Rhythm of the Home online magazine is offering up some amazing giveaways! My favorite is the Saint Lucia Set, the felted cowl and the Winter Cd. But I would have ecstatic to win any of the prizes, really! Check out their blog: http://rhythmofthehomeblog.com/12/winter-giveaway/#comment-2479
There is so much creativity and generosity out there, it's inspiring. The beautiful blogs are also inspiring, something I need to find the time for, as life passes by, this is a perfect way to keep track and document all the amazing moments....
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Back to school again....
Today we had a good day, beginning with a prayer of thanks and hopes for the new day, a verse and a candle. We started with math review, Ami is doing well with her understanding of the processes, very well actually. We do division by putting numbers of jewels into "Count Divide's" house, dividing up the the jewels for any number of princesses coming to the King's palace for dinner. Today Noah told me that if we had 12 jewels, and 3 princesses came to dinner, then each princess would get 4 jewels. He was so full of light in his face when he figured it out, and he did it in his head without counting! I didn't ask him, he just told me when I was asking Ami. He was very proud of himself :-) We then tossed a ball back and forth to do the 2, 5 and 10 times tables.
After math review we did some form drawing, and then sang Shalom Aleichem (hebrew) before lunch.
After lunch we took a walk to the mailbox, and then to the bird feeders to toss some seeds on the ground for the wild birds. We sang a new song about feeding birds, which we later began learning to play on the recorder. After tossing seeds, we went for a walk around the pond and stomped up ice in the yard. The most fun we had was discovering the amazing--absolutely amazing-- sound ice makes when you toss it across the surface of the pond (like a frisbee). It sings! It's like bird song, but synthesized, or something. I have never heard anything like it before. We all REALLY enjoyed that til our fingers were frozen. Then it was time to head inside.
When we came in we practiced our new bird feeding song on the recorder. Ami is really picking new songs up very easily lately.
All throughout the day she is delving into new drawings and it is so difficult for me to draw her away from them. I want to let her finish, but also to stay on track somewhat. So she puts them aside, reluctantly, and we move on to the next....right now she is into drawing really detailed and elaborate landscapes filled with dinosaurs, in the air, in the sea, fighting each other, munching grasses, feeding young, sniffing flowers.....
After recorder we painted snow/blue sky/ice rock salt watercolor paintings.
Eden used the potty today! She peed on the potty and I couldnt be happier! 2010 is gonna be a good year....
Today we finished our day with closing verse, after reading aloud to the kids and Ami reading one story aloud to us.
I feel like everything came together nicely today and hope everyday can go like this one did.
After math review we did some form drawing, and then sang Shalom Aleichem (hebrew) before lunch.
After lunch we took a walk to the mailbox, and then to the bird feeders to toss some seeds on the ground for the wild birds. We sang a new song about feeding birds, which we later began learning to play on the recorder. After tossing seeds, we went for a walk around the pond and stomped up ice in the yard. The most fun we had was discovering the amazing--absolutely amazing-- sound ice makes when you toss it across the surface of the pond (like a frisbee). It sings! It's like bird song, but synthesized, or something. I have never heard anything like it before. We all REALLY enjoyed that til our fingers were frozen. Then it was time to head inside.
When we came in we practiced our new bird feeding song on the recorder. Ami is really picking new songs up very easily lately.
All throughout the day she is delving into new drawings and it is so difficult for me to draw her away from them. I want to let her finish, but also to stay on track somewhat. So she puts them aside, reluctantly, and we move on to the next....right now she is into drawing really detailed and elaborate landscapes filled with dinosaurs, in the air, in the sea, fighting each other, munching grasses, feeding young, sniffing flowers.....
After recorder we painted snow/blue sky/ice rock salt watercolor paintings.
Eden used the potty today! She peed on the potty and I couldnt be happier! 2010 is gonna be a good year....
Today we finished our day with closing verse, after reading aloud to the kids and Ami reading one story aloud to us.
I feel like everything came together nicely today and hope everyday can go like this one did.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Been so long....
It's been so long since I have written anything. We have had a bit of a whirlwind past month. We went to visit Gramma Alice in MO and have just now finally gotten back into the groove around here. Besides having a loooooooong car ride and visit to the midwest, we also had Noah's birthday, and shortly after arriving home we had planning for Hanukkah. And know we are on to winter solstice celebration, Chris's birthday, and let's not forget Christmas, which, as much as I would like to avoid altogther, it's celebrated by everyone in our respective families so we will have a day of gifts and probably getting together with Grammy here as well.
So, a brief synopsis of how we have kept up with school over the past month (or so). When we were in MO we did nature studies, which was great because we were in a whole new area of the country, landscape was different, birds were different. Chris's mom has 40 acres and down the hill from her house is a stream which the kids (and their dad) spent a lot of time at, hunting arrowheads and beaver trails. We observed a great deal, winter setting in, squirrel nests and birds nests, collecting firewood, raking up leaf piles. The kids built a birdhouse with their dad. We read books, knitted, played piano and recorder, wrote poems and colored in the main lesson book.
Now that we are home we are on to Language Arts again, which is sort of melding in with nature studies and Solstice activities. And with Chanukkah we have read stories about the macabees, made hanukkiahs, colored pictures, main lesson activites, put on a play or two, learned a new song. We work on word families/spelling everyday. We are moving into winter, so our verses have been winter oriented. Today we made a Solstice spiral for the table and tonight when we lit chanukkah candles, we also lit the spiral which looked lovely, the whole table lit up.
My goals for he week are to spend more time with my kids just being. Taking walks and talking, rather than telling and explaining. I want relationship and relating/sharing.
Noah loved his birthdays, although he was a tired boy for both parties. He has become self-conscious and gets embarrassed at himself sometimes. Seems worse when he's tired, at which point the nervous/embarrassment turns to defensiveness and grumpy faces. We really need t be sure everyone gets a lot of sleep around here! For everyone except Eden River who just seems to always just prance around here with her rosy sunny personality at all hours of the long day!
I will make an entry every day, I pledge. Keeping focus helps me to be a better mother, and journaling our experiences helps me to know what I am doing right, wrong, what to change and how on track we are.
So, a brief synopsis of how we have kept up with school over the past month (or so). When we were in MO we did nature studies, which was great because we were in a whole new area of the country, landscape was different, birds were different. Chris's mom has 40 acres and down the hill from her house is a stream which the kids (and their dad) spent a lot of time at, hunting arrowheads and beaver trails. We observed a great deal, winter setting in, squirrel nests and birds nests, collecting firewood, raking up leaf piles. The kids built a birdhouse with their dad. We read books, knitted, played piano and recorder, wrote poems and colored in the main lesson book.
Now that we are home we are on to Language Arts again, which is sort of melding in with nature studies and Solstice activities. And with Chanukkah we have read stories about the macabees, made hanukkiahs, colored pictures, main lesson activites, put on a play or two, learned a new song. We work on word families/spelling everyday. We are moving into winter, so our verses have been winter oriented. Today we made a Solstice spiral for the table and tonight when we lit chanukkah candles, we also lit the spiral which looked lovely, the whole table lit up.
My goals for he week are to spend more time with my kids just being. Taking walks and talking, rather than telling and explaining. I want relationship and relating/sharing.
Noah loved his birthdays, although he was a tired boy for both parties. He has become self-conscious and gets embarrassed at himself sometimes. Seems worse when he's tired, at which point the nervous/embarrassment turns to defensiveness and grumpy faces. We really need t be sure everyone gets a lot of sleep around here! For everyone except Eden River who just seems to always just prance around here with her rosy sunny personality at all hours of the long day!
I will make an entry every day, I pledge. Keeping focus helps me to be a better mother, and journaling our experiences helps me to know what I am doing right, wrong, what to change and how on track we are.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Bringing us up to date
It's been two weeks since I wrote here about what we've been up to here at our "Sparkroot Farm Homeschool".....so I will attempt to remember our endeavors and describe them before they fade into distant memory.....why, btw, does life have to be like that? Wouldn't it be lovely if you could remember everything freshly and have it all right there to hold and experience in our mind's eye for always? What is this life, that everything we do just fades into the wake of time? What is the point of losing it all and having to write it all down, and capture it all in scrapbooks and files upon files of digital imagery and video? Is video memory G-d's intention? Or is it just experience and carrying on? I don't get it, is all...why life's experiences and day to day living end up as so much wisp and lost forever unless we take great pains and effort lest we lose every last scrap of life's experience....seems funny, and almost cruel to me....
Anyway, onward to the whole point of this post (and the whole point of this blog: journaling our time together so it will be here for us always to hold with us)....
For the past two weeks we have been covering math main lesson blocks and taking our time in the early and late afternoons for handcrafts. We have taken a break from the recorder, although I am blown away by Amelie's ability to remember songs and play them back effortlessly. I can't remember the tunes quite often, but she can just play her whole playlist one to another without stumbling.
Our math lessons have been based on stories we have been telling, recalling and playing with. The Woman who was Not Afraid focused on multiplication tables (2, 5 and 10). We made cut out fish, a cauldron and dumplings out of beeswax, a real rice for counting out the times tables. In the story the old woman uses a mortar and pestle to grind her rice into flour to make dumplings, so Amelie did the same, creating about 2 tbsps of flour, not much to do anything with but still a fun learning experience. The previous weeks story was all about division, and we told, recalled and played through a story called "The 12 Dancing Princesses." Through these stories we focused on multiplying and dividing numbers creating and breaking down 12 and 24 (2x6=12; 2=12/6, etc etc) We drew pictures in her good book and wrote math sentences. Amelie has been reading a little to me each day, and I have been reading to her, Black Beauty, which we are nearly done with. Amelie completes a washcloth she made for her nana, and a ball she knitted for her sister. She learned to crochet (a chain) and has watched me knit a hat. She took up weaving on a loom we made ourselves from cardboard (Chris is outside now putting together a loom he is making from wood). Noah has also learned to weave and is really quite good at it. He understands that the snake goes under and over and under and over, and if the snake goes under the fence and out, he must turn around and go back over the fence on the way in.....
Eden says to us all "you make a ninning? (knitting?)" and she wants to hold the skeins of yarn and poke them with a knitting needle :)
With the crazy amount of rain we have had here, it has been a lesson in nature as well. We have been discussing the angle of the earth's axis, making the days shorter, reasons for daylight savings time change, and with the flooding in our yard we have observed the snails and wooly-bears climbing high sticks up out of the flood waters, and collected beetle larvae (drowned) to feed for the chickens. Ami aptly noted how the beetle larvae were only found in high ground areas where they were more likely to have burrowed and taken by surprise by the rising water levels. We have had an excellent example of water finding its way to new places--rivers, creeks, streams--by observing the overflow of our pond into the woods, out into the pasture and into the neighbor's back yard....we talked about how water finds its place by traveling to lowest levels and rising, just as the bathtub would overflow out the door and down the street if we let it.
Ami has been a wonderful big sister to both her siblings. She loves her sister and really seems to be understanding how babies have a lesser capacity for understanding than older children, that self-control goes along on a continuum as we grow.
We learned a new song which is from the This is the Way we Wash-a-Day CD, and it goes like this"
Peace we invite you to greet us
Faith dance with vision around
Love circle through us to open our hands
We recieve with deep thanks
The gifts of the land....
We have taken to singing and dancing to this song and singing it before we eat. We sang it holding hands on teh Sabbath last night. I think the kids really enjoyed it. It felt really good to sing together like that as a family around the lit candles. Especially since we have found a new way of talking about our inclination to do either good or bad, to act in the right way or the wrong way. If someone is feeling grumpy, or responding aggressively, we remind each other: "your candle is going out, you need to take a deep breath and relight is before the cold darkness sets in..." Everyone can relate to this. On Saturday nights our little Havdalah ritual consists of this, mostly: lighting a candle and looking at the warmth and beauty of the flame. Talking about how each of us has a little flame, a little dancing spark inside each of us, and that is the spark given by the Creator. We are meant to help our own spark grow brighter and brighter and warmer by acting with care and kindness and love. When we act meanly or hurtfully our candlelight is growing dim, coldness is setting in, our candle is in danger of being put out by winds of meaness, grumpiness, aggression, etc. So we remind each other to take care our flame doesnt go out. It's been a very good visual way of calling attention to our emotions and self-control, kindness, care and actions.
We picked lots of carrots this week, and the remainder of our tomatoes. The kids have been enjoying the turkey that we put into the freezer as well. They sure did make a fuss over it when we were cleaning it and packaging it-"Eeewww! I'm not eating that! Gross!" But when it's all cooked up and on their plates, down it goes :)
All in all, a full, good, happy two weeks.
And I discovered a great website: a little garden flower, with a talk radio program I have been really enjoying, and a program I believe I would like to participate in (called Be a Beacon). It's a n Inner Work program, something I think I need a lot of and I am excited to be a part of. I will look into it after we return from Grandma Alice's in early December.
Oh yes, we also reorganized and redistributed the craft and school supplies. We now have a doll building, fiber and felting zone (which we call the "crafty corner") in the living room, a painting and coloring cabinet in the kitchen near the table, and a couple of knitting baskets on the bookshelf next to the couch. I feel like things are going in the right direction and feeling very positive generally. I really do feel that this homemaker, artist, waldorf-homeschooler path is the right on for me to be on, not just one that I have to be on because of life's circumstances. I sometimes get very concerned that something could come along and sweep it all away--a serious illness, something tragic, you know?--this is because I am realizing how precious this is to me and I don't want for any reason to give it up. I feel frazzled often, and frustrated too no doubt, but also very blessed and thankful for this opportunity to be at home with my children and walking on this path, taking this journey. This is an amazing journey, so many discoveries already. What more am I in store for? Looking forward to every minute of it.
Love......
Anyway, onward to the whole point of this post (and the whole point of this blog: journaling our time together so it will be here for us always to hold with us)....
For the past two weeks we have been covering math main lesson blocks and taking our time in the early and late afternoons for handcrafts. We have taken a break from the recorder, although I am blown away by Amelie's ability to remember songs and play them back effortlessly. I can't remember the tunes quite often, but she can just play her whole playlist one to another without stumbling.
Our math lessons have been based on stories we have been telling, recalling and playing with. The Woman who was Not Afraid focused on multiplication tables (2, 5 and 10). We made cut out fish, a cauldron and dumplings out of beeswax, a real rice for counting out the times tables. In the story the old woman uses a mortar and pestle to grind her rice into flour to make dumplings, so Amelie did the same, creating about 2 tbsps of flour, not much to do anything with but still a fun learning experience. The previous weeks story was all about division, and we told, recalled and played through a story called "The 12 Dancing Princesses." Through these stories we focused on multiplying and dividing numbers creating and breaking down 12 and 24 (2x6=12; 2=12/6, etc etc) We drew pictures in her good book and wrote math sentences. Amelie has been reading a little to me each day, and I have been reading to her, Black Beauty, which we are nearly done with. Amelie completes a washcloth she made for her nana, and a ball she knitted for her sister. She learned to crochet (a chain) and has watched me knit a hat. She took up weaving on a loom we made ourselves from cardboard (Chris is outside now putting together a loom he is making from wood). Noah has also learned to weave and is really quite good at it. He understands that the snake goes under and over and under and over, and if the snake goes under the fence and out, he must turn around and go back over the fence on the way in.....
Eden says to us all "you make a ninning? (knitting?)" and she wants to hold the skeins of yarn and poke them with a knitting needle :)
With the crazy amount of rain we have had here, it has been a lesson in nature as well. We have been discussing the angle of the earth's axis, making the days shorter, reasons for daylight savings time change, and with the flooding in our yard we have observed the snails and wooly-bears climbing high sticks up out of the flood waters, and collected beetle larvae (drowned) to feed for the chickens. Ami aptly noted how the beetle larvae were only found in high ground areas where they were more likely to have burrowed and taken by surprise by the rising water levels. We have had an excellent example of water finding its way to new places--rivers, creeks, streams--by observing the overflow of our pond into the woods, out into the pasture and into the neighbor's back yard....we talked about how water finds its place by traveling to lowest levels and rising, just as the bathtub would overflow out the door and down the street if we let it.
Ami has been a wonderful big sister to both her siblings. She loves her sister and really seems to be understanding how babies have a lesser capacity for understanding than older children, that self-control goes along on a continuum as we grow.
We learned a new song which is from the This is the Way we Wash-a-Day CD, and it goes like this"
Peace we invite you to greet us
Faith dance with vision around
Love circle through us to open our hands
We recieve with deep thanks
The gifts of the land....
We have taken to singing and dancing to this song and singing it before we eat. We sang it holding hands on teh Sabbath last night. I think the kids really enjoyed it. It felt really good to sing together like that as a family around the lit candles. Especially since we have found a new way of talking about our inclination to do either good or bad, to act in the right way or the wrong way. If someone is feeling grumpy, or responding aggressively, we remind each other: "your candle is going out, you need to take a deep breath and relight is before the cold darkness sets in..." Everyone can relate to this. On Saturday nights our little Havdalah ritual consists of this, mostly: lighting a candle and looking at the warmth and beauty of the flame. Talking about how each of us has a little flame, a little dancing spark inside each of us, and that is the spark given by the Creator. We are meant to help our own spark grow brighter and brighter and warmer by acting with care and kindness and love. When we act meanly or hurtfully our candlelight is growing dim, coldness is setting in, our candle is in danger of being put out by winds of meaness, grumpiness, aggression, etc. So we remind each other to take care our flame doesnt go out. It's been a very good visual way of calling attention to our emotions and self-control, kindness, care and actions.
We picked lots of carrots this week, and the remainder of our tomatoes. The kids have been enjoying the turkey that we put into the freezer as well. They sure did make a fuss over it when we were cleaning it and packaging it-"Eeewww! I'm not eating that! Gross!" But when it's all cooked up and on their plates, down it goes :)
All in all, a full, good, happy two weeks.
And I discovered a great website: a little garden flower, with a talk radio program I have been really enjoying, and a program I believe I would like to participate in (called Be a Beacon). It's a n Inner Work program, something I think I need a lot of and I am excited to be a part of. I will look into it after we return from Grandma Alice's in early December.
Oh yes, we also reorganized and redistributed the craft and school supplies. We now have a doll building, fiber and felting zone (which we call the "crafty corner") in the living room, a painting and coloring cabinet in the kitchen near the table, and a couple of knitting baskets on the bookshelf next to the couch. I feel like things are going in the right direction and feeling very positive generally. I really do feel that this homemaker, artist, waldorf-homeschooler path is the right on for me to be on, not just one that I have to be on because of life's circumstances. I sometimes get very concerned that something could come along and sweep it all away--a serious illness, something tragic, you know?--this is because I am realizing how precious this is to me and I don't want for any reason to give it up. I feel frazzled often, and frustrated too no doubt, but also very blessed and thankful for this opportunity to be at home with my children and walking on this path, taking this journey. This is an amazing journey, so many discoveries already. What more am I in store for? Looking forward to every minute of it.
Love......
Eden River turns TWO!
Our baby is no longer a baby--but a full on sweetie pie toddler, telling jokes and explainin' all kind of things in colorful commentary. I miss all my babies now, every now and then I think maybe one more baby would be nice, but then I remember that pregnancy and birth and recovery go along with having a new baby, and I snap right to :) I will simply have to slow down, enjoy the ride and watch closely, hoping time will slow, so the children don't grow up too fast.
Eden had a really nice birthday, which was marked by the first day of nor-easter Ida which brought floods and damage to the coast of NC. We now have waterfront property, as our pond has overgrown it's banks, swept across the pasture and into the rear neighbors yard a couple acres away.
Grammy was here to celebrate with us, she stayed overnight and spent much of the following day because of the wind and rain. Amelie knitted a ball for Eden, Noah made a picture of a pregnant seahorse and babies for her, and I made her a Waldorf baby doll (in her image), complete with curly hair and chubby little cheeks. We also gave her a handstitched felt crown and a fairy "shooting star" wand which we all helped create that afternoon. She also got an emerald green silk dress-up cape, and set of wooden veggies for cutting from Auntie Gina and a set of musical instruments and clothing from Grandma and Grandpa.
We told a little story we wrote about Eden while we sat around our new birthday ring, lit with 2 beautiful little beeswax candles. We each contributed something to the story, explaining why we love having her here with us each day as sister and daughter. Eden was taken with all of this fuss and loved hearing her name sang out to "Happy Birthday" over her cake (an orange cake decorated with a butterfly). She blew out her two candles successfully and then enjoyed taking fingerfuls of frosting right off the top of the cake...yum :)....
Eden had a really nice birthday, which was marked by the first day of nor-easter Ida which brought floods and damage to the coast of NC. We now have waterfront property, as our pond has overgrown it's banks, swept across the pasture and into the rear neighbors yard a couple acres away.
Grammy was here to celebrate with us, she stayed overnight and spent much of the following day because of the wind and rain. Amelie knitted a ball for Eden, Noah made a picture of a pregnant seahorse and babies for her, and I made her a Waldorf baby doll (in her image), complete with curly hair and chubby little cheeks. We also gave her a handstitched felt crown and a fairy "shooting star" wand which we all helped create that afternoon. She also got an emerald green silk dress-up cape, and set of wooden veggies for cutting from Auntie Gina and a set of musical instruments and clothing from Grandma and Grandpa.
We told a little story we wrote about Eden while we sat around our new birthday ring, lit with 2 beautiful little beeswax candles. We each contributed something to the story, explaining why we love having her here with us each day as sister and daughter. Eden was taken with all of this fuss and loved hearing her name sang out to "Happy Birthday" over her cake (an orange cake decorated with a butterfly). She blew out her two candles successfully and then enjoyed taking fingerfuls of frosting right off the top of the cake...yum :)....
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Give Yourself into the Ocean--Rumi
You've heard descriptions
of the ocean of non-existence.
Try, continually, to give yourself
into that ocean. Every workshop
has its foundations set
on that emptiness.
The Master of all masters
works with nothing.
The more nothing comes into your work,
the more God is there.
Dervishes gamble everything. They lose,
and win the Other, the emptiness
which animates this.
We've talked so much! Remember
what we haven't said.
And keep working. Exert yourself
toward the pull of God.
Laziness and disdain are not devotions.
Your efforts will bring a result.
You'll watch the wings of divine attraction
lift from the nest and come toward you!
As dawn lightens, blow out the candle.
Dawn is in your eyes now.
~Rumi
Version by Coleman Barks
One Handed Basket Weaving
of the ocean of non-existence.
Try, continually, to give yourself
into that ocean. Every workshop
has its foundations set
on that emptiness.
The Master of all masters
works with nothing.
The more nothing comes into your work,
the more God is there.
Dervishes gamble everything. They lose,
and win the Other, the emptiness
which animates this.
We've talked so much! Remember
what we haven't said.
And keep working. Exert yourself
toward the pull of God.
Laziness and disdain are not devotions.
Your efforts will bring a result.
You'll watch the wings of divine attraction
lift from the nest and come toward you!
As dawn lightens, blow out the candle.
Dawn is in your eyes now.
~Rumi
Version by Coleman Barks
One Handed Basket Weaving
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
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