Math in May

I've started putting up my May lessons. However, my attention is somewhat divided between my blog and the community blog I'm a part of: A Taste of Waldorf. So, I've posted our May math stuff there. Check it out: Math: Odd and Even Gnomes.

Little Fiddler

Bearcub's finally found a way to play the violin too. Here she is tuning up for her next performance.

Time for a change

Feelin whacky so I've picked a new look. I'm hoping this will help for organization as well. Hope you like!

This was fun

I tried this after seeing it on Sara's blog and...ta da: I'm a daffodil!

I am a Daffodil What Flower Are You?

Here's the description: You have a sunny disposition and are normally one of the first to show up for the party. You don't need too much attention from the host once you get there as you are more than capable of making yourself seen and heard.

Nice.

Ok, so I'm a daffodil, sunny and etc. etc. Only, here's my big secret - I only recently turned sunny again. In fact during the end of April and most of May I was down right cranky. That's why I haven't been posting much these days. Nor have I been on the web or reading blogs or anything. I was burned out. Fizzled. Why? The end of the school year, Chillymama quit her job, found a new job, started a new job (with three hour round trip commute - oh boy!), my relaxing hobby stopped being so relaxing, work kept me from sleeping, I am a parent, and etc. etc.

And on and on. One evening, in a rant, I found myself wondering how I got to be such a negative, pessimist. Was I always that way? So I stopped and took a good long look at my over reacting, cranky, drama queen self and decided: If nothing changes, nothing changes. Thus:

• I began focusing on getting sleep - long real sleep. This means no late night computing.
  
• I stopped working at night. I now have a helper who comes once a week, while I'm at home, to be with the kids so I can get a day for work. Miraculous.
  
• I set an end date for our school year, June 6, and we quit completely for the summer: no "lessons," no music rehearsal, no recitals, no planning, no nothing.
  
• I started yoga again (I used to teach...oh, so long ago.)
• I let go of cooking - we still eat wholesome, it's just that now we're on the simple, warm-up plan.
  
• I started biking and recently did a tri-athalon.
  
• I refocused on being with my kids.
• I planned a family vacation.
  
• I started reading for pure pleasure.
  
• I worked on being supportive to Chillymama and her career decisions, rather than harping on what should be happening.
  
• I stopped critiquing myself for every little thing.

Guess what happened? My sunny-ness returned! Keeping the focus on me has, of course, put everything else in perspective. To put it bluntly - it's all about me. Funny, but true. Taking care of one's self is an imperative part of functioning in a healthy way. Now that my perspective is clearing (I'm really not a negative fiend by nature - whew!) life is on the upswing. As a family we've made the decision to: keep homeschooling (seemed a little touch and go there for a minute), work on our relationship with a little outside help, take more time for each other, and say "No" more often if the activity seems like it will disrupt our family life.

I've also noticed that Nightowl has learned an amazing amount this past year (yay homeschooling), that at two Bearcub is not only challenging, she's engaging and loving and cuddly and fierce, and that I create quite a bit of my own stress.

As my sunny-ness returns I'm getting refilled and finding I have a little more to give each day. We did lots during the month of May - that I'll post eventually. Bearcub had a birthday, Nightowl had a birthday, summer camp has started and things are looking up. I'm even starting to think about our next year. I might even make plans - eventually. But for now, my focus is on refilling and rebuilding my daffodilish self - and seriously, my work here is not even close to done.

Nightowl in Love

Well, it's finally happened - in the most unexpected of places with the most unexpected of...um, creatures. Truth. Last Sunday Nightowl became entranced and then fell hard for the fluffy, feathered chicken.

Members from our congregation brought a small selection of animals to church last Sunday. All the kids classes got turns mixing it up with the goats, sheep, ducks, chickens etc. At the end of the service I went to pick up Nightowl from her classsroom. She wasn't there. I finally found her on the playground in a quiet space with a sweet Bantam hen nestled in her lap.

She'd been there since her class visit; she remained there throughout the coffee hour and into the beginnings of the second service. During this time her newfound chicken friend spent the entire time nuzzled in her arms sleeping, pooing (amazingly this didn't faze Nightowl at all), and finally laying an egg (this was quite amazing).

She was reluctant to part with the hen but we did finally make it home. Now we talk chickens, chickens, chickens morning till night. Nightowl wants chickens and (luckily??) our city code allows urban chicken farming - up to five hens on a city lot.

So we are now researching chickens, coops, chicks, safety, feeding, 4H and etc. Plus we've had a family talk about caring for animals and responsibility. Add this to our complete dedication in supporting our eldest - whatever direction her interests take - and you get the fact that we are considering chickens. We've decided that if Nightowl can show us that she can take some responsibility for the pets we currently have (two dogs and three cats) then maybe when she is 8 or 9 we'll consider getting a coop that will be her primary responsibility.

She's gung ho. She's taken over the cat care. She doing a daily cat box cleaning and is responsible for feeding and watering . So far she is quite cheery about it. This is good for me too as I am glad to shift that responsibility. So, we'll see if the romance lasts beyond the next few days or weeks. But for now she's pretty content with her dreams of future chickens. I keep overhearing the comments she makes to herself: "Won't it be great to have fresh eggs?" "Maybe the coop could go here." "In the winter I'll have to dig a path to the coop so that I can make sure my chickens get enough love and attention."

Ain't love grand?

The City Chicken
The Path to Freedom
Backyard Chickens
4-H USA
The Banty Chicken

Real Moms

Wow. I've been tagged. And until now I had no idea that it was even possible - or what it meant. So. Here's the deal: We overworked, overloved, tired, fabulous mothers are reading the blogs of other moms. Then we tag them on our blog and create community and etc. Fun.

Ok, so here goes: I'm a stay-at-home, homeschooling, running my own business on the side mom! Ha. I have wonderful moments, the all too real mom-flab, sleepless nights and cozy mornings. It's a good thing.

I tag the following mom's: Schooling from the Heart, Amy's Mama Journal at BlogSchmog, Big Mama, and Wife Mom Maniac.

Lasagna Again

Springtime now. Time for planting. True to the promise our layered lasagna garden has evolved into rich, black earth teaming with worms and other assorted creepy crawlers. The hay and mulch layers work wonders at retaining moisture.

This week we began planting with a few perennials - black-eyed susans, peonies, crazy daisies, coneflowers, and coreopsis. We are mostly interested in seeds and will begin planting those in May - once all fear of frost is gone.

Regarding our tree nursery - sadly we had no success. The seeds in cups did not work for us. But we are undaunted and will continue with other planting experiments.

The new craft

This Christmas Nightowl received a wooden-peg loom from Santa. On Tuesday she asked for a new craft; out came the loom.




Day one. Beginning the pouch-purse project.









Day three. It's been hard to put this project down. The work is frequently punctuated by comments of "Isn't it fun to watch me do this!"

Reading is also covered here as Nightowl is working on deciphering the directions. Lots of new vocab such as weft and warp.

Word-Family Town

Ok. We completely borrowed this idea from Sara over at Schooling From the Heart. The idea of creating a Word-Family Town to facilitate reading and spelling was just too delicious. It's been really great. Nightowl loves it so much that my two week project spiraled into four. I did not take into account Nightowl's capacity for detail - my mistake. So here it is.





It all started with a story and a house. The story of the "AD" house and all the consonant friends who come to visit. Nightowl made the house and I started making the friends. From there it blossomed.

Future plans include: directions through the town, a town-wide spelling bee, and a visit from the "Article Gang" (a, an, the...).

The only subject

It seems, despite our Waldorf blocks and unschooling meandering, that our one, main, true subject is music. We spend inordinate amounts of time on music. It permeates everything. Everyday Nightowl plays her two instruments: violin and piano. Her "pencil and paper work" often relates to music theory - intervals, note reading, music writing. She also makes up songs, sings, and dances.

We use tunes to remember math and use note values for simple addition and subtraction problems. We sing songs to remember reading skills and create simple words out of various notes. We play music games such as music note go-fish.

Music also helps her to forge relationships with other kids in group class and gives her a taste of the traditional classroom dynamic. But most of all she plays. And plays. And plays. She is now playing occasionally with with an accompanist. For this task we've asked for help from our lovely friend Bob, who is a wonderful piano player, loves the children, and loves to perform. Aside from a sweet little duet, this relationship has many other wonderful benefits - friendship, family-fun (our kids play with his kids etc. etc.) and the kudos of other great adults in our girl's life.

Here they are in their first recital. Awesome.

Flat Nightowl Returns

For geography we've jumped on-board the Flat Stanely train. Flat Stanley is a children's book about Stanley, a little boy made flat when a bulletin board falls on him. Other than being flat he is fine. As a flat person Stanley finds it is easy to travel via mail; he gets mailed on a vacation to California.




We liked the book and the idea. So Nightowl created a flat version of herself and we shipped Flat Nightowl off to Hawaii to visit her Aunty Kathy and Aunty Jane. She recently returned with souveniers, stories and pictures. The real, non-flat Nightowl is keeping a book of her travels as well as fun facts about the places visited.




At the moment, Flat Natalia is touring the Big Apple with our friends Margaret and Aliza. We've been studying up on NYC in preparation for her return as well as making travel plans for the future.






Photos top to bottom:
#1 Boogie boarding at Hapuna Beach
#2 Touring the volcanoes with Aunty Jane
#3 A narrow escape from the mighty Marlin
#4 Visiting the Orchid Market

Little Fairy Girl

Logic

During a recent trip to a neighboring town's childrens' museum Nightowl discovered a large scale chess set. That morning's chess massacre piqued her interest and we're now playing a at home. To help with the logic I've also introduced her to kid's sudoku. I found a nifty little website (Free Kid Sudoku Puzzles) with 4x4 sudoku that helps kids get a hang of the logic. We're doing a bit every day. Pretty cool.

Book Learning

We spent the end of February/beginning of March pursuing Natural Science. Among other things we: visited Nightowl's tree, collected and sorted seeds, started a tree seedling nursery, began a log of said nursery, and created a rotting log terrarium. Mild March days have drawn us out of doors and kept us there.

After four weeks of this (along with our other various activities such as music, reading, painting, cooking, learning to ride the two-wheeler and etc.) Nightowl came up to me and said, in all seriousness:

Mommy, we've been forgetting to do school. We haven't done school in weeks and weeks!
Incredulous I replied: We've been doing school - all this natural science plus our other activities - this is school.
It is?
Yes.
Silence.

Interestingly Nightowl has not considered most of our daily work to be school - school being the sit at a desk and raise your hand to speak type of thing she hears of from friends and reads about in books. The only work we do that she acquaints with school is when we sit down with paper and crayons/pencils and write words or work problems.

This whole notion made her a bit uncomfortable so we spent a couple of days book learning - I gave her materials and she designed, wrote, and illustrated a new Nightowl original book. Then we worked to plan out the flowers and herbs for our lasagna garden: we made lists and sketches for planting. All this writing and flipping of pages felt more schooly to her but I can tell that she's thinking things over.

For instance she now asks randomly during painting or the creation of our letter-family town or cooking or song writing: "So this is school?" When I reply: "Yes, honey it is." She chuckles and nods her head and says: "This is school."



1 - Planting, 2 - Seed cups, 3 - The found nest

Back to Nature

We've moved on, put the math books away - although the Gnomes still grace our shelves and our abacus still rattles daily - and have gone back to nature. Or, rather, Natural Science. It's our second natural science block and we're revisiting our old friend Grandforest Tree.

I think we'll spend two weeks here. Nightowl really enjoyed reviewing her work from our Fall Natural Science block (it's wonderful stuff). Now we're doing a few winter/early spring Natural science projects. The plan is to do an even larger SPRING natural science block in April. We've revisited her tree friend, read several stories about the forrest in Winter, gone on a nature walk, and have created a rotting log terrarium. We're also collecting tree seeds and next week we will plant them in small cups. Hopefully, we'll have a good start that we can transfer to our Lasagne Garden this spring. So far Nightowl has collected: apple seeds, buckeyes, acorns, and evergreen seeds (we removed these by warming up the pinecones).

However, our favorite project thus far has been tapping trees and collecting sap for maple syrup. We have a group that meets every other week. And last Thursday we went out to the woods, tapped trees, collected sap and learned how to make maple syrup. It was way cool. Sure we've all read about tapping trees and we all love syrup but these kids actually got to do it. Very nice. We ended our afternoon with a pancake and maple syrup lunch and long romp in the woody outdoors.

Now, we're feeling quite inspired and are planning, this, week to tap the maple tree in our front yard. Turns out there an entire culture of "in-town tree-tappers." All the gear and instruction kits are available at our local hardware store - who knew! We're not sure if we'll actually get any sap or any syrup, but then that's not really the point here is it? Updates on this later. In the meantime here's some images of our sappy adventure. Sweet!


Drilling the hole.


Choosing the tap. Tasting the sap.


Preparing the collection jug.


Boiling the sap.

Last Week

In a nutshell: Big Midwestern snowstorm. Our little enclave received: ICE (lots of it). Chillymamma was off from work for a couple of days. Our power was out for only about 8 hours (we we're luckier than many of our friends ). So we snuggled together and made the most of it:


Cookies!


Valentines!

Wednesday Watercolors

Nightowl has been watercolor painting every Wednesday since early September. We are using the wet-on-wet technique advocated by Waldorfers everywhere. This technique requires that a heavy weight of water color paper be submerged in water until nearly saturated. The artist then uses diluted watercolors to create art.

It's a tricky business this wet-on-wet painting. It's difficult to paint outlines - the concrete stuff of Nightowl's imagination. The painter needs to connect with the technique, working with the flow of the color from the brush. It requires patience, an open mind and a willingness to be flexible.

Truth be told - our painting hasn't gone so well. I had no idea (until recently) how to mix the colors. Some of our paintings were vibrant but most were washed out and barely visible when dry. Very frustrating. Nightowl was discouraged and I was sick of the whole business.

However, thanks to our recent workshop with Barbara Dewey and a cool "how to mix paint post" from Fairie School we are finally on our way.

I use several printed resources for painting but my favorite by far is How to Do Wet-on-wet Watercolor Painting and Teach It to Children by Rauld Russell. Unlike most other sources Russell recommends using 8 colors: Prussian Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Cobalt Blue, Alizarin Crimson, Vermilion, Cadmium Yellow, Yellow Lake, and Purple Lake. This is quite different from the usual three color recommendation but as we're colorful folk - we like it!

Although we had progressed to using more than one of the washed out colors we've opted to start over with single, better mixed colors. Nighowl is really taking to painting again. She's more relaxed and open to the process and pleased with her results.

We did cobalt with Barbara (See the above photo. Nightowls' painting is second to the bottom on the right).

We have done some work with Purple Lake.


Purple Mountains - by Nightowl and Aleisha


And today we tried Prussian Blue - Nightowl's favorite by far.


Ocean and Sky - by Nightowl













When we started painting I created a little story to go with the painting. We dropped as the painting became so unsatifying. We might go back to eventually though. It goes something like this:

At the beginning of time there was a beautiful Goddess. She sat on carved wooden thrown. At her side sat her companion the Imp - a prankster and joker.

One day she explained colors to the Imp. Red is a gift from the Red Fish of the Red Sea. One day the Red Fish gave me a shining red scale. From this comes red. Blue is a gift from the Blue Bird of the Blue Sky. One day the Blue Bird gave me a blue feather. From this comes Blue. Yellow is a gift from the Mainden who works in the Golden Field. One day she gave me the petal from a rare Daffodil. From this comes yellow. The Goddess carved a paint brush handle from the Tall Tree's limbs. The King Boar gave her a gift of bristles from his chin to make the brush. She gave the brush and the colors to the Imp: use them wisely and carefully, she told him. Take care to keep your colors clean and pure, your brush clean and soft.

One day the Goddess was creating the sky and the sun. She created a blue sky with a yelllow sun. Then she created a yellow sky with a blue sun. She thought about which combination she liked the best. All this painting made her very tired so she lay down to rest. Her companion, the Imp, smiled and laughed. He took his paint brush and mixed the sun and sky creating deep green. When the Goddess awoke she was startled but not angry. The Imp was quite pleased with trick.

Craft Log #2

We've been crafting away during the past few months; it feels like time to take stock of what's been completed by Nightowl thus far:

Completion of the fuzzy warm scarf and the fuzzy warm doll-scarf with fringe.










Festive door wreath. Nightowl collected these pine twigs during one of our walks. She wove it into a wreath and decorated it for the holidays. It still hangs on our door.











The puppets (A Prince of a Tale...)








Rosetta! (Back to school...)

A Grumpy Day

That's what it's been. Due to anxiety in other areas of my life I'm not sleeping so I'm exhausted and nervous. Nightowl, having been cooped up in-doors due to cold weather is fidgety and whiney. Bearcub is....well, she's nearly two, enough said.

This morning my kids kept poking me:

"Mommy, get up we want breakfast!" - Nightowl
"Eggs!" - Bearcub
"Mrrumph" - Me, pulling the pillow over my head.

Ok, I got up. We did our thing but overall it was a kinda grumpy, blah day. This morning Nightowl announced "Mommy, I need time to play today." She disappeared into her room aka the land of dolls and make believe. Bearcub would not allow herself to be dressed and spent much of the morning in a diaper, one snowboot (the right) and a frilly headband, all the while demanding:

"Mama! Coat! Cold!"
"How about clothing?" I'd suggest picking up the outfit for the 15-millionth time.
"Noooooo!"

And then she ran screaming the other way. Our house has a circular floor pattern so giving chase has all the makings of a cartoon adventure.

Eventually we pulled it together (sort of). Nightowl descended to help make the bread, play the violin, read some books, and do science experiments at the kitchen work table.

"What happens if I mix cornstarch, water AND potato starch...ooooh!"

Bearcub did eventually dress, this of course was only after she had removed her diaper and dumped it's contents which....well, let's just say it was pretty disgusting.

At the end of the day we headed outside for some snow play and driveway shoveling. In some ways, an hour outside cured everything. As we headed in for dinner ("Not leftovers again!" - Nightowl) we discussed the prospect of snow ice cream for dessert. This sweetness was wonderful and cheered us all. Of course, Bearcub did have quite a fit when, while trying to help make the ice-cream, she grabbed the bowl, dumped it's contents and was immediately removed from the area. But what can I say? She's nearly two. Heaven help us all.

Snow Ice Cream Variation #1
1 egg beaten
1 tbs vanilla
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups whole milk
Mix all ingredients, add clean snow, serve.

Snow Ice Cream Variation #2
2 cups full fat coconut milk
1 tbs vanilla
1/2 cup sugar
Mix all ingredients, add clean snow, serve.

All's Fair....

I completely forgot to post about our recent science fair - oops! Our local homeschool cooperative runs three learning fairs every year: biography, science, and international. Participation is optional, non-competitive and open to all ages.

Nightowl particpated in last year's science fair by creating a poster of the solar system. She was game this year as well. The topic she chose: shells. She had found a large cache of shells in a basket in our garage. She's been examining them for the past few months and was eager to share them with others.

In preparation we talked about what a science fair is, what she'd like to learn about the shells and what she'd like to present. Then we were off to the library for books, and the craft store for a display board.

We looked at the shell books together - but apart from that this was her thing. She decided she wanted to know:

1. What lives in a shell?
2. What color are shells?
3. What are shells called?

She discovered answers to these questions in our reading time together and created a display - on her own. I was called in to help with spelling but other than that I was hands off (the observer is never an easy role for me so I learned a little lesson too). As you can see she pulled it off and even felt comfortable taking questions from the audience:




Now she is excited about the International Fair. She's already selected her topic: The Philippines. She's into cooking right now so for her project she will be learning to make three different, traditional Filippino dishes. I suspect that I'll be called in to help decipher the recipes and handle the heat source. Sounds good.