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What our day looked like :D

7:15 Woke up, meant to get out of bed. Nicholas was cuddled up next to me, and had somehow managed to get his hand under my shirt and had it resting on my big baby belly. Decided I didn't want to move.

8:30 Michael came in and said goodbye, and so did Chip. Nicholas finally woke up and Katie Grace climbed into bed and we lay there snuggling and talking to the baby for another 15 minutes.

8:45 Katie Grace and Nicholas played in their rooms while I grabbed a quick shower. Got dressed, got Nicholas dressed, made him a quick breakfast, and started Katie Grace on handwriting. Ran down and switched the laundry.

9:00 Circle time with a winter teatime theme. Worked on our spring countdown and used the unifix cubes to figure out how many days left (yesterday was 50, today was 49!). Worked on our winter alphabet. Wrote some Little House in the Big Woods sentences with punctuation. Drew an Autumn in the Big Woods picture. Told a story about a little girl who met an old woman who had lost her needle in a haystack. The little girl helped her, and the woman turned into a beautiful fairy who granted her 3 wishes. Drew the haystack and the needle, which looks like the letter A. Nicholas played with cars, trucks, and unifix cubes.

10:15 Had some cinnamon sugar toast. Switched the laundry. The kids came upstairs with me and helped me do some cleaning in my room. Then we got sidetracked and looked at baby scrapbooks.

11:00 Got a phone call asking us to come over for a playdate. Said yes. Played "Old Mother Cat," a chasing game, and then did art a little early. Today we drew winter trees. The I told them the story of Old Grandmother Evergreen.

Noon Lunch and laundry

1:00 Walked a couple blocks in the snow to our neighbor's. Kids played, moms chatted.

3:00 Came home, warm and toasty because Neighbor gave us a ride! :D Mama grabbed a quick nap while the kids watched Zoom and Curious George. Michael came home, everyone had snack, Michael did his homework.

4:30 Snuggled with Michael and talked about his day.

5:00 Made dinner and chatted with hubby. We had a yummy German Sausage Stew.

6:00 Family meeting, followed by dinner clean-up and baths.

7:00 Scaled Mt. Laundry, talked to Grandma on the phone, put laundry away.

8:00 Stories with Daddy, then bedtime.

Transitions

So, we're almost done with Little House in the Big Woods and have just about made the transition from K12 back to a more Waldorf-inspired way of schooling. We've set math aside for a bit, but she still likes to read to me everyday, so we do that. I do want her to have that "relationship" with the letters and numbers and understand not just how to write them and what sounds they make, but the "qualities" of them, so we're going to do the fairy tale/letter thing next.

Unrhythmic Weekends

I came to the realization tonight that the big reasons weekends are so stressful is that we have no rhythm. This is not good. I also finally made a connection that this is why everyone breaks down after dinner as well. So, my goal for the next week is to try to think of a way to add a little rhythm and structure to our weekends and evening after dinner but before bedtime. Suggestions are happily accepted.

Comments

By the way, I haven't figured out how to reply to comments. So, if you left one, I'm not being rude, just clueless.

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!

Ramblings

You know, I never quote know what to put here. I have two mailing lists: Natural Childhood, where I try to post tips, ideas, recipes--just little things for adding Waldorf-inspired ideas to your life--and feasts and festivals, which is mostly feasts and festivals, LOL! I guess I invisioned this as a place to post day-to-day stuff. But I've been trying so hard to stay offline during the day, and by the time night rolls around, I'm really, really tired.

Anyway...

Nicholas is sick. It's hard to keep to a routine with a three-year-old who wants held all day long. I mean, I don't begrudge him, at all, but it's just hard. Plus I have no lap anymore. We made a little "bed" for him in the playroom so he could be right next to us. That lasted about six minutes. We managed, though. Poor little guy.

We're chugging along with Little House in the Big Woods. Today I wrote some very simple sentences on sentence strips and then cut them apart and shuffled them. Katie Grace put them back in order. She was really good at it, too. We're also working on an illustrated winter alphabet.

We also made warm snowmen today, with biscuit dough (yes, the bad Pillsbury kind) which we decorated with raisins and pretzels. Pretty yummy.

That was about it. Just another day in paradise.

Come, butter, come!

Today was remarkably smooth, especially considering that Michael was home from school. Daddy took Michael to his dentist appointment first thing, and Nicholas went along because he has his first appointment this summer. Katie Grace and I did some main lesson stuff. After snack, we did some cleaning together. We have a good deal of brass in our living room--I know, how Brady Bunch!--and did some good large-muscle polishing.

We read a picture book about Martin Luther King, Jr, although I left out the part where he was assassinated. We focused on being peacemakers today.

After lunch, I told them the story of The Boy Who Went to the North Wind. Nicholas in particular found it very amusing. Tomorrow we're going to make a story sack to help tell it. We also did some fingerplays.

Then we made paper snowflakes from kite paper. This was a huge hit. Even Michael, jaded big guy that he is, joined in. Nicholas made some pretty neat snowflakes as well. We hung them in the window where they would catch the light, and from the chandelier with string.

Katie read to me a little, then I read to her from Little House in the Big Woods. After a quiet time and snack, we made homemade butter to go with our biscuits at dinner time. It's very easy--just pour some heavy cream in a heavy glass jar and add a few marbles. Shake, shake, shake til you have butter. We chanted
Come, butter, come!
Come, butter, come!
Little Peter's at the gate
With his little butter plate.
Come, butter, come!

All in all, a good day!

Fairy Tales

If you want your children to be brilliant, tell them fairy tales.
If you want them to be very brilliant, tell them even more fairy tales.
Albert Einstein

Katie Grace is totally into Grimm's Fairy Tales lately. I have a huge paperback that has them all, no illustrations, and it's her first pick at story time, every time.

We're running into a couple issues, though.

One: While I completely get the whole archetypal deal, I'm utterly uncomfortable identifying the villain as a "Jew" or other stereotypical bad guy. So there's some quick thinking involved to change things around.

Two: This is related, but a little harder to vamp. I really loathe the whole dark = bad; light/white = good imagery. I feel like it plants the seeds that perpetuate racial stereotypes. But in some of the tales, it's so ingrained in the story that it's hard to avoid or rephrase. If nothing else, it keeps me on my toes.

Friday, Week's End

Ah, the end of the week! We're still all working on getting healthy. I didn't go volunteer in Michael's classroom today and sent my hubby instead. He had a great time. Maybe we'll take turns!

I missed a midwife appointment last Friday because of my cold, and am going tomorrow instead. I'm really looking forward to some peaceful time alone. I'm a complete introvert, and depend on alone time to recharge my batteries. This makes attachment parenting a little difficult for me, but if I can find the right balance, it all works out.

This was a pretty good week. Wednesday, Nicholas stayed with Grandma and Grandpa for the day and we took the older two to see Mary Poppins on Broadway. It was absolutely incredible. I've avoided all the Disney musicals on general principle, but decided to give this one a chance since Cameron MacIntyre was backing it. At the end of "Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious" I looked over and Katie Grace had tears in her eyes. Worried that it was all too overstimulating, I asked if she was OK. She said, "Mama, I just love it so much. It's so beautiful!" It was wonderful to pass my love of theater on to the children

Thursday was spent mostly recovering, LOL. We did the marketing and read and played a bit.

Today we got back into the routine. They really do love circle time, and it's such a blessing to be able to give them that gift. I've been doing a unit study-type deal at main lesson time, and basing it on whatever chapter of Little House in the Big Woods we read the night before. Today we talked about Ma's cleaning schedule:
Wash on Monday,
Iron on Tuesday,
Mend on Wednesday,
Churn on Thursday,
Clean on Friday,
Bake on Saturday,
Rest on Sunday.

We drew some pictures of what those chores looked like then and what they look like now, although I'm ashamed to say Katie Grace had no clue what ironing looked like, either in the past OR in the present. We also talked about Laura's house and our house, and how they were the same and how they were different.

We made soft pretzels today, except they weren't pretzel-shaped--they were balls and pancakes and hearts and snails and whatever else came into their heads. They were yummy though!

And this afternoon we sat down and colored together after reading a poem about evergreens. I've also gotten down my button jar, and we had a great time looking at all the buttons. We even glued some on paper to make button pictures.

Library in the evening, followed by pizza and the children putting on a play. A very, very, very long play, sigh. And now, bed.

Books we Read Today
Winter Days in the Big Woods (First Little House Book)
The Mitten by Alvin Tresselt
You Can Go to the Potty by Dr. Sears
What Baby Wants by Phyllis Root
Sun Bread by Elisa Klevin
Catch Me and Kiss Me and Say It Again by Wendy Watson

Plough Monday

I was feeling so guilty about not getting back into a rhythm last week like I wanted to, and then I was reading in All Year Round that today is Plough Monday. The Monday after Epiphany, it's traditionally a day for putting aside the final remnants of Christmas and "putting one's hand to the plough" and getting to work. We had a lovely day, too.

We've changed our dining room into a play/school room (I'm hoping to do pictures eventually) and moved our table to the breakfast nook. It's so nice to eat where we cook. It's just cozier.

Circle Time was fun. We still have our "winter woods" theme, and their favorite is hiding a beanbag for the other to find while chanting, "Grey squirrel, grey squirrel, where did you hide your seed?"

After circle, we had some table time, then snack. We also made a bird feeder and hung it outside the window by the table where we work. We played a guessing game with a button and they helped me clean the mudroom. We also made our Winter Woods nature table and sewed a little grey mousie.

We kept the TV off til mama needed her nap, and Nicholas helped me make a coffee cake for breakfast while his big brother and sister were at basketball practice.

One dilemma I have now is what to do with Katie Grace. With k12, she was doing first grade math and was reading. I feel like I can't really stop all that. I don't think she would stand for it. And yet, there aren't supposed to be main lessons or guided learning in kindergarten. I'm really struggling with what to do. I'd like to do "mini main lessons". Someone suggested Five in a Row, or I might try to do my own thing to go along with Little House in the Big Woods, which we just started reading.

She's so much happier now. She actually said to me today, "Mama, this makes me so much happier about learning!" I have great kids!