means we aren't pulling them into their heads and away from the world of imagination in which they thrive.

Particularly important is to invite dependence with Alpha children - these are the children whom we might have leaned on a bit too much (telling the child, "I need help") or given too much say in the schedule or their upbringing. Alpha kids are those who decide what to do for the day, what to eat, what color the walls are painted, what clothes the mother wears, etc, etc. These are the kids who eventually bully their parents. I was asked by someone to touch on what to do when a "three year old is going on thirteen, saying 'moooooommmm!!', 'don't talk' and giving (her mother) 'the look'." My understanding is that this is a case of an Alpha child. The solution is simply for the parents to regain the position of Alpha - don't ask too many questions (as in Waldorf), don't appear to give in to demands (if you plan on one painting and the child wants to do two and you decide to do two, say, "Ah, yes, I was planning to do two paintings today" and pull out another piece of paper so you remain in the lead), you can even remind the child that you're taking care of him (eg if he's concerned/anxious about what's for the next meal - this is something he shouldn't need to worry about and you can simply tell him not to worry, that you're taking care of him). You don't have to actually *have* the answer to everything - the point is that you ARE the answer. You can use phrases like, "I'm taking care of this" or "I'll figure this out" or "Let me think about it" if you're not sure what to do.

The idea of inviting dependence is very important I think and it's something that Neufeld explains very clearly in his lecture.

I'll also go into an aside here about futility which I think is part of being a strong alpha parent. This is discussed some in his book and is clearer to me after taking the Power to Parent course. When Yoav was younger, I was very much affected by Jane Liedloff's "The Continuum Concept" and I was very uncomfortable with futilities, much less futilities of my own doing! As an example, if Yoav's banana broke, I would try to fix it for him by mushing it back together and hoping he'd eat it without it falling apart, rather than simply telling him that it was broken and comforting him through hugs if he needed to cry about the broken banana. As a result, he is not resilient - he is not often uncomfortable facing problems. Since studying Neufeld, I've been working on softening him by being "an agent of futility and an angel of comfort" - not only helping him through externally-imposed futilities like rain or a broken banana, but even creating futilities like saying we're not going into the forest today. The important thing about feeling futilities is for the child to move from mad to sad - first they might get angry - "I want to go into the forest!" and stomp feet and whatnot. When the parent stands firm (lovingly, not yelling that we're not going into the forest LOL), the child will eventually soften and feel sad. It is the sadness that allows the child to move on and to see that "all is still well" in the world (versus not moving past mad, which results in repressed feelings) - proximity and connection with his attachment figure hasn't been broken and, on top of that, he is able to consider solutions to the problem if one is needed - such as perhaps asking if we can go into the forest in the afternoon.

The key to understanding if we should stand firm or give in is to understand if the desire is a need or want. Of course, you can give in or find a solution sometimes - you don't always have to go through this exercise, which can be quite time-consuming! It's a beautiful thing to see the child move from mad to sad - you eventually learn to recognize the tell-tale signs of softening, of the shoulders slumping or allowing you to come close to cuddle if the child is in defensive detachment.

I know this got long - there is much more in the video on this section and it is explained so clearly by Neufeld - as you can tell, this was a very important session for me ;)

Session Four - Competing Attachments

For more on this lecture, see here.

I think this is all fairly well explained in the book - the idea that attachment is like a polarized magnet - pursuit of proximity with one person results in resistance of another. This explains shyness - the child seeks proximity with his primary attachment figure and at the same time resists proximity with the stranger. Shyness serves attachment and children should be allowed to grow out of it naturally! This is something that many people in our society do NOT understand :)

This lecture was mostly in the book - he explains that a strong attachment with the child will allow him to emerge into personhood which will allow him to relate to peers without loss of individuality or loss of adult attachment. The primary sign of a competing attachment is when proximity with one leads to resistance to proximity with the other (if you're seeing your child on their iphone/ipad at the dinner table so they can continue to be on facebook or chat with their friends, you are facing competing attachments and need to read the book ASAP and take this class!!!)

One interesting thing I learned in this lecture (which is probably in the book in the chapter on Creating an Attachment Village) is that, for kids who go to school, it's very important for the parent to be the person to introduce the child to the parent. So, first the parent meets the teacher and then introduces the teacher to the child - this way, the attachment relationship is preserved.

It will probably be a few days before I get a chance to write more about the remaining lectures, so I'll just leave links to summaries at thedreamtowrite blog...

Session Five - Preserving and Restoring the Ties that Empower

For more on this lecture, see here.

Session Six - Handling Aggression

For more on this lecture, see here.

Session Seven - Handling Counterwill

For more on this lecture, see here.

Session Eight- Guidelines for Discipline

For more on this lecture, see here.

To buy the CDs for this course ($165), click HERE!!!

Painting Day

2011-11-10T11:59:00.000-08:00

This is Yoav's painting for today. We have been doing directed paintings, meaning that I tell a story as we paint together.

Today the story went something like this (based on ideas from Live Ed):

Yellow woke up this morning and was happy to hear the birds singing outside the window and the light streaming inside. She was so full of joy today and wanted to fill the whole house with her joy! *begin painting with the yellow, line by line, moving toward middle very slowly* As she was spreading her joy through the house, she heard a knock on the door and her friend Blue came in. Blue was feeling a bit shy but wanted to come play with Yellow - he came slowly toward Yellow. *start painting blue, slower than yellow* Yellow hurried up to come find Blue *more yellow until yellow is about 2/3 of page and blue is 1/3 of page*. Then they saw each other and started to dance! *paint blue over the yellow* Ah, Green came to join them! (Yoav noticed this right away and said himself something along these lines about Green joining, not making the color green). The three of them danced and danced until they were too tired to dance anymore. *fill middle third of page with green*

I love this one because it looks like a sun/grass/sea painting without actually being that. So there isn't any pressure to paint a certain way or to look just so but it ends up as a beautiful painting (and of course is a color exercise and practice holding and using the brush properly)! I'm enjoying doing these painting with Yoav. I've never been very good at drawing or painting - I've always preferred the more precise arts of needlework, sewing and knitting - so this is really stretching me.

Musical Rooms

2011-11-10T11:36:00.000-08:00

Since we moved into our house in March, I've been trying to figure out which rooms should be for what. Initially, I picked a room on the main level for my sewing room and planned to use what was built as a TV/screen room (love the irony of this as we don't have a TV and you can see the photos below of what the room turned into!) as the playroom and schoolroom. Since it was supposed to be a TV room, the walls are dark blue and there is no ceiling light - not ideal for a Waldorf schoolroom! So, I moved my sewing stuff into a guest room and gave up my sewing room for a bit while I used the sewing room as a school room:

Original schoolroom

I thought it would be best to have a separate schoolroom for several reasons:

1. So Yoav wouldn't get distracted by the toys;

2. So the schoolroom would be on the same level as the outside and kitchen so we wouldn't have to go up and down stairs;

3. So kids (not mine) wouldn't "play school" with our actual school supplies.

As it turned out, Elie doesn't have the patience to listen to a full fairy tale (and I don't want him to listen anyway!), so I brought a few toys into the school room and then to avoid schlepping toys up and down, I decided it would be easier to just put the school desks in the playroom and make a combined play/schoolroom.

I solved the problem of kids playing with our school supplies by putting the supplies in a separate room - only the desks, chalkboards, and painting boards stay in the play/schoolroom.

And without further ado, here is our new play/school room :)

Play / School Room

I beyond love how it is working out. I still want to paint (hopefully Lazure paint) the walls peach and we need a ceiling lamp, but we are making do with a new floor lamp. Elie mostly plays while we do our school stuff and Yoav loves school so much, we haven't had any issues with him being distracted.

And, the best part of all is that I get my sewing room back. I really missed it. And I took our old kitchen table as a second table to use for cutting fabric, so now it's even better than it was before all the room switches ;)

Sewing Room

Now to start sewing! :)

Language Arts Block 1 / Week 3

2011-11-09T05:48:00.000-08:00

We're almost through our third week of our first LArts block. I'm enjoying this block so much! I hope the next block (Math - Quality of Numbers) is as much fun.

The story for this week was "The Fisherman and his Wife" by Grimm's, which is a fantastic story - a fisherman finds an enchanted fish and throws it back into the sea, but when his wife hears, she asks him to ask the fish for a wish - first for a hut, then soon after she tires of that and asks for a castle, then when she tires of that, she demands her husband to ask for her to be King, then Emperor and then, the ultimate, she demands that her husband ask the fish for her to be "like unto G-d", at which point, instead of granting her wish, the fish returns the couple to their life in their original pig-sty.

Steiner teaches that it's best for the storyteller to have the meaning of the story in mind when telling the story. I highly recommend the book "The Interpretation of Fairy Tales" by Roy Wilkinson for this. There is also a book called "The Wisdom of Fairy Tales" by Rudolf Meyer which is supposed to be very good as well.

My chalkboard drawing with hidden letters (F in fish, W in waves) - copied from here.

Yoav really enjoyed drawing this one. He said it was his favorite (actually I think he says that every week, so I guess it really doesn't mean much!)

Yoav's drawing

The letters were revealed on the third day (F in the fish and W in the waves):

Letters revealed - F(ish), W(aves)

Then Yoav practiced writing the letters in the air and hovering over his page and then on my back and then drew them on his drawing paper:

Yoav's letters (form of letters are from Audrey McAllen's "Handwriting with Children", which I HIGHLY recommend!)

Yoav made these letters out of chickpeas as part of our Word Games Morning Activity today, when we play games with the new letters (like today - I found a fish on the floor and then went to a field filled with flies and then I fell, etc etc - each person adds to the story when it's his turn).

Extra letter exercise as part of our Wednesday morning Word Games activity

I love that I found these shapes on the coffee table this afternoon. Yoav didn't even tell me he had made them.

Our craft today was to make Shabbos candles - we used beeswax from a gift from my SIL from Magic Cabin. Yoav had the idea of adding the Stars of David. A friend of mine from NY wrote an article about making beeswax Shabbos candles with a suggestion of where to get cheaper beeswax sheets. I was buying beeswax candles from Safed Candles, but I want to find a source for beeswax sheets in Israel so we can start making our own!

Yoav's Seventh Birthday Party

2011-11-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

Today was Yoav's seventh birthday party. Everything went well but I'm very glad it's over :) The format was very similar to his party last year.

We had eight kids total, including my two. The common Waldorf recommendation is to have as many kids as your child's age plus one.

The kids were already over for a Gordon Neufeld parenting class being hosted at my house. After the class, the kids played on the trampoline with a mother who is a gymnast and gymnastics teacher (not planned, but was a great start to the party!)

Yoav attempting a flip

Then we had lunch (rice noodles and tomato sauce plus pita, hummus and salad).

Then we started the official part of the party.

I sang our Nature Walk transition song:

I love to go a wandering
Along the mountain Path
And as I go I laugh and sing
My knapsack on my back
Valdaree, valdarah, valdaree, valdarah ha ha hah hah ha
Valdaree,valdarah, my knapsack on my back

And we headed off into the forest - the entrance behind our next-door neighbor's house leads to a nice path where I had put all of our bean bags (I made 12 rainbow beanbags and Yoav hand-stitched 8 felt ones). I put them in little wax bags to protect them from possible rain and/or dirt.

My beanbags - cut fabric 4.5"x4.5", used 1/4 inch seams, stuffed with white rice and topstitched over the opening.

Yoav's beanbags - this was completely his idea, start to finish - he decided to make them, he chose the colors (other than the white one, which is the cheap felt I gave him for the first one when I thought he wouldn't be successful - whoops!), did all the stitching other than the start and end knots and he stuffed them with lentils.

Running toward the path for the scavenger hunt

Searching for beanbags

Trading beanbags - the made-by-Yoav beanbags were the hot commodity

Next we started Circle outside but it was too sunny so we went down to the basement. I really enjoyed doing Circle with so many kids. I kept it very similar to our most recent Circle. It was great to see all the kids watching me so closely and following along. I felt like a Kindergarten teacher :) We did:

Circle opening - Let us Form a Ring (Nancy Foster)
Clapping game - Pease Porridge (all the kids loved this, though there was some initial bickering about who would play with who - I solved this by telling the kids first they'd play with the person to their left and then we'd do it again with the person on their right)
Fingerplay - Where is Thumkin (many/all? knew this one, so it was a good one for starting the finger plays)
Fingerplay - Ten Little Children Dancing on the Shore
Five Little Soldiers standing in a row
Fingerplay - Ten Tall Candles (Donna Simmons)
Tongue Twister - Peter Piper
Movement - Whisky, Frisky (A Child's Seasonal Treasury)
Movement - Gallop Away, Gallop Away (A Child's Seasonal Treasury?)
Game - Jump over the river (jump over two sticks that are moved further and further apart - A Child's Seasonal Treasury)
Game - Beanbag Man with Dragon variation (written by Marsha Johnson)
Closing - "Here and Listen, Listen and Hear, Now our Story Time Draws Near"

Circle

Circle (Whisky Frisky)

Circle (beanbag game)

Then we went upstairs for the puppet show/story, which was all set up in the sewing room. I started by lighting a candle and singing "Mother of the Fairy Tale" (Nancy Foster) on the pentatonic xylophone. I told "The Frangipani Maiden" from "Healing Stories for Challenging Behavior". We got a video, but it needs a little editing for me to be willing to post it. I LOVED doing the story for so many kids. It was very fulfilling to see all those shining faces with wide-open eyes. I even got applause at the end ;)

Then our eating transition song: "Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to our table; Welcome, welcome, let's all hold hands together."

Birthday cake (with homemade candles)

I sang the "It was seven years ago today, today... " song - see here for full song. Then we sang Happy Birthday and the kids did the little Are you One, Are you Two game, which he enjoyed. Yoav made a wish and all the kids helped blow out the candles. The cake was very well-received - it was devoured in minutes - it was the carrot cake from the "The Waldorf Kindergarten Snack Book" for the third birthday in a row.

Next I sang our craft transition song: "With these living hands, let wonders unfold, and show to us beauty and visions untold." and moved the kids into the living room for an embroidery craft. Each child got a 7" embroidery hoop pre-fitted with linen fabric (from Gray Line Fabric in NYC) and a gold-eye chenille needle. I had a lot of colors of embroidery floss prepared - separated into three strands, cut the length of my arm and knotted at the end - so I only had to thread needles and tie final knots during the craft. The kids first drew pictures on their fabric with water-erasable markers and then they worked on their embroidery. They brought home the hoops and needles as part of the party favor.

Giving directions for the embroidery

Yoav's embroidery (horse)

At the end, we did a little tradition learned from one of our friends at the party - each child gave Yoav a coin for him to put in the tzedakah box.

And, finally, the day was over and everyone left. I think Yoav was very happy with the actual birthday last week and the party today. I'll likely use this same format next year - it's very similar to our daily rhythm.

Happy Seventh Birthday Yoavi!!! I hope it's a great year!

Language Arts Block 1 / Week 2

2011-11-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

We have guests coming this weekend and Yoav's birthday party on Sunday (cake to be made, story to be memorized and props to be organized, bean bag party favors to be filled and topstitched...), so this will be quick, but I want to post all the lovely photos from this week.

I'm loving this method - it is so thorough and so deep. And it's so enjoyable that I'm finally able to really maintain our rhythm ;)

Yoav has very much enjoyed both Grimm's stories we've done so far and this week (as you'll see), the recall went much better. For those who are on Marsha Johnson's Yahoo group (WaldorfHomeEducators), I posted about our difficulty with recall and got a wonderful response.

On Monday (Yoav's birthday - he turned 7), I simply told our new story - Grimm's "The Water of Life". We didn't do anything else for "school" on that day.

On Tuesday, I revealed my chalkboard drawing - it's the youngest son holding a Jug (wording changed from a cup in the actual story) of the Water of Life, talking to the dwarf, with the Mountains in the distance (where the two elder brothers were stuck. We got lucky with recall on this day - Elie laid down on the floor and said he didn't want to do school. Yoav was so eager to draw that he offered to tell the story, which somehow suited Elie and led to Yoav doing a recall of the full story! I was very surprised at how much he remembered of the story (especially considering the resistance to recall in the past) without needing any assistance from me. He even remembered details such as the two lions by the door of the castle to whom the youngest brother threw two loaves of bread.

Then Yoav drew the same drawing:

On Wednesday, I "revealed" the two letters - J for Jug filled with the Water of Life and M for Mountains...

Two girls next door were off school and one joined us during our morning walk and then the other soon after. They joined in with us for Circle and when it was time to go into the schoolroom, I invited them to join us (I let them know we were doing school - they were so curious and excited to get a peek into our day!). So, again, we had a lucky recall situation - I asked Yoav to tell the girls the story while I got the paper and drawing pads ready for the girls ;)

Then they all drew the M and J - I love that the girls were so careful about it, following the exact format we do and using two colors for the letters just like us, even though these are likely the only two letters they'll do with us and the drawings will probably end up in the trash rather than in a Main Lesson Book.

These are Yoav's letters - again the format and method of drawing are from Audrey McAllen's "Teaching Children Handwriting".

And, finally, Yoav and Elie had SO much fun together this afternoon. Yoav was actually getting agitated in the early afternoon after the craft (hand-sewn felt beanbags for his birthday) so I whisked the kids (well, I honestly never whisk - I'm actually much too slow getting sippy cups and clothes together LOL) out to the forest to play. They brought their bikes and biked along a path that's a perfect ramp for them - over and over, they biked one at a time down the ramp (followed by the dog each time, which brought lots of laughs) and then walked their bikes back up. That very much calmed the energy and once it started to get cold and dark outside, we headed in for dinner. While I was making dinner and then again afterwards, the boys played with the tree blocks and wood animals together. It was such sweet play. Yoav mostly was making the structures and then would talk to Yoav in a big-brother voice about which house was for Elie and where Elie should park his truck and such. A funny quote to add since I've been lax about my Monday Memories: Yoav said he was a woodworker and was 50 years old and had been a woodworker for 30 years. Elie was very confused and said, "But Yoav, you are seven." Yoav said he was just 50 in the game, to which Elie said, "Oh, in the game.." It's hard to separate real life from fiction when you're three ;)

Knitting Bag

2011-10-30T01:19:00.000-07:00

I made this little knitting bag for Yoav's birthday (along with the tool belt). He picked the colors without knowing what I was making and I love how it turned out!

I used this tutorial. There's a little pocket inside for accessories. I think I'll put one of my stitch counters in the pocket for him. I'll give it to him with his needles and yarn inside.

Teaching the Letters

2011-10-26T13:33:00.000-07:00

So, we're almost through our first week of the first Language Arts block (tomorrow is watercolor painting). In some ways, I've been looking toward this week for years - trying to keep the world from getting in our way of teaching the letters and reading in the "Waldorf Way" - I am one of a small handful of mothers who never sang the alphabet song (and have even been known to ask friends to sing different songs if that one comes up LOL); I've kept the pens out of reach and told Yoav that I would write the words to his stories even when he was asking for me to show him how; I've avoided telling him the names of the letters until I could do it in this special Waldorf way.

That time has finally come!

The resources I used for planning this block are:
* Marsha Johnson's Fairy Tales Block - available free via the WaldorfHomeEducators Yahoo group - I cannot say enough good things about Marsha's materials. They are the best I've seen, even as compared to pay-for curriculum guides I've purchased and/or reviewed.
* Eric Fairman's "P"Path of Discovery for First Grade" - invaluable, especially for the price!
* Audrey McAllen's "Teaching Children Handwriting"

This week we learned the letters B and V. Such a fun week - I love that he is so utterly teachable - he oohs and aahs every step of the way, loves hearing me tell stories, carefully draws his drawings and letters, loves to knit and keeps his knitting next to the couch so he can add a row or two each day (and has been learning math from the knitting -this week telling me that two 2s is 4; two 4s is 8; two 8s is 16 and two 16s is 32 - he's doing 16 stitches per row and I'm pretty sure he figured out two 16s from the knitting as I can't think of another way to figure it out). I'm SO glad I found homeschooling and Waldorf in particular (since he seems so well-suited to this method) so I can help him retain that love of learning.

On Monday, I told the Grimm's Fairy Tale "Rose Red and Snow White". I read it to myself once a day since Thursday to remember it well enough to be able to tell the story (versus reading it, which is frowned upon in Waldorf). I also read the meaning of the story in Wilkinson's "The Interpretation of Fairy Tales". Wilkinson is adamant that the story teller understand the meaning of the Tale in order that the child will pick up on the hidden meaning.

On Tuesday, we recalled the story (the two of us together) and I revealed my chalkboard drawing of the story (the poorly-drawn brown animal on the ground is a bear and the one in the tree is a vulture):

Then (on Tuesday), I pulled off the playsilk to reveal the drawing. Yoav's whole face lit up when he saw the drawing and told me that he didn't know I could draw so well :) He then drew his drawing based on mine - even though he is very confident with his drawing, he understood that the idea was to copy mine as closely as possible. He stood up a few times and got close to my drawing to see how I had drawn things and I redrew the trees for him because he said he loved them and didn't know how to draw them the way I did. It was amazing to me that he retained the hidden letters in his (see below - the B and V).

On Wednesday (today), I told the story again with his help ("recall", which he doesn't like and which I'll write about later). I then revealed the two hidden letters - the B and V, said the sounds (I did not say they are called B and V, just called them by their sounds 'buh' and 'vuh') and showed him by drawing over the letters with chalk and then with my fingers in the air how to draw them. I'm using the writing method described in Audrey McAllen's "Teaching Children Handwriting". She shows how to write each letter - the B is obvious, but she says to write a V by first starting at the top left, going down to the bottom, then lifting up the pen/crayon and starting back at the top right and drawing down to the middle again.

Next Yoav drew the letters. Since we did two letters this week I folded the paper in half for him to draw both on one page. Some people do not introduce every letter in this way (in Path of Discovery, Fairman says you can leave some that the children will "take on authority", but since Yoav really doesn't know any of the letters yet, I want to introduce most of them in this way.) I drew the letters next to Yoav - we used the thick side of a block crayon to draw the borders, then drew the letters with the short side of a block crayon, first in one color and then in a second color on top, then used a block crayon to fill in the rest of the white on the page. I then asked him to think of six words (because he's six and is full of love of the number six right now) that start with each letter. He enjoyed this and thought of bath, bed, bear, bus, and bee for B (I said the first one to get us started); V is harder and he added the word vitamin (which I hadn't thought of last night when I was thinking of alliterative verses!) to my selection of void, vapor, vanish...

Our Morning Activity on Wednesday was Word Games, so we spent the time doing alliterative versus ("The big black bee bit the big brown bear and the big brown bear bled blood."), etc. Then for each letter, we played a "game" of taking turns adding a word to a story that starts with the given letter. So, for B, we went back and forth adding to our story, which went something like this: "A boy at the bus stop help a balloon and blew bubbles and he got on the bus with a bunny and a bear and ..." He enjoyed this and even asked Jeremy later to "play" with him :)

On Thursday, we brought a long rope outside and made the letters and walked them as we said, "vuh, vuh, vuh - violin, viola, voila, vitamin, van, etc." and then the same with the letter B. Yoav enjoyed this -he made the letters himself.

Unrelated to the letters, our afternoon activity was to make walnut candles. The directions are in "The Children's Year" by Stephanie Cooper. First you open up walnuts and scoop out the flesh; then you heat beeswax using the double-boiler method (we used a metal measuring cup with beeswax placed into a pot of boiling water), pour the beeswax into the walnut shell and when it starts to harden a little, put a pre-waxed 1.5" wick into the center and you can hold it in place with matches as shown below. It's SUCH a great activity - short, minimal mess, exciting to watch the beeswax soften and then harden in the new form and practical! We made seven for Yoav's birthday coming up in a few days - we'll let them float in a bowl of water!

Yoav's Birthday

2011-10-25T12:56:00.000-07:00

Yoav's birthday is coming up. On the day of his birthday, we're going to go to his favorite restaurant with his cousins (who can't come to his birthday party because they go to school). Then we're going to do his birthday party the Sunday after his birthday - he's inviting five friends and then with him and Elie, it'll be seven. Waldorf recommends having the number of kids equal to the child's age, though I forget if it means including the child or not, but it's close enough and we're inviting the only friends he has (other than neighborhood kids) :)

I haven't figured everything out for the party yet, but I think I'm going to make boo-boo-bags (flax filled bean bags) to hide for a scavenger hunt like what we did last year, but I'll do a better job with the hiding - so that will be a combined game and playing in the forest, then I'll do some of the Circle games we've been doing this year that the kids love, I'll do a puppet show, cake and that's about it...

I just finished up his gift and wanted to share... We're giving him tools (using the list of tools needed in "Carpentry for Children" by Lester Walker) and I made him a tool belt using this pattern. I made it one inch longer and with canvas rather than thin fabric, since it will be for real tools rather than plastic ones. It doesn't have to be so perfectly useful, I know he'll love wearing it either way - the kids in Walker's books are wearing their toolbelts in all the photos and I don't see any tools sticking out :)

First Chalkboard Drawing

2011-10-24T15:11:00.000-07:00

I'm going to expose myself here, mostly for my own interest in seeing my growth.

This is my first chalkboard drawing - the brown figure on the ground is supposed to be a bear (the B will come out of the head and body) and the brown figure in the tree is supposed to be a vulture (the V will come out of the neck).

In addition to my drawing abilities, I realize that my chalkboard is also terrible - it is supposedly for school use, but the chalkboard paint is painted too thick with a brush and you can actually see the lines. :( I'll have to make a project of sanding and painting it myself or finding a better one.

I do like the chalk, though - I'm using the chalk called "Blackboard Chalk" sold here at Paper, Scissors, Stone.

They recently did a custom green lapboard for me, and now I see that they are offering green chalkboards on their site :) Their chalkboards are really good - I got lap boards for the kids.

Starting Letters!

2011-10-24T13:50:00.000-07:00

This week we're starting our first Language Arts Block - we'll be introducing letters via a three day rhythm of: Day 1) telling a fairy tale; Day 2) drawing a chalkboard drawing of a part of the tale with one or two letters "hidden" in the drawing plus recall with Yoav of the story; Day 3) seeing the letters in the chalkboard drawing and drawing them in the Main Lesson Book.

This week we are starting with the letters B and V (both simple letters that only make one sound, versus letters we'll do later like G or C). We're using the Grimm's Fairy Tale "Snow White and Rose Red". I told the story today and Yoav L-O-V-E-D it. When I finished he said he wanted to hear it again (I said we'd do it again tomorrow) and he said it was the best story he's ever heard ;)

Now tonight I have to draw a chalkboard drawing of a Bear and Vulture (in the story it's actually an eagle).

Overall, our days are going so well lately. We seem to have found our groove (for the moment). I've worked out a few of the early kinks (like putting the desks face-to-face instead of side-to-side and bringing a few toys for Elie into the school room). The Power-to-Parent Neufeld class I'm taking here has helped a lot as well. It is giving me confidence to deal with difficult moments we have with sibling squabbles or Yoav's frustration that I didn't have before.

Meanwhile, I think both due to a combination of parenting changes learned through my Neufeld studies and simple growing up, Yoav is so easy to teach. When he sees a drawing paper on his desk, he says, "Are we doing something certain or whatever I want?" If I say something certain, he's totally happy with that and follows along. Today we did a Form Drawing at the start of Main Lesson. I told a story of a bird who found a worm in the garden and flew up to the roof and then when she finished, flew back down again (from Marsha Johnson's Form Drawing book).

He did the Form:

and then during the free time between Main Lesson and Morning Activity, he drew a picture of the Form Drawing story:

Our Morning Activity was beeswax modeling in which I've seen a tremendous change this year. I posted to WaldorfHomeEducators (the Yahoo group run by Marsha Johnson) on May 13 of this year about Yoav not wanting to learn from me or to do age-appropriate activities. I wrote:

My 6.5yo son doesn't want to start easy to learn how to do things - hewants to do complicated things that are well beyond hisabilities/level. As an example, he wants to be able to make a firetruck out of modeling wax. He won't sit with me with a single colorof modeling wax and make simple things like a bird's egg or star. IfI give him some red wax, he gets frustrated that he can't actuallymake a fire truck.

We did very little modeling up until this year because it was too frustrating for Yoav. Now we do it every Monday for our Morning Activity. Today, for our beeswax modeling time, Yoav was given brown modeling wax and I said we were making acorns. No complaints, no request to make a fire truck LOL - he just got started warming his wax. His is below on the right, mine is on the left:

And here they are on our Fall Nature Table:

Now I'm off to attempt my first blackboard drawing. I'm full of low hopes :) I need to spend time with my "Drawing with Block Crayons" book and also the "Blackboard Drawing" book.

Sukkot

2011-10-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

It's late and we're starting a big week tomorrow so this will be quick. Tomorrow we're starting our first Language Arts blocks (learning the letters!) We're doing "Snow White and Rose Red" (Grimm's) to introduce the letters B and V. Just read it for the fourth time and I'm hoping it's enough (I'm telling the story, not reading). I'll be telling the story tomorrow, we draw a picture on Tuesday and then Wednesday, we'll "find" the letters in the picture and will write them and do verses and such.

We just finished up Sukkot here and I wanted to post a few photos of our Sukkah and the decorations.

Our Sukkah

Inside of the Sukkah

Rainbow finger-crocheted chain
(this was Yoav's idea - it's just like paper chains, but instead of paper loops, he made finger crochet loops)

Dried apples - we strung these the day before Sukkot and they were crunchy and yummy by Sukkot end - it was a perfect place to hang them since it was out of direct sunlight.

Flower crown (changed to garland) from Carol Petrash's "Earthways"

Learned to Knit!

2011-10-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

Yoav learned to knit this week for our Handwork activity! He's only been wanting to knit for, oh, four years now :) He's been very patient all these years - as a toddler, he helped me wind balls of wool; at age four, he learned to finger crochet; at age five, he learned to finger knit and finally now, knitting!

I used this article and this one to help with the planning.

I used the verse on Lisa's blog (the first link), but it wasn't ideal for us. The verse is:

In through the front door,
Run around the back,
Peek through the window,
Off jumps Jack!

Yoav kept inserting the right needle above the left needle, so I added "and into the basement" after the first line. I guess with that adjustment the verse works. Yoav certainly loved the last line - he laughed at that part for the first twenty or so stitches ;)

For anyone starting knitting with a little one, I highly recommend the book, "A First Book of Knitting for Children" by Bonnie Gosse and Jill Allerton. In hindsight, I think their verse would have worked better for Yoav since it includes an image of going under the left needle in the first line:

Under the fence,
Catch the sheep,
Back we come,
Off we leap.

It includes verses for casting on, purling, undoing stitches and a few other things.

For yarn, we used this chunky 4-ply 100% wool yarn, which is what we've been using for all of our finger crocheting/knitting. Yoav was very lucky to get about ten skeins from his Safta last year for his birthday! And he used needles he made last week using this tutorial!

In the video, when he asks when he can switch yarns, he means when can he learn how to change colors...

It was difficult for me to teach knitting - I had to bite my tongue quite a lot! Up until now, I really haven't done any "teaching" and nothing has been such a big leap as this (from finger knitting to needle knitting). It can be hard for me to watch him "muck about" (Holt) and let the learning happen if it seems slow to me, especially if he's doing something wrong (like holding his finger over the "window") that's obvious to me but not to him. I often wonder who's learning more in this homeschooling journey!

Happy Knitting!

Spinning!

2011-10-04T05:07:00.000-07:00

We are working towards the introduction of knitting in a slow, Waldorf-style way :) So far, we visited goats (I wanted him to see shearing, but couldn't figure out how to make that happen here, so far from the fabulous NYS Sheep and Wool Festival :( - he did see it there two years ago before we moved), then we carded wool and today we spun the wool. Initially I thought we were in over our heads and maybe there is an easier method of spinning for children, but once I got Elie to sleep for a nap, we did it!

I started by showing Yoav how to do it myself, based on what I learned in this Youtube video; then we worked on him spinning the drop spindle with his left hand while I held the unspun wool; finally, he managed to do it all himself. I was so excited I almost said "Good Job!", which hasn't happened yet, but this was the closest I've come :) I think I was more excited than he was!!

We are going to make knitting needles on Craft Day and then next week we'll start learning to knit!!! Yoav has been waiting and waiting to knit, asking on a regular basis when he'll get to learn to knit for well over a year. I think his patience will be well rewarded, since he's much more ready now in terms of fine motor skills (and, probably more importantly, he's more patient and resilient!) than he was a year ago.

First Grade - Fourth Day

2011-09-15T13:18:00.000-07:00

Today was ok - I have some kinks to work out, but Yoav is really loving school - he begs me to "do First Grade" :)

Morning and Circle were fine and the boys continue to have fun with the games. They both wanted me to do Pease Porridge (with clapping together - my hands together than clapping against theirs) with them exclusively, so I suggested they do it with eachother, which was so sweet, but, sadly by the time I found my camera, they had moved on to something else...

We did all the Figure 3 forms in the Ernst Schuberth "Form Drawing for Grades 1-4" book. The first form was as below, which I presented with the image of a person standing on the earth. The top drawing is Yoav's. I was completely shocked to turn around from the board and see the bottom drawing on Elie's desk. I actually asked him who drew it, thinking maybe Yoav wasn't perfectly happy with his and had done a second one. Obviously, it was Elie who drew it. I was particularly shocked because he's really not very into drawing yet, so I was surprised at how well it was drawn (straight lines, vertical line pretty close to perfect center, very nearly perfectly perpendicular...) My preference is for Elie *not* to participate in Form Drawing. I think Form Drawing is too awakening for his age. A friend did her "school" stuff today outside and said it worked really well - for various reasons, but one of the reasons was that her younger child was busy in the sandbox. So I think I might try the same to see how it goes.

Yoav's Form Drawing on top; Elie's on bottom - form is from Ernst Schuberth's "Form Drawing for Grades 1-4"

Yoav drew this made-up form after we did a plus form.

After the Form Drawing, Yoav wanted to do some free drawing (he seems to be itching for free drawing after Form Drawing when he has to draw "a certain thing"). In this picture, all looks well - both boys are drawing trains on train tracks. But, moments after I took the picture, Elie put a crayon mark on Yoav's drawing and Yoav flipped out, leading to much crying and a break in the day - we eventually got back to our soaking watercolor paper a few hours later...

For some reason, Elie likes his desk to be RIGHT next to Yoav's. Yoav does not at all like this - he wants room for his elbow and paper and probably is (rightly so), worried about Elie being so close. I'm not really sure what to do about this. Certainly I can leave free drawing for afternoons, but watercolor painting will also sometimes result in the same problem. Maybe benches would be better than desks. I could also do the Main Lesson in the living room at the big square coffee table - I tested today and Yoav can sit properly with a couch cushion plus a pillow. Then the boys could sit on opposite sides. I have to think more on this - would love to hear ideas on managing siblings during Main Lesson!

First Grade - Third Day

2011-09-14T13:13:00.000-07:00

Today was another really good day. So I'm going to chalk yesterday's difficulties up to insufficient sleep.

We started off the day with breakfast and a bit of clean-up and then headed out for our little walk.

The kids both enjoyed Circle. Yoav is enjoying the finger movements more than ever before. A new type of movement we do is clapping games - we're doing Pease Porridge where I clap my hands together and then clap against his hands and he's really enjoying it - he asks to do it over and over. I added in a tongue twister (Peter Piper Picked a Pickled Pepper...) and both boys loved that, with Elie coming up with a new ending instead of the word Pepper (think potty humor and a 3-year-old male brain LOL). That set the boys off laughing and spewing wackiness.

Yoav doing (and very much enjoying!)"Where is Thumbkin?" fingerplay

Yoav's favorite part of Circle is the games. His favorite is the jump rope one, but he also loves the bean bag game - I sing, "Do you have a beanbag head?" to the tune of "Do you know the muffin man?" and switch around to things like, "Can you hop with a bean bag head?"

Yoav loving (and getting a little kooky) our beanbag game.

I guess Elie was throwing his beanbag - it ended up on the roof and I couldn't get it off...

One of the beanbags ended up on the roof :(

For Form Drawing, we followed Ernst Schuberth's "Form Drawing: Grades 1-4" for the third day. We reviewed line and curve and then I drew a horizontal line. I asked Yoav what was the feeling of the line (per the Schuberth book) and he said, "Like a warm cozy bed." which I guess is somewhat expected, because Schuberth says to call it the straight line lying down - the "resting" line.


Form for today (drawn on MLB paper) - "resting" line

Our Morning Activity was cooking - we made chicken soup.

Making chicken soup

Our Afternoon Activity was Craft - we made Rosh Hashanah cards using potato prints with watercolor paint. Yoav made a Star of David (he drew the star on the potato and I cut); I made an apple.

Potato print

We used thick watercolor paper cut into 4"x6" rectangles and we rounded the edges with our cool new corner rounder.

Yoav stamping

Yoav LOVE LOVE LOVED this craft. He said a few times that he loved it and it was so much fun. As an aside he had such a funny comment about a card he made for my in-laws. He said, "I'm going to make this one for Saba and Safta because I love them so much. They're the kind of people who love everything I make for them." Then as he was painting it, he said, "Look how much love I'm putting in! SO.MUCH.LOVE!" :)

The craft took a little too long (for Elie). He wanted it to be over and for me to stop helping Yoav. It took us a bit to figure out a good method, how much paint, cutting paper, etc. We ended up switching from thinner watercolor paper to thick watercolor paper when I saw that Yoav was painting the whole card rather than just doing the print. Also I had the cards prepared as 8"x6" cards folded in half rather than 4"x6", but it just seemed unnecessarily to have them be folded cards once we switched to the thicker (more expensive) paper. For next time, I'll know to mix the paint with minimal water for the print - Yoav was having fun squirting water into the blob of paint, but you really just need a bit of watercolor paint with one or two squirts of water (I didn't want a thick print).

Yoav painting around the stamps

Yoav's finished card

My finished card

First Grade - Second Day

2011-09-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

Just showing a few quick photos from today - we followed Steiner's indications (from "Practical Advice to Teachers") to let the kids draw yellow paint with green paint and then yellow with blue and to discuss that the yellow/blue is more beautiful. Even though my green was a really beautiful shade of green (just random luck!), Yoav seemed to think it was obvious that the yellow/blue was more beautiful together though he did also love the color of green we had...

Today was not nearly as blissful as yesterday. Mostly because none of us got enough sleep - the sun woke us at 6am because the blinds weren't properly positioned (we otherwise would have slept until around 7 or even 7:30). I really somehow need to be as organized as possible (we had a little argument during Circle between them when I left for a moment to get, whoops...the camera LOL). Other times also, though, it seemed that issues happened when there was a lull - it took me a while to get set up for painting - though I had the paints pre-mixed, this was the first time painting in this room and I had trouble soaking the bigger paper, since we usually use smaller paper. I want to get a cheap plastic storage container big enough to soak the paper in. There's a bathroom by the schoolroom, so with a plastic container, I'd be able to soak the paper there rather than in the kitchen.

Also, Yoav did NOT like doing the story recall - he told me to "just tell the story". I tried to get a bit out of him, but he seemed annoyed by my interruptions ;) I'll have to read up on the how-tos of recall so it'll be smoother.

OK, making this short because I have to review and organize the craft materials for tomorrow!

Elie painting

Yoav painting (he came up with the idea of using the sponge to white out a rectangle of space on his own - we've never even done sponge/potato printing, though, coincidentally, we'll be doing it tomorrow for craft!)

Yoav's finished painting

Yoav carding wool (for handwork - leading up to learning to knit);
I used this video/instruction to learn how to card.

Dog happily sleeping with newly-carded wool

First Day of First Grade

2011-09-12T12:19:00.000-07:00

So, I did it - we got through the first day. I've been quite nervous about this - wondering how Elie would take to the change and how Yoav would react to Elie's participation and if Yoav would follow along or want to lead...

Today was really fantastic.... Better than I ever could have hoped for. We had about four hours of perfect harmony - Yoav loved every minute of it, and Elie loved parts of it (Circle) and played along for the rest (drew and played with his truck while Yoav spent an HOUR on a drawing!)

I followed Marsha Johnson's (waldorfhomeeducators Yahoo group) First Day suggestions pretty closely. I used that, plus the first day suggestions in Steiner's "Practical Advice to Teachers" and the first day of form drawing suggestions in Ernst Schuberth's "Form Drawing for Grades 1-4".

We woke up early today at 6am (Elie fell asleep early last night and Yoav was just excited to start First Grade!) and started off with breakfast and some cleanup. Then we went out for a quick walk, singing my walk transition song first ("I Love to Go A-wandering") - the walk involved us leaving out the front door, going past one house, taking a path to the back yards and walking along the forest to our backyard :) So that got us a little nature walk and got us to the backyard to do Circle.

Circle was wonderful - the best we've ever had! Elie lately has really enjoyed finger movements and follows along with the words and movements if I sing slowly. The format worked well - it was more fun that last year when I just did finger plays and movement verses - this year I'm including some game, all of which the kids loved and couldn't get enough of...

CIRCLE:

Opening
(Nancy Foster, “Let us Form a Ring”, notes on p. 31)
Let us form a ring
Dancing as we sing,
Ring-a-ring-a-rei-a, Ring-a-ring-a-rei-a
Now we turn ourselves around,
Watch the birds fly up and down,
Kick-er-i, kick-er-i kee!

Clapping Game
(From Mrs. M “Fall Circles for Grades 1-3”; did this one line with Elie, then next w Yoav so they'd both be doing it with me)
Pease Porridge hot, Pease porridge cold
Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old
Some like it hot, some like it cold
Some like it in the pot, nine days old!
(clap knees-clap own hands-clap other’s hands-repeat - do three times through)

Jump Rope
(From Mrs. M “Fall Circles for Grades 1-3”)
Tie rope to door knob or fence... swing gently and let child jump over...
Round and round the earth is turning,
Turning always round to morning,
Then turning round to night.
x3

Finger Plays
(From Mrs. M’s Flute Book - to prep for flute instruction)
Where is Thumbkin?
Where is Thumbkin?
Here I am
Here I am.
How are you today, sir?
Very well, I thank you.
Run away
Run away.
Where is Pointer?
Where is Pointer?
Here I am
Here I am.
How are you today, sir?
Very well, I thank you.
Run away
Run away.
Where is Longman?
Where is Longman?
Here I am
Here I am.
How are you today, sir?
Very well, I thank you.
Run away
Run away.
Where is Ringman?
Where is Ringman?
Here I am
Here I am.
How are you today, sir?
Very well, I thank you.
Run away
Run away.
Where is Baby?
Where is Baby?
Here I am
Here I am.
How are you today, sir?
Very well, I thank you.
Run away
Run away.

(From A Child’s Seasonal Treasury):
I have ten little fingers                    [Stretch hands out in front.]
And they belong to me,                [Point to self.]
I can make them do things,                [Rub hands together.]
Would you like to see?                [Open hands, palms up.]
I can shut them up tight,                [Make fists.]
Or I can make them wide,                [Extend fingers.]
I can put them together,                [Clasp hands.]
Or make them all hide,                [Put hands behind back.]
I can make them jump high,                 [Raise hands overhead.]
I can make them jump low,                [Place hands on floor.]
I can fold them quietly,                [Fold hands together.]
And hold them just so.

(From A Child’s Seasonal Treasury):
Whisky, frisky, hippity hop,
Up he goes to the treetop.                [Roll hands up and clap at top.]
Whirly, twirly, round and round,
Down he scampers to the ground.            [Roll hands down to lap.]
Furly, curly what a tail,
Tall as a feather, broad as a snail.            [Bend arm in a crescent.]
Where’s his supper? In the shell.            [Cup hands, look inside.]
Snap, crack, out it fell.                [Clap two times, open hands.]

Hebrew Movement
Ooga ooga ooga,                     Cake, cake, cake,
bama’agal nachuga,                     in a circle we celebrate
nistoveva kol hayom,                     turning around all day
ad asher nimtza makom,                 until we find a place
lashevet, lakum, lashevet, lakum,             to sit, to stand, to sit, to stand,
lashevet v’lakum                    to sit & to stand!

Games
(From A Child’s Seasonal Treasury):
Jump the river - Place two sticks one foot apart to form river. Children take turns jumping over. Widen the gap as children try to jump over widening river.
(Mrs. M - bean bag game)
To the tune of Muffin Man:
Do you have a bean bag head, a bean bag head, a bean bag head?
Oh do you have a bean bag head, so early in the morning?
(put bean bag on each head and march around in a circle in the room; then Can you hop with a bean bag head, etc...)

Toss and catch game (Mrs. M)
Use soft ball to toss and catch, starting close and moving further apart to a cute rhyme of any sort or counting (doing this to 1,2 buckle my shoe - on 1, throw to Yoav, on 2, throw to Elie, on words, they both throw back to me and I take a step backward)

Standing Poem
(traditional Waldorf)
It’s Golden in the Garden,
It’s Golden in the Glen,
It’s Golden, Golden, Golden,
September’s here again.

Seasonal Song (most of this really does not describe the season now in Israel, but I like the last line and it's not so far off, and I couldn't find one and didn't write one that would fit better )
(From A Child’s Seasonal Treasury, notes in book - p. 37):
Yellow the bracken, Golden the sheaves,
Rosy the apples, Crimson the leaves.
Mist on the hillsides, Clouds grey and white.
Autumn good morning, Summer good night.

IAO Verse (use Eurythmy poses)
(Eric Fairman, “Path of Discovery”)
Ee, ee, ee: We reach for a tree.
Ah, ah, ah: As far as a star.
Oh, oh, oh: Round the world we go.
Oh away! Ah away! Ee away!

End of Circle
(From Mrs. M):
Hear and listen, listen and hear,
Now the lesson time draws near!

At this point, we went inside and as we stood by the school room (with the door closed), I said our Start Day verse:

Start Day
In sunlight shining bright
In reverence to Hashem
The strength of humankind
Which You so graciously
Has planted in my soul
That I with all my might
May love to work and learn
From Hashem comes light and strength
To Hashem rise love and thanks!

I started off relatively easy (for me to memorize) and will gauge how it goes and add more/change as needed. I have all my homeschool planning (schedules and day-by-day plans) on Google Docs, so I printed all the verses and taped them onto 4"x6" cards so I can carry them around and study them as I have time.

We then went inside the room, Yoav Ooohed and Aaahed. I gave both kids a rose from the garden which I put into a vase in the school room (great Mrs. Johnson suggestion!) and I used some of the language from Mrs. Johnson and from Steiner - that it's the first day of First Grade, it's an important day, that this year we will be learning a lot of the things that adults know - how to read, write, play an instrument, knit. Then I showed the kids where I put things - each child has a drawer in a vertical bookshelf for chalkboard/crayons and chalk, then there's a drawer for yarn, a drawer for painting supplies and a drawer for drawing paper.

And then we began! I drew a straight line on the board (top to bottom) and said it was a straight line. Then we stood straight and tall with arms straight up, walked along the jump rope in a straight line, practiced drawing a straight line in the air, then on the chalk board and finally on paper for a Main Lesson Book. Yoav at first when he drew on paper did it from bottom to top, but I reminded him that we draw from "Heaven to Earth", pointing to the top of the line down the bottom and he understood and redrew. Next we did the same with a curve.

Next was time for modeling wax. Each child got a bit of reddish/brownish Stockmar modeling wax to make a line and curve. I don't remember if Yoav asked what we were making or if he just understood (I was making a line and curve as well). It is so interesting (and probably a good subject for a future post) how content he was to make something so simple, when, in the past, we've had such a hard time with modeling wax - he always wants to make something far beyond his ability (like a fire truck, which he insisted on trying to make last time) and he ends up in tears (don't worry, we do this very rarely - I try it every few months to see if there's any change). Since the day was so structured and so exciting, he was happy to make the line and curve, he could feel that it was important work we were doing! We stuck the shapes onto the drawers (I know it looks like an aleph - we didn't talk about that, though - I'm tentatively planning to start the Hebrew letters in Third Grade).

Next Yoav decided he wanted to do a free drawing, which seemed fine until I realized how long it would take! Yoav has the patience of an ant. I was going stir-crazy, watching him slowly draw, sometimes getting distracted by Elie (when I would jump in and remind him that his tree was growing and growing - I really really had a hard time keeping my mouth shut!!! But of course, as we all know, patience is a virtue so I certainly don't want to interfere!) This was the result of his efforts - too bad he won't be drawing the chalkboard drawings for letters for me since he already draws better than I do!

When Yoav FINALLY finished his drawing (btw, Elie drew on his chalkboard with crayon during this period and later I was able to get it off with a mix of dishwashing detergent and baking soda!), I lit a candle, sang "Mother of the Fairy Tale" (from Nancy Foster's "Let us Form a Ring") and played on the pentatonic xylophone. I told the story about the crab, which Yoav loved (as he loves all told stories) and watched me tell the story with a big smile on his face!

At the end, I used my new snuffer to put out the flame (which this kids thought was magic and asked if the "thing" could make the candle get lit again LOL) did my end story verse ("Snip, Snap, Snout, Our tale is ttold out") and end Main Lesson ("Birds in the air; Fishes in the water; Stones on the land; I’m in G-d’s hand) and we had lunch, tried to rest a bit afterwards and then went to Yoav's horseback lesson in the afternoon.

Yoav was thrilled with the first day and told anyone who would listen about the school room and what we did.

I'm so exhausted (so I'm sorry for typos or bad grammar) - I'm going to get breakfast and our watercolor paints ready for tomorrow and then hopefully get to sleep soon...

Starting Tomorrow!

2011-09-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

We are starting tomorrow with our first day of First Grade! I can't believe it! I was so organized early in the summer, but now I feel a bit unprepared - I'm going to post this and review some verses and my story!

I'm hoping Elie won't participate much, but of course he has to have a desk like Yoav ;) Both kids get a white painting board, a lap-sized chalkboard and a roll of crayons. Yoav has eight sticks and eight blocks in his - it's a regift of this crayon roll from three years ago! I put the eight block crayons in the four first top and bottom slots and then two stick crayon per each of the remaining four bottom slots. I washed it and put on a new ribbon to make it look new :). Elie got regifted Yoav's crayon roll from last year with a blue, yellow and red stick crayon.

On my desk, I have a pitcher of what will be water, a candle and snuffer for story time and bean bags for Circle.

Off to finish memorizing - I'll post details about the first day in the next few days...

Wish us luck!

Baby Blanket

2011-08-30T02:01:00.000-07:00

I made a little baby blanket for a friend who just had a baby.

The pattern is the "Quick and Easy Baby Blanket" from "Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts" by Joelle Hoverson. It's listed as a 2-4 hour project, which is about right. The cutting always takes me a long time (this is my third one - here's one and the other I forgot to take a photo of) and at the end, you make little embroidered stitches every 4" to hold it together (see last photo) which takes a long time to first measure and mark the locations and then to do all the stitching (by machine, but still slow...)

The front fabric is Harmony Art Sweet Jane organic sateen, backing is organic cotton (front and back from Organic Cotton Plus); batting is organic cotton and thread is organic thread from Near Sea Naturals, so it's truly a 100% organic blanket :) I love how it turned out - the fabric is so soft and the pattern is gentle and the colors are lovely - perfect for a baby blanket!

The blanket is 33"x53", quite a bit bigger than the recommendation, but I had that much fabric and the batting is that size, so it seemed better to use it than to have a thin scrap to save indefinitely...

I want to get some sweet gender-neutral baby fabric to make a few of these as standby gifts so I don't find myself doing blindstitch at 1 in the morning again (ah, I just realized that the name of the book is Last Minute Gifts, so I guess it makes sense that I was making this blanket at the last minute!)... I like that this gift is fun to make, practical, can be made fairly inexpensively if cheaper fabric is used, and is enough of a gift by itself (ie, I don't feel compelled to make several things when I give this blanket).

Monday Memories

2011-08-29T11:49:00.000-07:00

{Yoav}

Yoav thinks he put modeling wax into his stomach through his belly button when he was younger and that now sometimes it hurts. He was lying in bed supposedly falling asleep and picked some fuzz out of his belly button and thought he got some of the modeling wax out (this isn't the first time he's talked about this, though it's been a while). Kids really do say the darndest things. Not sure how/if to break it to him that the occasional tummy aches are definitely NOT caused by modeling wax :)

{Elie}

Elie lately has just been saying the funniest/oddest things - he tells stories as if they make sense (and I really think they make sense to him!), but they make NO sense to me or are just wacky! He told me how he wants to try sleeping at Saba and Safta's house when they come visit and was talking about that and then in the story, he said, "But I don't know how to drive if I need you to come." as if that was a serious concern and he wasn't sure how to handle that issue in his plan... Another time, he told me that he's getting two horses and the horses will stay inside so we'll have to put the puppy outside.

amimal = animal

{Yoav and Elie - Interactions}

In the car, Yoav (for at least a year now!) has declared that no one else can look out of "his" side and gets upset if Elie sees anything or mentions anything out of "Yoav's window" (like a passing truck or train). The other day, we were passing sheep on Elie's side, so Yoav asked if he could look out of Elie's side (I've never heard Yoav ask this before). Elie said yes. Then a moment or so later, Elie asked Yoav, "Is it for all the times now I can look on your side and you can look on my side?" Yoav said yes. Here's hoping!

We were at my BILs house and my SIL invited the kids up to one of the bedrooms to do some singing and dancing. Yoav seemed to want to go, but not alone, so he asked Elie if Elie wanted to go. Elie said yes and they both headed up together. When the singing was over, my SIL told me that Yoav and Elie were holding hands! And when not holding hands, Yoav was putting his hand on Elie's back or hugging(!) Then when Elie wanted to leave, Yoav helped him open the door and made sure he got out of the room ok. This is NOT standard for us, BUT I have lately noticed that Yoav likes the security of Elie when I'm not around. As you can see by the photo, they have some very sweet moments together - I took the photo before they noticed I was there.

Form Drawing Planning

2011-08-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

I have my first Form Drawing Block planned out as well! This block will be 3.5 weeks at the start of the year. I'll be doing a lot of watercolor painting during this time as well (form drawing and painting both to help with fine motor and writing prep), but I need to do more planning for the watercolor painting.

Form drawing is unique to Waldorf Education. It helps the child prepare for both writing letters and later geometry. More information as well as a video is here, a great post is here by a very experienced Waldorf homeschooler, and here is an article on the Waldorf Library called "Form Drawing" by Rosemary Gebert.

I will be using the following books (the first two for reference of the forms and the third for the stories):
“Form Drawing for Beginners”, Donna Simmons
“Form Drawing for Grades 1-4”, Ernst Schuberth and Laura Embry-Stine
“Liputto”, Jakob Streit

My format for this block will be to tell the stories and then to draw the forms on the chalkboard and as I draw the form, I'll say the part of the story related to the form.

Week 1: Form Drawing exercises per Mrs. M’s First Day article (available for free via her WaldorfHomeEducators Yahoo group) and Steiner’s indications (in “Practical Advice for Teachers”) and Ernst Schuberth Form Drawing book - Schuberth has instructions for first three days and will do Figure 3 (Day 3 in book) over two days.

Week 2:
Story: “Liputto” by Jakob Streit, The Story of the Little Gnome Liputto
Day 1 - Ring on Liputtos cap = circle form, Figure 6 (Schuberth book)
Day 2 - Seven rings on Liputto’s cap = concentric circles, Figure 7 (Schuberth book)
Story: “Liputto” by Jakob Streit, Liputto and the Trampled Violet
Day 3 - Liputto comes close to violet = Figure 8a (Schuberth book)
Day 4 - Farmer boy backs away and goes home = Figure 8a (Schuberth book)

Week 3:
Story: “Liputto” by Jakob Streit, Liputto Saves a Bunny
Day 1 - Mom hops, then bunny hops - one big semicircle open down, the small one, then big, then small, then big, then small
Day 2 - bunnies hide in tall grass - tall vertical lines left to right on page
Day 3 - Mother rabbit sees field of carrots - horizontal lines top to bottom on page (like second row, second column of p. 14 in Donna Simmons’ “Form Drawing for Beginners”)
Day 4 - Bunny disappeared under a fern - first three semicircles from row 3, column 1 of p. 13 in Donna Simmons’ “Form Drawing for Beginners” - so two big semi circles open down with semi circle open up in the middle

Week 4:
Story: “Liputto” by Jakob Streit, Liputto Saves a Bunny
Day 1 - the whole meadow was mowed by lawn mower - small vertical lines across page - p. 14 for Donna Simmons’ “Form Drawing for Beginners”, row 1, column 2

Day 2 - gnome takes rabbit to find her baby bunny - one horizontal line across page (for gnome’s path) and a series of semicircles open downward below straight line for rabbit hops

Language Arts Planning

2011-08-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

I'm basically done planning my letter blocks for next year. I'll have two "blocks" to teach letters, which will be introduced with fairy tales. The basic format is
Day 1: I will TELL the story
Day 2: I will unveil my pre-drawn drawing of the story (and Yoav will draw a similar drawing in his MLB (Main Lesson Book))
Day 3: I'll reveal the letters in the drawings and we'll do related tongue twisters, and a variety of "writing" exercises (ie, "walk the form" (put a rope on the ground in the shape of the letter and walk along it), make the letter in sand, on another person's back, with feet, fingers, etc.) and Yoav will finally write the letter in his MLB.

Here is a famous example (outlined by Steiner on page 3 of "Practical Advice for Teachers") of such a drawing - look at the First Grade Fisherman Drawing in the fourth row of this page of chalkboard drawings. The first drawing is what the child would see pre-drawn on the chalkboard on the second day (this drawing is for the Grimm's story "The Fisherman and His Wife"); then on the third day, the letters are "revealed" (F of the Fish and W of the Waves) as in the second Fisherman Drawing.

This article explains fairly well how I will be teaching writing and THEN reading.

I will use "Blackboard Drawing" by Frederick Whitney, available for free here, for help with my chalkboard drawings!

First Language Arts Block (October)

Week 1: Rose Red and Snow White (p. 664, Grimms) - B(ear), V(ulture) - actually eagle in story but changing to vulture to get the V

Week 2: The Water of Life (p. 449, Grimms) - M(ountain), J(ug) - actually cup in story but changing to jug to get the J

Week 3: The Fisherman and His Wife (p. 103, Grimms) - F(ish), W(aves), Z(igzag) of lighting

Week 4: The Goose Girl (p. 404, Grimms) - G(oose), C(at)

Second Language Arts Block (January)

Week 1: The Nixie of the Mill Pond (p. 736, Grimms) - N(ixie), R(abbit), Y(ew) Tree

Week 2: The Princess in the Tower (p. 50, "Leaves from the Garden of Eden" by Howard Schwartz) - P(rincess), T(ower), (o)X, L(ight) - will add light on tower

Week 3: The White Snake (p. 98, Grimms) - K(ing), Q(ueen), S(nake), H(orse), D(uck)

Week 4: Vowels - A Ah (father); E Ay (fame); I Ee (feet); O Aw (dawn); U Oo (moon)

Teaching per Willi Aeppli in “The Developing Child” (highly recommended!) - p. 28-35

Story of angels who brought vowels to man per Aeppli book

Watercolor paintings of the "letter angels"

(will create a slightly modified version of this story based on Jewish view of angels - http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/692875/jewish/What-Are-Angels.htm)

Week 5: Vowels, continued

Story: “The Two Brothers” - Grimm’s - will look for and act out (with eurythmy gestures) examples of vowels, walk the forms, poems, etc.

Write letters in MLB

Featured on Parenting Passageway!

2011-08-19T07:13:00.000-07:00

I have to say that, even though I have a blog and share a lot, I feel a bit exposed in a post I wrote for Carrie over at Parenting Passageway.

Here it is:

http://theparentingpassageway.com/2011/08/18/growing-into-motherhoodemilys-story/

Now you know my full parenting history :)

Sandbox!

2011-08-17T14:14:00.000-07:00

I (woops, I meant the kids) FINALLY have a sandbox!!!!! I have been wanting a sandbox for almost four years now, ever since I first read "Heaven on Earth" by Sharifa Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer describes her lovely sandbox made with fallen tree logs for the borders and she explains how important sand boxes are for children - fun, creative, great sensory experience. I also wanted a sandbox for First Grade because we will write forms and letters in the sand with sticks and body parts...

Though we live next to the forest, collecting fallen logs would be beyond our current forestry abilities ;) So, my husband went to the hardware store yesterday (for those in Israel, we go to Nissan in Bet Shemesh - it's a great hardware store in the industrial area of the City) and got three pieces of wood, each 5.7 meters long and 10 cm wide. Then these were each cut into two 2 meter pieces and one 1.7 meter piece (we saved money doing it this way rather than just asking for all 2 m pieces). We had four 2 m pieces and four 1.7 m pieces.

To make the sandbox, first we had to saw the 1.7 m pieces a little because they weren't all exactly the same size. Yoav did really well with the saw. He tried some sawing about six months ago with a lesser quality saw and didn't like it at all. We have a better saw now and Jeremy was helping so it went much better!

Next they screwed two of the 1.7 m pieces together, then screwed the other two 1.7 m pieces together. Yoav got to use his egg beater-style drill we got from Garrett Wade - it's very unique and is great for young kids (fun to be able to drill at all, but the motion of the hand drill is good for fine motor development)!

Then they attached one of the 2m pieces at the end with long wood nails (he tried screws but found it hard to get them all the way in) and one 2m pieces at the other end.

And finally they attached the additional 2m pieces to the previously attached 2m pieces.

We put some old tarp down at the bottom of the box so the sand wouldn't come out the bottom. I think Sharifa Oppenheimer said you don't need this, but we tried a very small sandbox before without a bottom and the sand mixed up with dirt pretty quickly and got gross.

Next the sand came! Half a cubic meter of it! How fun for the boys - a huge truck with a crane came and plopped the bag of sand down right in the middle of the sandbox. btw, real sand is MUCH easier to find in Israel, since there's so much more sand! I finally found one thing cheaper in Israel than the US other than produce!

Finally the boys nailed the tarp to the inside of the box.

And emptied the sand into the sandbox - I love that Elie went to get a chair to make this part easier ;)

I'd like to cut it down a little so you can see the beautiful wood frame, but I probably need a power stapler or something to make sure the tarp is well-secured so sand doesn't slip through. We'll cover it with another tarp at night to keep it free of icky-ness.

Oh, and the best photos of all, of course are those of the kids playing! Guess which child said repeatedly that he doesn't want a sandbox and he will.not.play.in.a.sandbox!!!! :)

We recently got a highly recommended book called "Woodworking with Children" by Lester Walker and all my boys are so excited to start doing woodworking projects. I added weekly woodworking to our weekly schedule for First Grade! Yoav is particularly excited to build the coaster car, which is the final and most complicated project. He even has Elie talking about "his" coaster car, which will be red with a horn on it. Elie today told me I could ride in his coaster car with him which will go "SO FAST!"

Monday Memories

2011-08-15T05:01:00.000-07:00

The big news in our family is that we got a puppy - she was one of five born to a dog that friends took in. Our friends think the puppies are half Pinscher and half Jack Russell. So far, we're all thrilled with the puppy, who we named Tzippy (other than the potty training, which I'm pretty lost with!)

{YOAV}

I was making a little ribbon blanket for a friend and Yoav noticed that two of the pink ribbons were not exactly the same color (was totally normal, just the way it was dyed). I said, "Ah, no worries, it's close enough - it's just going to be chewed by a baby anyway, so it doesn't have to be perfect." A little while later, I noticed that I had cut one of the ribbon pieces 4" instead of 4.5" and I said anxiously, "Oh no, one of the ribbons is too short!" Yoav said (not as a joke, in all seriousness to help me relax), "But it's ok, it's just going to be chewed on by a baby, it doesn't have to be exactly the same."

Yoav has been running little errands like bringing homemade crafts to neighborhood friends and he sometimes starts getting ready to leave the house alone, but then comes back to ask Elie to come with him. Also at a friends, he was going into a tree house and he excitedly showed it to Elie and asked Elie to come with him to see it.

Yoav taught himself how to do front and back somersaults in the pool. He has also taught himself to do the breast stroke quite well. I now see what a joke are swim lessons! So many kids his age have years of swim lessons under their belts and their parents probably think when they start swimming a nice stroke that it's because they had such a great swim teacher, when, in reality, it's likely just that the child is ready to swim! Actually, Yoav is close to surpassing my swim ability because I felt such self-consciousness and anxiety through all my early years of swimming, especially when I had to wear a green swim cap at camp, which displayed to the lifeguards (and all the other kids!) that I was one of the worst swimmers!

{ELIE}

Talking to Grandma, she said, "Is it dark there now?" Elie responded, "No, we have the lights on." LOL

I was doing nose kisses with Elie (touching noses) and when I moved away, he said, "Don't stop - let's do it forever!" (he's a very cuddly three year old!)

We did not go in our pool during the Nine Days. Ten minutes before the end of the Tisha B'Av fast, I said, "Ten more minutes!!!" to which Elie said, "I'm opening!" Me, "Opening what? We're having bagels..." Elie, "I'm opening the pool!" Of course there was no pool that night since the pool prohibition was until midday the next day and on top of that it was time for food and bed ;)

He likes me to take off his clothes so they don't end up inside out (I hope he can continue this until he makes some woman a happi(er) wife - I wish I didn't have to fix all my husband's clothes!!!), but instead of "inside out", he says "outside out".

He says piccups for hiccups ;)

He rides his little balance bike everywhere! He brings into the bedroom and "parks" it next to the bed when he sleeps. One night he had to go pee after we had already turned out the lights and he rode his bike to the bathroom (and had to find a parking spot in the bathroom while he peed).

Yoav's Apron

2011-08-14T05:33:00.000-07:00

I made another apron (this one will be for Yoav, the previous one will be for Elie) using the Montessori pattern and linen fabric from Grey Line Linen.

I made this one 2" wider, 5" longer and the neck strap 1" longer. The neck strap would have been better 1/2", but it's fine as is. Yoav is happy with the length and fit, so one more item that I can cross off my list!

Another bit of sewing I managed to do while the kids were awake :)

If I knew then what I know now...

2011-08-11T04:45:00.000-07:00

I was just making carrot cake for Shabbat and was searching the archives to see what substitutions I've made in the past. Looking through the old posts, I found this one:
http://flowingwithmyducklings.blogspot.com/2008/08/day-of-cooking.html

I WISH I could respond to that post three years ago and alter the past three years and not be doing the Work that I'm now doing with my son. I now so clearly know the answer and it seems so OBVIOUS now I want to hit the old Emily over the head!!!

If I could respond, I'd say:

_______________________________________
Emily,

He is looking for you to be the strong Alpha Mother - he needs you to help him adapt, to become resilient. What he needed was to feel the futility of the situation. And for children, futility must happen on an emotional level. It is not enough for the child to be angry or frustrated - you must help to draw out the tears for him to FEEL the sadness of not having measured the water himself.

So, what to do? You simply say, "Ah, you wanted to pour the water yourself?!" Then, hold him, attend to him, comfort him as he experiences perhaps first the frustration and anger (at you) of not being offered the chance to do this himself, and then as he experiences the SADNESS of missing this opportunity. You must be an agent of futility AND a source of comfort! You don't say, "Ah, you wanted to pour the water yourself?!" and let the child cry for an hour in the corner or in his/her room. You must be there with the child as the source of comfort.

Resilience follows *felt* futility. He will see that he did not get to pour the water AND that he survived this experience. This will develop resilience in him.

Hope this helps to save you years of your own frustration :)

Future Emily

_______________________________________

This I believe so very strongly, deep in my heart, as Truth. This is (along with much much more), the teaching of Gordon Neufeld. His teaching is attachment-based and he teaches how to develop a very strong attachment and how we as parents gain power from that attachment (and how we can use this power to parent with love and without punishments, rewards or consequences). A dear friend here in Israel, Leigh Bar-Yakov, has taken classes with him and is now working as a parenting coach and will be teaching his Power to Parent course in September in Israel near Bet Shemesh. The course will the same as the Power to Parent course offered online here, complete with Neufeld DVDs, with the added benefit of weekly meetings with Leigh to help more clearly understand the materials. She will also help us to see how to implement his teachings in our current parenting situations/troubles.

Please email me if you live in Israel (even if you're not near Bet Shemesh, because she would like to offer classes in other areas as well) and are interested in taking the class. If not, I highly recommend his Power to Parent class online. And, at the very least, read his book, "Hold on to your Kids" and check out some of his YouTube videos. Your life (and the lives of your children) might be changed forever ;)

Desks and Proper Handwriting

2011-08-07T14:52:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about Yoav's "school" desk for months (literally) now. A child's desk must be the proper height for him to develop good handwriting. This is particularly important to me because I did not learn to hold a pencil properly and aside from the callous on my fourth finger (which of course shouldn't be involved!), I find writing to be unpleasantly uncomfortable.

I recently read a book that I highly recommend called "Teaching Children Handwriting" by Audrey McAllen. On page 34, she has a stick figure drawing of proper and improper seating.

I had planned to buy a small wood desk and cut off the feet, but it would be hard (for us, since we're woodworking newbies) to get the feet smooth and even. And I'd have to keep buying new desks as Yoav gets bigger and finding people who want short-leg desks ;)

On a recent trip to IKEA, we found what seems like a near perfect solution - a small (2'x3') desk with adjustable legs. It's this one, which is part of the Galant series. And we already have a Stokke chair with adjustable seating. It would be more perfect if the desk started a little lower so we wouldn't need to use the foot rest, but, for now, I have it set up with the foot rest and Yoav seems to be positioned almost almost exactly like the stick figure on page 34 of McAllen's book :)

I've been very careful not to leave pens and pencils around the house so the kids don't use them. It's important that kids don't myelinate improper pen hold before they even learn proper positioning. And, obviously, it's important to watch how they hold the pencil once they start writing (whether they go to school or are at home) and to help them with the proper positioning if they seem to start off wrong. Once it's myelinated, it's VERY hard to change. Even as a kid (after I'd been writing for at least a few years), I remember trying to hold the pencil properly and I found it terribly uncomfortable, although I'm sure it would have been easier then than now - I'm going to have model proper pen hold when I'm writing with Yoav...

There is a lovely idea in the McAllen book about how to help children develop good posture when writing:

"the children can sit like a king preparing to sign a royal decree, his feet placed on a footstool, his red robe keeping his right arm to the side of his body, the left hand weighted by a heavy flashing ring of jewels so that all see him move the paper as his right hand writes. And he must hold his head up straight so that his "crown does not fall off!""

I will be using this imagery when we start writing in the Fall (next month!!!) I'm going to use Yoav's birthday crown as the crown, a playsilk as the robe, and old ring with a shiny stone glued on for the ring of jewels.

Back Pain Hot Pad - Tutorial

2011-08-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

This will be a VERY simple tutorial, mostly for my own benefit, so I can make these again :) This is a GREAT gift for anyone with back pain. It was a request from a family friend who, of course, has back pain. She saw something similar a few years ago and told me about it and that she regretted not buying it then, since she hasn't seen anything like it since, so I volunteered to make one and thus got the benefit of her detailed description and help in implementation!

This is filled with flax seeds and can be microwaved to heat the flax (which retains heat and cold well). Then you rest it between your back and bed or couch to relieve back pain.

Materials:

26" x 15" cotton or linen or favorite fabric

matching thread

about .5 kg flax seeds (hopefully not organic like I used...)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Wash and iron fabric.

2. Cut two pieces of fabric to 13" x 15" each. (One side is longer because once the pad is filled with flax, the horizontal side shortens a bit - guess how I know that?? LOL.)

3. Fold down one of the long sides on each piece of fabric 1/2 " to the wrong side and press.

4. With right sides facing, sew three sides together with a 1/2" seam. The side with the 1/2" fabric pressed down is the side that will not be sewed. Trim corners.

5. Turn right side out, poke out corners so they look square and press.

5. With a ruler and vanishing marker, mark 12 vertical lines evenly (the total fabric width will be about 14", so the lines are about 1.17" apart.

6. Sew along these lines, going back and forth at beginning and end.

7. Measure out 1.4 oz flax seeds and fill into the first column. Pin top so seeds don't fall out.

8. Continue #7 for remaining 11 columns.

9. Topstitch closed, going back and forth at beginning and end and making sure not to sew over seeds.

10. Cut loose threads.

11. Wait for vanishing marker to disappear and give to friend who will say, "Aaaaah, Thank You!!!"

I'll try to take photos of the next one I make so this will be clearer.

Monday Memories

2011-07-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

This is a bit delayed because Jeremy was traveling and our internet went down, so I was offline for a few days...

{ELIE}

Kids were slow getting moving to take Jeremy to the airport, so he said to Elie something like, "Elie, get dressed... I want you to take me to the airport." At which point Elie turned to me and asked, "Ima/Mommy, do I know how to drive?" (Just like his previous swimming quote - I love it!)

Sat on the couch with a book and told me he was going to read to me. He opened the book and said, "Can you teach me how to read?" So sweet. And interesting to me that he'd think in those terms - Yoav has never asked me that, though he is excited to learn to read next year...

Sitting on the balance thing at the playground (in photo), Elie sat in front and started "driving". Then Yoav got into the back seat to get a ride. Elie said he wanted Yoav to sit in the middle. Yoav didn't want to. Elie said, "If you sit there (back seat) you could get eaten, but if you sit here (middle), you won't." Yoav thought for a second and switched to the middle seat :)

Funniest in a LONG time!!! -- Elie saw a little girlfriend naked. He said to me, "Where is her penis?" Me: "She doesn't have one." Him: Some very deep thought followed by, "So does the pee come out of her tush?"

{YOAV}

Friend noticed that I was feeling totally overwhelmed (kids (mine and neighborhood friends) coming in and out of the house, leaving messes in their wake)... She started cleaning the mess in the living room, then folded my laundry (!) and when she asked where Yoav's clothes go LOL, I asked him to go with her to show her, at which point he got into the cleaning and both of them continued to clean the house for about an hour! They totally cleaned up the playroom, made the bed!!!, swept, did some sort of washing of bathrooms, brought toys to the playroom that were in the living room.... I hope the fun of cleaning stays with Yoav beyond this day!

Falling asleep one day, Yoav said, "How did we think of moving to Israel?"

Elie and neighbor were switching bikes. Elie got onto the neighbor's bike but the little boy started crying a little confused (this trade was pre-arranged but I guess he wasn't so clear on the details). Yoav saw him crying and ON HIS OWN, got up and got Elie's bike and ran it over to him!!!! Yay, Yoav is really developing empathy!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yoav was eating his Shabbat snack of carob cookies outside. He had six (because he's six, of course!). While we were eating, three of the neighbors came over. One by one, they each asked if they could have one. Actually, the first really asked and the others sort of motioned. Yoav was so cute after this happened - he looked down at his plate and SMILED at the silliness of having had six and now so quickly and unexpectedly down to three. He looked at me with an, "Oh, well" kind of look and I suggested he could have three more with dinner and he was happy about that. Yay for mixed emotions (happy to share, sad to lose the cookies)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yoav's New Apron

2011-07-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

I get to check off another item from my to-do list!

I made Yoav an apron this morning. It's the Montessori Child's apron that I've made before (this one and this one).

Yoav looks so big in it now. I might use this one for Elie (he uses one I didn't make) and make another a bit bigger for Yoav. Yoav picked out the fabric, to match mine. I love that we can both fawn over linen - of course I love the cute Japanese fabrics in the previous aprons I made, but, hey, what mama doesn't love linen?!?!?

(Oh, and the girl in the first picture is our neighbor - as a group, they practically live here. The sister showed up in another recent photo here... Seems to be hard to get photos of my kids these days without one of them in the photo LOL! The good news is that my kids are learning Hebrew quickly; the bad news is that it's truly too much for me... Working on a solution...)

The Joy of Co-Sleeping

2011-07-21T12:10:00.000-07:00

I have always loved co-sleeping. I was fortunate to have a baby (Yoav) who didn't want to sleep in his co-sleeper AND to have extreme pain nursing for the first few weeks of his life. Yoav's first night home, I tried to put him in a little co-sleeper next to the bed to sleep. But every time I put him in the co-sleeper (after nursing him to sleep), he woke up. Didn't take too many times before the pain became unbearable and I plopped him in the bed between me and DH and went to sleep. Six and a half years later, he's still happily sleeping in that same spot. To be fair to those who have tried it and NOT liked it, it's easy for us because both my kids are pretty good sleepers (once asleep), neither kicks, squirms, moves much or talks in their sleep, and we have space for a king+twin Family Bed... And, really, who wouldn't rather cuddle Elie or Yoav than Jeremy LOL :)

Anyway, my 6yo tends to spend the time in bed before he falls asleep thinking about the day and asking questions.

Sometimes the questions seem to be unrelated to anything that has happened during the day, like this one tonight (which, of course, he said in all seriousness!): Could you shoot me up the the moon by squirting water at me? ... Then if I landed on the door, I could just open the door and go in.... I'd have to bring a parachute, though, right? Has anyone ever parachuted down from the moon before?

Then, the next one came... Background is that earlier in the day, he was banging a pair of goggles on the kitchen table. I told him he couldn't bang the goggles on the table (it's a beautiful hand-painted, solid wood table), but he could bang them outside or bang them on his head. I wasn't serious about the head part! But, his question to me at night was: "Would you rather if the table broke or my head?" Me: "Huh?!!?!?!?" He explained why he was asking and I gave him a big hug and said I hadn't actually meant that I wanted him to hurt his head and of COURSE I'd rather the table break in a zillion pieces than for anything to happen to his head! This then led to a sweet conversation about whether I'd rather do xyz or for Yoav to break - his favorite was if I'd rather Yoav break OR have to eat my least favorite food for every meal forever. He loved that I'd rather eat that food than for him to break, especially since he's such a picky eater ;)

So, tonight, he fell asleep totally relaxed, knowing that he IS loved unconditionally and completely, rather than sleeping in a state of agitation wondering whether I love the kitchen table more than him!!!

...And, in case you didn't think of this one - a huge benefit of co-sleeping is all the adorable cuddly/sleepy sibling photos you end up with :)

Monday Memories

2011-07-18T15:24:00.000-07:00

{ELIE}

The big news for Elie this week is that he fell into the pool! He was attempting to get into his little blow-up raft which has two leg holes and I guess once he got his feet in, he lost his balance and flipped over, so he had basically capsized. Of course I was watching, so it wasn't a huge deal - I jumped right in (with my clothes and glasses) and got him. He was quite shocked by the experience! He held me tight and cried a little but then just stayed in the pool and I swam with the kids in my clothes, which they thought was fun ;)

A few cute pronunciations: cabbage cheese instead of cottage cheese; angel muffins instead of english muffins; tontacts instead of contacts; and w instead of l, which makes every 'l' word cute :)

Elie sometimes acts protective of me, which is ever so sweet - told me how to hold a knife so I wouldn't cut myself and told me to hold on at the playground so I wouldn't fall off (we were walking along a little bridge)

The sweetest of the week was last week at the horseback lesson. I told Elie we could get pizza at the restaurant (really really tasty - everything in the restaurant is very fresh and homemade-ish...). He fell asleep on the way and only woke up when we were getting back in the car at the end. He opened his eyes and looked around and said in confusion, "But I didn't get pizza?"

{YOAV}

Yoav cantered at his horse lesson this week for the first time. Yoav was very excited - he said it was fun... ;)

Yoav coordinated with Elie to bring out dishes and food when we had friends over. He split up the plates for them each to bring out a few, and he asked Elie to open the door for him when he was bringing out the watermelon.

Yes, I feel bad that I only have two for Yoav and four for Elie :(

Language Arts Planning

2011-07-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking for over a month as to how to introduce the consonants. The Waldorf method is to use stories (of course!) to introduce the letters, which are shown to the kids in the form of a chalkboard drawing with the letters hidden in the drawing like a pictogram.

Examples are here. The "Fisherman Letters" is a good example. The drawing on the right just looks like a regular (albeit very good!) chalkboard drawing. Then on the left, you can see the letters F and W drawn in white in that same drawing to "draw out" the letters. Then we practice the letters with some verses, alliteration and talk about other words with the same start and finally the child draws a simplified version of the drawing on the left side of the MLB (Main Lesson Book) and the letter itself on the right.

The tricky part is figuring out which letters to introduce via which stories. I've decided to do two blocks of consonants, which is eight weeks. I'll introduce one or two letters per week in the first block and two or three in the second block. Then I'll spend a week on vowels and in the end there will be five letters Yoav will just learn "on authority" - we'll simply write these in his Main Lesson Book and perhaps do some alliterative verses about them and that's it.

The stories I've decided on are:

Block 1:
Week 1: Rose Red and Snow White - B(ear)
Week 2: The Water of Life - M(ountain), J(ug)
Week 3: The Fisherman and His Wife - F(ish), W(aves)
Week 4: The Goose Girl - G(oose), C(at)

Block 2:
Week 1: The Nixie of Mill Pond - N(ixie), P(ond)
Week 2: Rapunzel - R(apunzel), T(ree)
Week 3: The White Snake - K(ing), Q(ueen), S(nake)
Week 4: Mother Holle - L(ady), V(ase), D(oor)

Remaining Consonants: X, Y, Z

And in trying to figure out words from the stories, I had to read the stories over a bunch of times, so I'm halfway to memorizing these... Now to practice some chalkboard drawing!

Balance Beam - Done!

2011-07-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

Yay, one item can be checked off my list!

Not that we really needed a tutorial, but we used this one :) Ours is two meters long and each horizontal piece is 1/4 meter.

Balance beams have an important place in Waldorf homeschooling. We all know that kids learn better when they're moving, so in Waldorf, the balance beam is used quite a bit. It's great for balance of course (hence the name LOL!) - the child can practice going across it stepping, eyes open, eyes closed, backwards, crawling, sliding, sideways, etc. It is also used to keep the child in motion while memorizing - great for math facts - counting forward/backward and counting by two/three/five/ten, eyes open and closed, walking forward and backward on the balance beam.

I was happy to see that Yoav thought it was fun to go on and didn't just say it was easy as it would be just to walk across. He was practicing jumping and hopping and sliding across.

Monday Memories

2011-07-11T13:16:00.000-07:00

{ELIE}

Elie has been saying thank you a LOT. In the sweetest of ways because he says it for all the little things I do. I open a door for him and he says, "Thanks"; I pour him a drink, he says, "Thanks"; unbutton his shirt so he can get it off and I get a "Thanks". I love. (And, for those who haven't been reading my blog for years LOL, this is all without any prodding - I believe strongly in not "teaching" manners - certainly at age 3, as Steiner taught, kids learn via imitation!)

Elie wanted to get something off a high shelf and, instead of asking for help (or saying anything to me), he went downstairs to get a chair, came back up, got on the chair, got the item and went about his business. ;)

{YOAV}

One day falling asleep, he starting playing aloud with words. He said it was funny that the word "tiny" is bigger than the word "big". He said "turtle" and "squirrel" sound alike - at first I couldn't even figure out what he was talking about here, but he meant that they both end with an "l" sound. He said that you can say "sss" forever and practiced with the word "faster" - as in, "fassssssssssssss-ter". I think this is a sign that he's ready to start learning letters!!!

He asked if it ever rains on Shabbat and wondered if "making rain" would be allowed (by G-d, that is)...

He woke up this morning and right after breakfast, he gathered some yarn and headed over (with Elie for company) to a 13-year-old neighbor to show her how to finger knit (he had told her yesterday that he would show her).

Monday Memories

2011-07-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

One of the things I liked about my blog when only my family read it was that I felt comfortable posting cute things my kids did or said. I want to bring that back for my sake, so I'm going to start a "Monday Memories" tradition of posting cute things my kids do/say for the week. It'll be titled as such so non-family/friends can skip it ;) [And for those who saw this post before, yes, I changed it LOL - I like the sound of Monday Memories better. So, this will be a Monday Memory on a Thursday and going forward I'll do it on Mondays .]

{ELIE}

Elie was eating scrambled eggs and siad, "The big pieces are hot but the small ones are not." So he ate the small ones.

He got a blister from his new shoes and at night told me it hurt and said he got a sunburn from the sun because he went in the pool naked. (A friend's daughter got sunburn complete with blisters and he knows that when it's sunny, we wer bathing suits and sunscreen in the pool. I love that he linked the two pieces of information to associate his blister with sunburn.)

Elie was throwing up this morning. He said, "I'm not sick, I'm just throwing up." In hindsight, I know now that he meant he didn't feel sick other than the throwing up... At dinner, he got thoughtful and said, "This morning in bed I were throwing up. When I was lying down, I didn't have throw up and when I was sitting, I did have throw up."

Once recently I told him we were going swimming. He was quiet for a moment, deep in thought, and then said, "I can swim?" - as in he didn't realize he could swim and was cautiously excited that maybe he actually could ;)

Today, sitting at the edge of the pool with Jeremy ten feet away, he asked Jeremy (in all seriousness!) if he could swim to Jeremy.

He seems to be in a stage of categorizing and linking some basic cause/effect (he's 3.5 yo).

{YOAV}

Today he got a balloon blower toy and after he blew up a balloon, he gave it right to Elie and said, "Here, now you're turn."

He's getting much more advanced in the pool. He just learned to swim (initially dog paddle) about a month ago and is now doing handstands, floating on his back, doing a back stroke, diving for goggles that he throws to the bottom...

He's starting to do a lot more independently. He doesn't like to feet his socks wet and now almost always remembers to put on his Crocs before going to the bathroom or using the kitchen sink. And he'll *sometimes* get himself new socks from the bedroom when said socks do get wet ;)

---

I'm glad I'm doing this. I'm going to keep a list of cute/interesting things and I'll try to include a photo each week - hopefully that will motivate me because I've been TERRIBLE about photos lately!

Planning First Grade - Part III - To Do!

2011-06-28T13:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, last post of the night.

This is my list of to-do items - I'm not counting reading and planning as *doing*, though I have a LOT more of that to do as well ;)

* Make a GREEN (per Eric Fairman in Path of Discovery First Grade) large chalkboard - likely 3'x4' - using this tutorial and instructions from Mrs. M (waldorfhomeeducators Yahoo group); ideally with pine border
* Make two small lap chalk boards, using same method; ideally with rounded corners
* Build sandbox (for use with Form Drawing and drawing letters in the sand) - you could also use a sand tray, but I've wanted a sandbox for the kids for years and finally have the space for one, so am using the given reasons as motivation to get one built before September!
* Make balance beam - I'm thinking of making it with two tree stumps with wood board nailed on - this is for movement and also math (counting by 1s/2s/10s while walking backward and more)
* Paint the play/school room using Lazure painting method - using info from here and a video tutorial here, color info from here, and examples from the main Lazure site here. The room we are painting was originally (not by us) used as a movie room, so the walls and ceiling are currently a dark blue. I'm considering getting this Ebook to help as well. And I'll get Lazure paint brushes here.
* Buy wood desks (hopefully these with ADJUSTABLE LEGS! from IKEA - I hope this is available at our IKEA) and size legs to size based on measurements in Audrey McAllen's "Teaching Children Handwriting".
* Make second painting/cooking apron using same pattern I used for this one, but Yoav wants a linen one (like mine)
* Make painting boards using Mrs. M's details (out of melamine, if I can find it here)

Planning First Grade - Part II - Calendar

2011-06-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

My calendar is almost the same as that of Mrs. M's (waldorfhomeeducators Yahoo group) in "The First Grade" and the addition of a second short Form Drawing block based on Eugene Schwartz's calendar. Eugene Schwartz has three blocks of Form Drawing whereas Mrs. M suggests one four week block at the beginning of the year and then to incorporate Form Drawing into the Main Lesson once a week. I'll do 1.5 blocks of Form Drawing and will do weekly Form Drawing after the initial telling of the new story for the week (Mondays). Honestly, the only reason I put in the second Form Drawing block is that I didn't want a full 4 week block to be cut off by Hanukkah :) But, I'm glad for the extra time for Form Drawing, because I know me and I know I'm better at making schedules than sticking to them, so I'm sure I won't actually *do* Form Drawing after every new story!

The weekly four day "academic" schedule will be:
Sunday: Family Day (day for errands, taking care of the house, going to a nature reserve or hike or whatnot)
Monday: Tell story (TELL not read)
Tuesday: Retell story with child's help, with artistic element (like painting or drawing or modeling wax)
Wednesday: Retell the story, mostly the child, with academic element
Thursday: Painting Day
Friday: Baking Day (this is our day to make challah - just a simple Kindy day for Elie)
Saturday: Shabbat

2010-2011 CALENDAR (school holidays are listed with holiday names)

SEPTEMBER - Form Drawing - 3.5 weeks
9/5 - 9/8
9/12 - 9/15
9/19 - 9/22
9/26 - 9/27
9/28 - 9/30 - Rosh Hashanah (holiday)

OCTOBER - First Language Arts Block - Consonants - 4 weeks
10/3 - 10/6
10/10 - 10/12
10/12 - 10/19 - Sukkot (holiday)
10/20 - Shemeni Atzeret (holiday)
10/24 - 10/27
10/31 - 11/3

NOVEMBER - First Math Block - Qualities of Numbers - 4 weeks
11/7 - 11/10
11/14 - 11/17
11/21 - 11/24
11/28 - 12/1

DECEMBER - Second Form Drawing - 2 weeks
12/5 - 12/8
12/12 - 12/15
12/21 - 12/28 - Hanukkah (holiday)

JANUARY - Second Language Arts - Remaining Consonants - 4 weeks
1/2 - 1/5
1/9 - 1/12
1/16 - 1/19
1/23 - 1/26

FEBRUARY - Second Math - The Four Processes - 4 weeks
1/30 - 2/2
2/6 - 2/9
2/13 - 2/16
2/20 - 2/23

MARCH - Nature - 2.5 weeks
2/27 - 3/1
3/5 - 3/6
3/6-3/9 - Purim (holiday)
3/12 - 3/15

MARCH - Third Language Arts - Vowels - 2 weeks
3/19 - 3/22
3/26 - 3/29

4/6 - 4/13 - Pesach (holiday - stretching out to two full weeks)

APRIL - Third Math - 4 weeks
4/16 - 4/19
4/23 - 4/25
4/26 - Yom Ha'Atzmaut (holiday)
4/30 - 5/3
5/7 - 5/9

MAY - Fourth Language Arts - Writing - 4 weeks
5/14 - 5/17
5/21 - 5/24
5/28 - 5/31
6/4 - 6/7

JUNE - Year-End Review - 2 weeks
6/11 - 6/14
6/18 - 6/21

I put the full calendar in Google Calendar, which seems pretty good for me. I like Lisa's calendar here, but I want one that starts on Sunday and with Google Calendar, I can include the Jewish Holidays and birthdays and can print each week Sun-Sat with each day as a separate calendar just like in the book Lisa uses AND I can print monthly views as well. So far I entered all my block titles into the calendar and later will add details like flute and handwork (and birthdays which need to be on the calendar so we can make gifts during Handwork time).

Planning First Grade - Part I - Resources

2011-06-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a LONG time since I last posted. I want to start posting my plans and progress for First Grade, which we are starting in the Fall. Blogging our days has helped me to stay motivated and on track and I'll need that next year when we have SO much to cover (or so it seems - in a few years, First Grade will look like cake.)

I've been busy reading everything about First Grade Waldorf that I can get my hands on! I'm using Marsha Johnson's free guides (available through her amazing Yahoo group waldorfhomeeducators). I got the Christopherus First Grade curriculum and read it but I'm not using it at all. I'm much more drawn to Mrs. M's materials and much prefer spending my money on supplemental books than a curriculum.

All in all (for now), I'm using:

GENERAL
Mrs. M's First Grade Materials - available at waldorfhomeeducators Yahoo group
Eric Fairman - "Path of Discovery Grade One"
Marsha Johnson - "Creating Beautiful Main Lesson Books"

MATH
Roy Wilkinson - "Teaching Mathematics"
Ron Jarmon - "Teaching Mathematics in Rudolf Steiner Schools"

LANGUAGE ARTS
Roy Wilkinson - "Interpretation of Fairy Tales"
Donna Simmons - "Form Drawing for Beginners"
Laura Embrey-Stine and Ernst Schuberth - "Form Drawing for Grades 1-4"
Audrey McAllen - "Teaching Children Handwriting"

HANDWORK
Bonnie Gosse and Jill Allerton - "A First Book of Knitting"
Arthur Auer - "Learning About the World Through Modeling"
Rauld Russell - "Wet on Wet Watercolor Painting" - available via Mrs. M's group

PENTATONIC FLUTE
Marsha Johnson - "Teaching Yourself and Your Child Pentatonic Flute"

I'm going to break this up into a few posts so it's easier for me...

Learning from Life

2011-05-01T15:25:00.000-07:00

Yoav today surprised me with a bit of math knowledge.

I was cutting fabric pieces for a gift for my MIL. In case she sees this, I won't say what I'm making, but I'm making six things, each of which requires six pieces of fabric. Yoav counted the fabric pieces and said there were 35. Then he immediately corrected himself with, "Oh, no, there's six xyzs (what I'm making) and six pieces for each, so there's 36." I said, "Huh? I thought you said there are 35?". Him: "But there's six sixes so I know there's 36." Me: "How do you know?" Him: "I just know that six sixes is 36." Me: "Oh."

So, a six-year-old still learns the multiplication tables from real life even if it's not on the schedule until second grade. One thing I love about homeschooling is knowing for sure that no one formally taught this to him - all along the way, I've seen him counting things, putting things in rows to count, keeping track, remembering. I love watching him figure out math - he can count by twos, count by tens, knows how to multiply and obviously remembers at least some of the times table, knows that when I'm 70 he'll be 40, knows that Elie will be 97 when he's 100 :)

And yet he still doesn't know the word "plus" or "multiply". Or "math" for that matter. But he's learning it nonetheless because his desire to learn is untempered. I can avoid telling him the names of letters and the names of math processes, but it doesn't stop the learning - it just keeps the learning from becoming intellectualized.

Planning

2011-05-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

I've been busy getting the house organized and doing a LOT of weeding. I've been fairly lax about our rhythm, and the laxness is showing up as irritating behavior in my 6yo. So, I'm forcing myself to get back on the wagon. I even managed to get DH to read Martha Johnson's (waldorfhomeeducators Yahoo group) Kindy document so he can help understand what I'm doing and help me stay focused and motivated!

I have a more solid weekly menu plan that I *think* is realistic and I hope will hold. And along with that, minor changes to our general weekly plan.

These are my two updated schedules:

WEEKLY SCHEDULE:
Sunday: Family Day (errands, gardening, house projects)
Monday: Gardening Day
Tuesday: Painting Day
Wednesday: Handwork Day
Thursday: Soup Day
Friday: Baking Day
Saturday: Shabbat

For the Weekly Schedule, I switched Cleaning Day to Soup Day. Yoav didn't like a "Cleaning Day" and I can incorporate cleaning into our afternoons. Soup day coordinates with the new weekly menu plan - we'll have soup for dinner on Thursday and the remaining soup will be saved for Friday dinner.

One new thing I've been doing that I learned from Martha Johnson is to keep a basket out with a few key items for that day's activity. I really love this. I have a beautiful basket that I acquired from a woman who ran an organic grocery that went out of business. I keep that on the kitchen table with a few items - so, tomorrow is gardening day so I have the basket out with a trowel and shovel; for Painting Day, I'll put out the cut paper (edges rounded) and paints, etc. I've noticed that this has two obvious benefits - keeps me motivated and lets the kids know what "Day" it is without asking me.

I also put together a basic and very easy weekly menu for myself. This is an idea from "Simplicity Parenting", although my schedule is even more basic than he suggests - the author, Kim John Payne, suggests a "chinese food day", "mexican food day", etc. I'm keeping mine really simple because Yoav is very picky so I don't vary the food too much during the week. Having the schedule will just help me make sure food is defrosted in time! Along with having trouble with my rhythm through the move (and, to be fair, Pesach), I've also had a hard time keeping up with all the cooking and have fallen far short of my ideal. A new organic store opened up five minutes from us, so that should help with last-minute oversights.

WEEKLY FOOD PLAN:
Sunday: Eggs (shakshuka, scrambled, etc)
Monday: Ground Beef (hamburger, spaghetti with meat sauce)
Tuesday: Chicken (shnitzel, roast chicken)
Wednesday: Steak
Thursday: Soup and liver (soup is main course for me and DH, liver is main course for the kids)
Friday: Shabbat
Saturday: Leftovers

Craft: Omer Counter

2011-04-13T08:30:00.000-07:00

Today as our craft, we made an Omer Counter. "Counting the Omer" is the Jew's formal counting of the 49 days from the second day of Passover (when the Omer offering was brought in the Holy Temple) to the eve of Shavuot, signifying our preparation for the receiving of the Torah on the holiday of Shavuot.

If you're interested, you can read more about Counting the Omer here.

For our Counter, Yoav finger crocheted a long chain of wool yarn. Then we tied colored wooden beads onto short lengths of thin wool yarn and I made a loop at the end of each to slide it onto the crocheted chain. We then put the colors into a pattern and slid them onto the crocheted chain. Each night, we'll slide one bead from the right to the left. It was a good craft for us - Yoav kept busy with the finger crocheting, putting beads on the white yarn and then ordering of the beads and Elie was busy stringing beads. I knotted the beads onto the white yarn and made the loops.

Yoav and Language / No Intervention

2011-04-12T09:16:00.000-07:00

Score 1 for No Intervention!

For the past few years, Yoav has said a few words wrong and I've wondered if I should do anything about it. I talked to Beth Sutton of Enki Education about it a little less than a year ago and (based on his detailed biography), she suggested I wait a year and then re-evaluate.

Thank you Beth!

Today, suddenly, Yoav is able to say ALL the words properly!

The words he said wrong were:
"d" instead of "th" (ie, "dat" instead of "that")
"ill" instead of "ull" (ie, "bill" instead of "bull")

Today he said to me, "Watch (me spin this candle). I hold the string between my thumb and this finger."
Me: "Your WHAT!?!?!?!"
Him: "My thumb."
Me: "Your thumb?"
Him: "Yes my thumb."
Me: (nonverbal) Woohoo!!!! Then, aloud, "Ah, and you make it go as fast as a bull?"
Him: "Yes."
Me: "As fast as a bull?"
Him: "Yeah, as fast as a bull!"
Me: "Do you think you can pull a bull?"
Him: (thinking aloud) "...pull a bull..."
Me: (nonverbal) Woohoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Creative Parenting: How to Sleep and Play With Your Kids :)

2011-04-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

This post is in honor of my very creative husband ;)

Today he was playing with the kids - DH was the shop owner and the kids would come by with their pick up trucks to buy items from the shop and then would take the items to their home and organize it all.

DH was exhausted from just returning from NY and going to sleep too late last night and waking up early this morning. So he said to the boys that he (the shop owner) had to go to the bank and was closing down the store briefly and would be back soon. Then he came and rested on the couch and told Yoav that he picked a number at the bank and he got number 176 and they were on number 25 or something like that. Both kids took it as part of the game and went on playing in a way that didn't involve going to the store. Occasionally Yoav would ask what number the bank was on and DH would let him know and Yoav took it as just the way it is / part of the game and DH got to sleep a bit :)

Yes, I Got Rhythm...

2011-03-27T14:04:00.000-07:00

... Who could ask for anything more?

:)

I've been on a bit of a hiatus. We moved to a new house about two weeks ago. Our first home purchase, here in Israel, in a small moshav (rural town) called Eshta'ol, about 20 minutes to Jerusalem and 40 minutes (or so) to Tel Aviv.

With the move came, as expected, a bit of chaos. Aside from the general anxiety of moving, we had almost no rhythm for the past two weeks. I watched both kids behavior go down such a steep downward spiral that, a few days ago, I started seriously thinking it could be possible that my 6yo has clinical depression (versus the actual combo of 6 Year Change, Melancholic Temperament and recent move)... ;)

So, yesterday, I started thinking about what I might post to my various Waldorf groups for help. And I quickly realized that there was no reason to post because I knew that the responses would all be some form of: Is your rhythm strong?

Duh!

So, I printed out Marsha Johnson's (WaldorfHomeEducators Yahoo group - she's a Waldorf teacher who runs a Yahoo group for Waldorf homeschoolers and she is an invaluable resource!) Kindergarten Guide (a pamphlet titled, "A Week in the Home Kindergarten")

and put together a new rhythm modified a bit from our previous one to (hopefully) better meet the current needs of my kids. I'm also going to try to changing the week to be Sun-Thurs with Friday left for Shabbat prep so I don't feel any pressure to do anything else on Fridays...

Daily Rhythm:
Rise/Dress/Make Bed
Breakfast
Focused Activity (see weekly rhythm below)
Snack
Outdoor Play (not sure what will happen here when the weather gets hot - might need to be switched with the Focused Activity)
Circle
Story
Story-related or Seasonal Art (brief)
Lunch Prep
Lunch
Quiet Time
Free Play
Dinner Prep
Dinner
Bed Prep
Bed

Weekly Rhythm:
Su - Gardening Day
M - Painting Day (and Yoav has a horseback riding lesson at 2pm, which will be during the free play, no longer as one of our anchors)
T - Sewing/Handwork/Craft Day (will focus on sewing and handwork projects for the home or as gifts)
W - Washing/Ironing Day (kids can clean the kitchen cabinet outsides, help iron linen napkins)
R - Baking/Cooking Day

F - Shabbat Prep
Sa - Shabbat

This week, our story is "Gingerbread Man", sewing project is to make a felt Gingerbread Man ornament that we'll gift to a friend and on Baking Day, we'll bake gingerbread men.

Circle is same as it was prior to moving, which should help provide some stability/continuity.

This morning when we came downstairs for breakfast, Yoav immediately started in with, "What Can I Do? What Can I Do? What Can I Do? What Can I Do?"

I simply said, "Today is Gardening Day - don't worry - we'll be busy today." He felt the Mama Duck energy in my statement and I didn't hear this question for the rest of the day. In the end, we had a great day today, our best in at least three weeks (since I was packing pre-move and not keeping up with our rhythm well). Yoav participated fully in Circle and clearly enjoyed it; both kids listened to the Story, with Yoav mesmerized as usual. After (telling) the story, I led us to our craft table to draw and I drew a picture of the Gingerbread man and the various animals/people who ran after him.

Sometimes the Waldorf Way seems really exhausting to me - I dream of days spent lazily reading on the couch sipping tea, but the fact is that those days aren't relaxing - I *do* try this sometimes, thinking I can make the dream a reality, but the actual result is me sitting with a book on the couch with the kids fighting or Yoav asking me over and over what he can do (typical part of the 6 Year Change). The Waldorf Way requires such strength from me, especially when getting "back on the wagon", but the results are always so worth the effort. Yoav digging in the dirt this morning and planting seeds, laughing as he galloped around the house during Circle, bulging eyes hanging onto every word of Story... I'm so thankful that I found Waldorf and I hope that on the bad days/weeks, my friends (and mostly DH) will please remind me that I *can* do it and send me back to this post for inspiration ;)

Cloth Pad Giveaway

2011-03-07T13:46:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to share a Glad Rags Giveaway (International!)

http://wisewomanfertility.blogspot.com/2011/03/menstruation-part-iv-cloth-pads.html?spref=bl

Drawing is Mar 15. Also, the woman who runs the site is known to be quite special as an infertility specialist if anyone is in need of a fertility guru...

Shabbat / Simplicity Parenting

2011-03-05T15:22:00.000-08:00

We went to friends for Shabbat this weekend and it was so calm and enjoyable. I've been noticing lately how well my kids do when we're out of the house. Not to say that they don't do well at home, but, out of the house, they really make me look good :) This Shabbat, there were no tantrums, no angry words, no fights, no need for me to intervene other than a few gentle shush-es while our hosts were napping, no complaints about food (or anything else for that matter!).

Of particular interest to me was that there were three toys in the house (this family has older children) - a small set of Plan Toys blocks, a set of pick-up sticks and a set of 28 Connectagons (not 240 like in the link!) I love that my kids happily played with these three toys for a full day. They spent some time building with the blocks, some time pretending that the Connectagons were food (the kids served us "cookies"), and quite a lot of time with Yoav pretending to run a store that sold the blocks and Connectagons and the pick-up sticks were the currency we used. BTW, this was not an adult-intensive game - the adults were talking and simply paused when our turn came around to "buy" something from Yoav's store.

There is a wonderful book called Simplicity Parenting in which the author, Kim John Payne, recommends first getting rid of half of your children's toys (donating or giving away) and then I believe he says to do the same with the remaining half. We have very few toys at home - a set of tree blocks; Waldorf dolls for each child; a wooden play farm with wooden, felt and knit animals; a gnome home (used as a doll house for the little handmade gnomes); playsilks; a few small play kitchen items; a few wooden trucks; and various nature items - shells, pine cones and pebbles. Having so few toys at home makes my kids less dependent on toys for fun and more creative in their play since each toy we have is open-ended. Open-ended toys are those that can be many things (for example, silks can be clothes or grass or ocean) versus an electronic doll that sings a song when you push a button. Because of this difference, play silks can be played with for hours (in a single day) versus probably a few minutes for an electronic doll. And, as a further benefit, the kids are happy when they see that our Shabbat hosts have a small set of blocks, a small set of Connectagons and a small set of pick-up sticks rather than asking where the rest of the toys are or complaining that there's nothing to do.

In a world where children's attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, I'm so very thankful to have found this slow movement - thankful that my family prefers to watch a sunset together than to watch a TV show or play a video game!