1st Light of Advent

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

Tonight we celebrated the 1st light of advent - the countdown to the winter solstice. I really do enjoy this time of year, it is such a calming time to reflect upon the past year. I also spent the weekend purging our home of clutter. I ended up with 5 trash bags full of things that could not be salvaged! it feels good to get rid of all the broken, random things that are not needed. Although I feel bad about it all going to the landfill, but I remind myself that the rest of the year we do not create to much waste.

We spent some time at our friends house who invited us over for a dinner party. It was such fun and we always enjoy getting together with them. Steph is a wonderful cook. Even Tony loved the veggy stew she made and volunteered to eat a yellow beet! Afterwards lots of dessert - yummm.

Here is our winter solstice nature table after we added our stones,crystals and minerals. We lit the candle and I read the blessing from our Tiptoes Festival of Stones book. We then all walked Ryan up to bed with the lantern and I read the chapter from tiptoes about the festival of stones. It was a very nice simple celebration.

(sorry the flash from my camera washed everthing out)



Here is the advent calender I made on Thanksgiving. The flas washes it out, but it looks nice. Each pocket represents each light of advent - stones, plants, animals and humankind.
Then we can place things in the pockets that we would like to bring as a gift to the festival each Sunday.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! I hope it was wonderful. We had a nice low key family day. When Sage got up, he made us all french toast! It was delicious. Tony started the cooking - all of it. I did not do a thing, what a wonderful husband. With the turkey in the oven we went for a hike on the trail behind our house. The rest of the afternoon was spent hanging out. I worked on some handwork and got a lot done. I was working on an advent calender for the winter solstice. It is all done and I will have pictures soon. The boys put on 2 puppet shows for us - how delightful! Of course Ryan's ended in chaos as most of his stories do. This time it was a fire in the house and of course the whole house was ruined. Oh well, I am sure he will outgrow that one day. We did encourage him to have a second part of the puppet show where everyone worked together to rebuild the house.

After dinner we headed over to our neighbors house for dessert. Tony made pumpkin pie and they had apple pie and 3 different kinds of cookies. yumm - I myself had 4 pieces of pie!! 2 for me and 2 for the baby : ) Oh and homemade whip cream!!! Looks like I will be on the treadmill today. It was a nice low key holiday!!!


Heidi so much wanted to help Tony baste the turkey! She knows when TOny cooks they are treats involved.


Revealing the puppet show.
Ryan the storyteller.
Here is the fire in the house. Funny Sage was the one playing so nicely with the puppets. He enjoyed having the puppet milk the cow. I sure wish I had these things when he was little. Sage was getting frustrated that Ryan was destroying the set so the next show Sage told the story. I love seeing the 2 of them work together like this. They do not do puppet show together often.
Talking about the animals.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Various Happenings

I have not been very good lately about updating the blog on a regular basis. I get so tired at night these days all I want to do is climb into bed. I can't believe I only have 4 more months to go before our baby girl is here. It is so wonderful to feel her growing inside my belly. She is becoming very active, esp in the evening. I am also staring to realize the limitations of my belly - my husband had to help me tie my shoes the other day, I could not get to them : )

We have been pretty busy here. Even when we are just home, Ryan can find enough to do to make it feel like a full day. Lately he has been into taking the couch apart and making various things out if it. Such as a boat, pyramid, drum,ect. He has even taught Heidi to walk on the treadmill. As much as I love his imagination and energy there are some days when I just want my couch back.

Here is the homemade drumset:


This past weekend we went to a Holiday Fair at the local Waldorf school. Ryan made some crafts while Sage played soccer in the play yard. It was so cold that day, I decided to hang out in the craft area. It was a nice fair and my friend had a booth there - so we stopped by to say hello.
http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=36644 . She is very talented , check out her shop on etsy.




We also finally made a bird feeder. Unfortunately the birds do not seem to like it. The squirrels do not mind it though.
Ryan made this wonderful snack for us all by himself. He cut out the center of the bread and used it as a border for the fruit.


Our last Nature Class for the Fall. We met with the art instructor and the kids did some watercolor paintings. It was fun and we can not wait for the winter session.

The Naturalist working with the older kids had made his own drop spindle - cool!!

Activities

Monday - our monthly science group met at our friend Kim's house to learn about oxygen. She talk a bit about it and the kids held their breath to see that we really do need oxygen - luckly no one passed out. Also a couple experiments were done. Check out her blog over there at Frog Creek for more details. (see side bar for her blog). It was great and Ryan was able to tell his dad all about it.


We also had a tour of a local firehouse. Ryan enjoyed that although he said he was feeling shy and did not want to sit in the firetruck or hold the hose. I have those days too.


Here Fireman Greg is showing the kids the "keys" to every house in the town. I definitely do not want him to use those keys unless absolutely necessary.

Ryan came home Mon night and put out many fires around the house. - whew were lucky it did not burn to the ground! THe next morning he was still in fireman mode and wanted me to go on a tour of his fire house.

Here he is showing me the smoke detector:
This is the fire truck:


After the tour and lessons we ran some errands and then headed over to our morning nature class. They kids met with the Ranger who talked about habitats. Then they headed outdoors to find various habitats.
Here is a hole under the center where a woodchuck used to live.
A bat house
They also found various bird nests and took a nice hike.
After some of the kids ran around and played in the field before heading home. Ryan and I stopped at the knitting shop and we both picked out some great yarn to make slippers. I cant wait. I forgot to take a pic of the yarn so I will take a pic of the finished slippers.

It is only Tuesday and I am worn out!! I see an early bedtime for me tonight.

Lessons

So far this week we have had 2 good days in a row for lessons - yeah. On Monday morning we started our day with some singing and scarf play. I made up a song based on some other songs I have heard and come up with something like this:

All the leaves so happy and gay, were dancing around a tree on day.
Along came the North Wind and blew through the town and all the leaves came tumbling down (throw scarfs on the ground). We rake them up high, as high as the sky (put silks in a pile). Then throw them up high (throw silks Up).

It could use some work, but Ryan had fun and wanted to do it several times. THen he was inspired to sing one of our songs using the fairies around the house. It was fun esp since Ryan is not always into singing time. After that we worked on some form drawing based on the story form Donna Simmons Form Drawing book. About a king who looked out his castle wall and saw the mountains behind him. Took off on his horse and came to the sea - that is the general idea anyway.

Knowing that transition is key with Ryan - sit too long and I loose him fast! We went to beanbag games. I told the story of the Shepard boy as we tossed the beanbags and how the Shepard boy
had to count all the sheep so to make it easy he counted by 2's. Then we kept tossing the bags counting by 2's. (well honestly only I was counting) Then his father bought more sheep and the boy knew counting by 2's would take a long time so he counted by 5's, ect then counting by 10's.
Ryan enjoyed that game and wanted to kep going. Knowing though that if we go to long with somethings it looses his interest, I stopped at 10's so that we can pick it up again in a few days.

This week we are working with our good friend the Addition gnome and he is helping the squirels count their nuts for the winter.
I ended Monday lessons by telling the story of Jack and The Beanstalk.


Tuesday was all about the block crayon drawing of our story and watching the letter emerge. Can you guess our letter ? : )
Ryan wrote his first sentence. I did not think he was ready and would compain that he could not do it - but he did it! I did not push it either. I wrote it on the back of my paper and he decided he would too.
I threw in my drawing so you can see how I guided him in our lessons.

So far so good!

What to do on a rainy Saturday?

For Ryan and I our day started at 6:30 this morning. Breakfast was over by 7 and then he was down in the playroom telling me the "storyteller was here". He made up a wonderful story while I sat and knit.

Next it was on to block crayon drawings. I love how Ryan drew the "fairies on the world", even adding the sun and a cloud. It is great to watch his imagination and creativity flourish. Learning at home enables him to experiment with what he likes to do. It changes all the time and he can work at his own pace. Even on my toughest days with him, I am thankful to be homeschooling him.
I practiced a little of the techniques from my block crayon drawing book. I still need some work.
We didn't stop there, on to the puppet show. It has been a long,long time since Ryan has wanted to do a puppet show on his own. It was nice to see him come back to it. It did eventually end with a storm and things were everywhere, but that is ok!
Last not least, Ryan was inspired by my "Toymaking with Children" book. So he got out the scarfs and blocks and we set to work to build a village. It was such a nice morning to spend together. By 9 we were off on our separate ways - me to do yoga and Ryan to eat a second breakfast with daddy.


A great big hug for his baby sis!! Just wait till you are born our sweet baby girl, you will have so much loving.

The rest of the morning the boys spent wrestling with each other till I threw them outside : ) by then the rain had stopped for a bit.

A hang out rather lazy kinda day but great fun just to hang out with each other.

Martinmas Celebration

on Tuesday we celebrated Martinmas with a lantern walk at a friends house. I co-hosted the event with her and did the puppet show while my friend did everything else! It was a nice evening. The kids made lanterns, played, had a sit down snack and a puppet show followed by a lantern walk around the neighborhood. It was such a nice low key festival. I am glad that we were able to go since tonight is the lantern walk at the Waldorf school and I made the decision not to drive an hour not knowing if they were having it or not because of the rain. We went last year and it was lovely. I do enjoy the festivals associated with Waldorf , they are so simple and meaningful!


After our lantern walk at our friends house, Ryan and I came home and he wanted to have a family lantern walk. So we turned off all the lights and walked around the house leading Ryan upstairs to bed. We read the lantern story from our Tiptoes book and said goodnight by lantern light!

The lanterns above are all the lanterns we have made over the past 4 Martinmas celebrations. THe very first one was when Ryan was 2 - that would be the biggest one with the stars. The most recent is the blue jar lantern in the middle.


Here is our St Martin puppet I made for the puppet show. He is rather cute and his cape is in 2 peices so that I was able to show how Martin tore his cape in 2 and gave half to the poor beggar man. Now he sits on our Nature table in a place of honor.


Continuing the Martinmas celebration we had our playgroup on Thursday, however is was very low key because I had to leave early for a midwife apt. I decided to make window stars. I figured everyone coming has made many lanterns and we needed to do something different. The stars are great though, they look so beautiful in the window , esp lately with our dreary rainy days.
I also ended up doing a simple puppet show using the story of St Martin from the Tiptoes festival book. The kids seemed to enjoy it. My friend Elieen has more pictures of our day: http://eileensplace.blogspot.com



Then the kids had a good time playing in the playroom. Ryan said they were doing construction. Usually that means a lot of things get moved around, but it was not too bad this time.

Congratulations Pam and Anders

My cousin Pam got married this past weekend down in Florida and we were so happy to be a part of the celebration. It was a beautiful ceremony followed by a wonderful reception. It was great to see family we have not seen in awhile and met new members of the families. It was a quick trip but well worth it!

CONGRATULATIONS PAM AND ANDERS!!!! We will miss you guys when you are down in the Keys! I know you will enjoy living down there.


I did not get any pictures of the wedding. Although I did remember to take a picture of Sage and Ryan hanging out in the old roadster that was waiting for Pam and Anders to take them to the reception. Well except they are getting out of it. Oh well





We also enjoyed some time hanging out with the Grandparents. Sage played some football with Grandpa. We are excited about our trip at Christmas.

Sunday Family time

Sunday we headed to the Common Ground Fall open farm day. It was a very low key event but it was a beautiful day and we enjoyed hanging out with each other. Checked out the chickens and the goats.


Ryan enjoyed a little tree climbing with one of the goats.

Tony's favorite was the pigs. Not because he thinks they are yummy, but because he thought they were cute. Yep - I am going to make a farmer/vegetarian out of him yet! : )
After Common Ground we headed down the street to the West Rock Nature Center where Ryan has been having his nature classes. We showed Tony and Sage the sculptures the older kids had made with the river rocks. They were so cool.
Ryan was inspired to make his own so he and Tony worked on one for awhile. Sage has always been my one who does not like getting dirty so he just watched.