Mummies on Monday

We're carrying on with Story of the World. We're doing some experiments on parchment vs. clay tablets. The kids made cuneiform name plates for their doors






And Katie Grace rolled out the papyrus for our homemade parchment (we bought a kit from Rainbow Resources)

It's getting kind of stinky to work with!

We're trying to decide if we're going to mummify a chicken or not. On the one hand, it's a pretty big expense and seems like a waste of supplies (baking powder, baking soda, salt, oil, and, of course, a chicken). On the other hand, it's mummifying a freaking CHICKEN-- how cool is that?!?!

Clueless comment of the day goes to DH: "You're not bringing a dead CHICKEN into the house--that's gross!!" Um... honey, I bring dead chicken into the house all the time. Usually you think it's yummy.

We also put up our tree today. Daniel seems very confused by the presence of this much nature in our living room.






It's our 13th wedding anniversary as well. We celebrate with the little ones, telling them it's the birthday of our family. Michael keeps insisting our family began the day he was born and not with our wedding, LOL!

Three snowy children and one happy teething baby!









Another icy snowy day.

Blessed Santa Lucia Day!

Katie Grace loves playing St. Lucy!


Cheesy smile, butchered bangs, and lots of buns!


Buns in bed in a messy room


We had lots of Santa Lucia fun today. We colored St. Lucy pictures and sang a song. We also watched a video of a girls' choir singing Santa Lucia and another about a shared Swedish/Mexican Santa Lucia celebration.

Most of our Advent saint stories have come from the book Winter Saints: Stories for the days of Advent and Christmas.

We also sponge-painted stars on white paper to make Star Boy caps, which we'll finish tomorrow.

And what was going on in our world while we were celebrating?
This!

Our Lady of Guadalupe and Getting Ready for Santa Lucia

Today we read the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The the two older children drew pictures in their main lesson books. I found this blog too late, but it has some awesome ideas. I can't wait until next year!

Tomorrow is Santa Lucia, and we spent a good chunk of the day making our Lucia buns.
Katie Grace kneaded the dough:

See those bangs? She cut them herself. Sigh.

Rolling the dough




The rolls are cut and ready to bake (OK, I admit it, we used a mix. But we still had to add yeast, knead the dough, etc. The only thing the mix did was premix the flour and stuff!)


And we have Lucia buns!


Nicholas helped clean up.


Katie Grace is very excited, although she has to do sans wreath. But I am trying hard not to let perfection be the enemy of the good.

Then, we put together our Advent nature table (finally). We are adding stars to the sky each night.


We also have a family altar, with an Advent wreath Katie Grace made at Advent Family Craft Night:

The October/November Update

Holloween/All Saints Day
St. Therese (The Little Flower), a cowboy, and Frodo




Pumpkin Carving










Pumpkin Butt


Pumpkin Heads


The Butterfly Project I Never Did Post About






And Thanksgiving Dress-Ups

I'm going to try to update more tomorrow. I did just realize that I still don't know how to reply to comments. Any pointers?

Sigh. I feel like we are continually starting over.

Michael is back home for school and, God willing, will stay home. Third grade was less than satisfactory.

I've been MIA because first my husband lost the cable that connects our camera to our computer, and then we've just been crazy getting ready for Michael to come home.

Anyway, we'll hopefully be back on track soon. The plan is to sort of "deschool" in December and work on finding our groove, and having a pretty decent rhythm going by January.

Soft Pretzels

We made yummy soft pretzels this week. Our favorite part (next to eating them, of course!) was singing to "wake up" Brother Yeast:
Are you sleeping,
Are you sleeping,
Brother Yeast?
Brother Yeast?
Time to wake now,
Pretzels we will bake now.
Yum, yum, yum!
Yum, yum, yum!

We used Martha Stewart's recipe. Today I'm planning on making some high-protein peanut butter cookies, if His Royal Majesty King Daniel will sleep long enough to let us.

Quality of Numbers

One thing I love about the Waldorf approach to mathematics is that in first grade, a child isn't learning just how to write a numeral or what exactly makes up the quantity of a number, but is introduced to the qualities of that number as well--one is for unity, two for duality, etc.

I'm going to post the little number poems we used with each number. She didn't copy them all in her lesson book. Sometimes she wrote the whole poem, other times just a couplet, and still other times, nothing at all.

One
One is the sun.
One is the tree.
One is the earth,
And one is me.

Two
Two ears to hear,
Two eyes to see,
Two hands to help
Those all 'round me.

I didn't like this one, and I think in her lesson book, she wrote "One, two, me and you!" instead.


Three
The world is three-
Beast, plant, and stone.
God is three-
Father, Spirit, Son.

Four
Summer and autumn, winter and spring--
Through four seasons passes the year;
Fire and air, water and earth-
Out of these four does the whole world appear.

Five
Five are the fingers on each hand,
Each foot has five toes.
Five rays has the star shining o'er the land,
Five petals has the rose.

Six
Wherever light would find its home,
In storm or cave or honeycomb,
Six is its chosen number and form.

Seven
Seven colors in a row
In a shining rainbow.

Eight
Wriggling spiders on eight legs crawl,
Spinning webs on every wall.

Nine
Nine is a mystery, hidden away,
A secret to be revealed one day.

Ten
Ten fingers have we on our two hands.
Ten toes, as on two feet we stand.
For ten contains within two fives,
Which we'll remember all our lives.

SOURCES:
Some came from Eugene Schwartz's number poems, which are floating around all over the place but, I believe, came from A Child's Seasonal Treasury. They're also here. I also found some other poems here. Some I just made up.

Have a wonderful day!

We're still here...

I don't know why I didn't blog for two weeks. Lots going on, plus I'm a little embarrassed that I still haven't figured out how to reply to comments. But we're still here. I'll post our "Quality of Numbers" rhymes this week, as well as some info from the Butterfly Unit Study we're wrapping up. This week we're going to do a Middle Lesson with origami and other paper folding, and work on some scissors work as well. I've been poring over the Rainbow Resources catalog, because we're pretty sure we're going to bring Michael home around Thanksgiving break. Well, I'm sure. Chip is less convinced.