The fourth light of Advent is the light of humankind--
The light of hope that we may learn to love and understand.

Advent, week 3

The third light of Advent is the light of beasts--
All await the birth, from the greatest and in least.

FINALLY! Our autumn's end nature table

We finally got our nature table back up, and it's all due to Katie Grace. This was totally her project.
Martinmas pictures and a lantern made last year. Behind that, an autumn tree and beeswax owl Nicholas made. In front we have gnomes sewn by Katie Grace and Nicholas, a mushroom made by me, and a pinecone from our yard.

The gnome cave and bonfire, set up by Katie Grace.
A lonely gnome in a solitary cave, hanging out with a pinecone turkey, sporting wool fleece feathers and clay facial features.

Spring Nature Table

Our lilas finally bloomed!

Spring Nature Table

Advent Nature Table

The first light of Advent is the light of stones.
Stones that live in crystals, seashells, and bones.

The second light of Advent is the light of plants;
Plants that reach up to the sun and in the breezes dance.

Gnome's Bonfire Autumn Nature Table

Autmn Nature Tables

Last But Not Least

HAPPY SPRING!

Spring Break?

My biggest boy and my littlest boy, making beautiful music together. Of course, I could have done without looking up today to discover that Daniel had been left sitting alone on the piano bench playing for 5 minutes, but it's nice to see them enjoying music together.

I've decided that next year, I am ordering things so we have a bit of a spring break. We certainly have spring fever! We've been getting the basics done--reading lessons for Katie Grace, math for both, Story of the World. We just started reading A Wrinkle in Time. I'll need to update the sidebar, but tomorrow. Sigh. It seems like everything gets pushed back to tomorrow.

What's really happening tomorrow is co-op, and a trip to the library, and a car ride to the dairy for milk and cheese and eggs and hopefully some produce. I've made kugel and a noodle pudding to share at the potluck--we're visiting Germany in our Many Lands class--and tomorrow I'll need to make something for the LLL potluck on Saturday. And there are four loads of laundry waiting to be folded, and two porches I meant to get cleaned up this week, and an attic to be completely decluttered.

It gets a little overwhelming sometimes. I was praying, and asking God, "Is this it? Get up at six, fold laundry, shower, dress, clean, make breakfast, clean, teach, clean, mother, clean, cook, clean... and then go to bed and start all over again?" And God just said, "Yes." I could almost here something that sounded like "Duh!" And I guess this is it, just the daily stuff, chopping wood and carrying water. Like my Mary Engelbreit calendar says, "Life is just so DAILY!"






We did get our nature table updated for spring. See the little seed babies sleeping in the underground cave? We needle-felted them yesterday! And that beautiful flower child? I made her myself at a workshop at the Susquehanna Waldorf School! Katie Grace and I made the snail last spring. Mother Nature and her Root Child were made by another Waldorf mama in California. One thing I love about the homeschooling community and buying WAHM goods is the feeling of connectedness.

A Week in Review

Three posts today, and no posts last week. It was a rough week, but we did get lots done.

Sunday was Michael's First Communion. Except it wasn't, because in the ELCA, children can technically receive Communion from the time their baptized, so Michael has been receiving since he was around a year old. This was a hard day for me actually, one of the hardest parts of raising Little Lutherans.

This is Michael and his buddy Lukey.


And cake! Everybody loves cake!


Monday was Rosa Parks birthday, and we talked about the life of this wonderful woman.

On Shrove Tuesday, we had pancakes for dinner.

Ash Wednesday was spent getting the house ready for Lent.

It was a rainy, dreary, cold day, and my four little ones and I went to Mater Delarosa to receive ashes at noon. When Father blessed Daniel, Daniel gave him the biggest baby grin, and both Father and Monsignor couldn't help but laugh out loud. By the time we got to the car, Daniel's ashes were pretty much gone. Michael said, "I guess Dust doesn't really stick to babies."

On Thursday, we changed out the Nature Table.

We'll definitely have fun adding more to King Winter's kingdom!

I also couldn't help but notice I had three matching children on Thursday, and I couldn't resist a picture.


On Friday, we traveled about three hours to stay with some college friends. They're also homeschoolers, as you may be able to tell by the great bookshelves. Here are their three girls with our crew.


We spent the night and made our way to our main destination on Saturday- the Benadum theater in Pittsburgh to see The Lion King. I'll blog a little about that separately, I think, but here are some pictures.

The opening curtain and beautiful stage.


And two happy children before the curtain went up. Daniel and Nicholas went with Daddy to the Pittsburgh Children's Museum.


And Katie Grace wanted me to take a picture of the chandelier, because it was pretty.

After the play, we stopped for dinner. A lady came up to us and said, "When I saw them seat a family with four little kids next to us, I almost cried. But your children are very well behaved!" I didn't quite know how to take that!

We left the restaurant around 7 and pulled up in front of our house at 11. We would have gotten home sooner, but we hit horrible fog. I prayed for the last hour of the trip!

The today, I caught Daniel doing this:


Time to dig out the baby gates!

Autumn Nature Table and Some Math

It's a bit more cluttered than I generally like, but the kids really got into it this time around. We made the forest fairies today.




Gnome treasure--we matched numerals to number words, and then gave each gnome his due.


A Cuisenaire rod step ladder. I did one side, and Katie Grace did the other.

Summer Nature Table

Schoolroom/Playroom

I don't know if I mentioned it, but over the Christmas holidays we made some big changes. We moved the table to the breakfast nook and changed the dining room into a schoolroom/playroom. It's a little crowded at meals, but I'd rather be a tiny bit cramped for a half-hour a day or so than confused and unorganized all day long.

So, this is the erstwhile dining room. The door you see is to the kitchen. The picture on the wall is Our Lady of Good Counsel, one of my favorite representations of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and, in my opinion, a particularly good choice for the homeschooling room.









This is one of my favorite windows in the house. It looks out into the backyard. Since the pictures have been taken, it has our kite-paper snowflakes hanging in it.

The plastic bins I am not too crazy about, but they're really convenient and it's hard to find something that organizes so well. I did see this big white not-really-wood "pantry" at Big Lots I was thinking of buying, just to get things out of sight. There's also a lot of k12 stuff there that we're waiting to send back.


Books. We have too stinking many books. I know they say you can't, but we do. One of my goals is to get more baskets so the books can be stored with the covers facing out rather than the spines showing, for easier selection. If I do get that pantry thing, it would also be great to get the teacher books hidden away somewhere.

I'd also like to find some storage options beyond wipes containers. But again, the price is right and they're easy to find.

You can also see some of our "collections" on the window ledge--we have marbles, wooden beads, buttons, super balls, and magnetic marbles.







This picture turned out dark for some reason, but this is where we do most of our main lesson work. The view isn't great--it looks out on our grouchy neighbor's house--but we hung a bird feeder out there and might add a see-in bird feeder. We also bought some impatiens in a pot and have them on the table. Katie Grace loves taking care of "her" flower.

The little circle is a really pretty stamped beeswax design from NOVA Naturals.

This is a lot messier than it is now. There's tons of k12 junk on the shelves waiting to be returned. I finally just put it in the basement. You can see our nature table and a little corner shelf with a candle and aromatherapy diffuser.

The print is a really pretty angel I got from A Child's Dream. DH likes to call it "Saint Waldorf" *insert eye roll here*















A close-up of our nature table. This was our Winter Woods nature table. We're working on changing it to a Winter Adventures table, with people sledding and building snowmen and playing in the snow.








The rest of the corner with our easel. This opens into our living room. The French doors that go here are up in the attic, and I'm so tempted to try to put them back on, except I would end up spending most of my free time either cleaning little fingerprints off the glass or, more likely, cleaning up splintered glass from the floor.





The other side of the entrance to the living room. We have a set of playstands up in Katie Grace's room, but I'm a little reticent to bring them down. Right now, despite all the stuff in the room, it still seems pretty spacious, and I'm afraid that the playstands will make things see crowded.

We did find a big basket for the dress-ups, so we were able to get rid of the big ugly plastic crate. I'd love to get a less obnoxious kitchen.



Another inexplicable dark picture. There's a little shelf here with some other dramatic play stuff, and a block box. We're really blessed to have a set of kindergarten unit blocks from when DH was a little guy. Nicholas loves them.







Last but not least, the other side of the dramatic play area and the other side of the kitchen door. The big huge shelf has games. I'm not sure how this will work once the baby gets here. I'd love to find baskets to use instead of bins, but I'm not stressing over it. And the shelf was Michael's first birthday present, and we still use it every day!







So, that's a tour of our playroom/schoolroom. We do main lesson here mostly, but we spread out for other parts of our day. We do lots of baking in the kitchen, and we cuddle up and read in the living room. Nicholas and Katie Grace do lots of playing upstairs and they love to spread out and do floor puzzles or big complex play scenarios in the living room.

Sorry the spacing is all screwy. I just can't figure it out!