M,N,O,P

Our Alphabet Journey continues.......


This week the prince took the Lovely Lady for a horseback ride and came upon the Mighty Mountains:
I love Ryan's horse here in his picture.


After their long journey the prince went to rest while the lovely lady sat with her needle and thread to sew. I also told Ryan the story of a merchant who did not have time to fix the nail in his horses shoe because he was in a hurry. In the end the horse could no longer go on because he had lost his shoe and the merchant had to walk home in the dark.


The prince woke to the smell of popcorn. He wandered the castle till he came to a purple room where popcorn came out the tops of the pillars. There he met the young plump,purple prince. (this part of the story Ryan added from our Wise Enchanter book). The Prince let out an "ooooo" dear when he saw all the popcorn on the floor. Just then a gold star fell from the sky and landed in front of the prince. He took it and put it in his pocket next to his heart.


Our journey has been a fairly simple story using our many resources as a guide, but Ryan is enjoying it and wants to start from the beginning every time we sit down to work on our lessons.
It has also been a great practice for me in my block crayon drawings. I am trying to get better.



We worked on watercolor paintings using blue and red.

This week I told the story of a little boy who woke one morning to find a mountain had grown in his backyard. A magical mountain. The boy put on his red coat and went out to climb the mountain - up and down he went. If you look closely Ryan's mountain is in the painting - just very light.



Last week we also used blue and red but the story was of a little red bird who danced around in the winter time snow. I love the method that goes along with our watercolor paintings. Lighting the candle, saying the verse, turning down the lights and really feeling the colors on the paper.



The best part of homeschooling - for recess you get to go to the local park/farm and go sledding!!!
Someone had made a snowman

This little guy is new on the farm.
I could watch these guys all day - too cute! One day we will have a sheep of our own - a girl can dream!




Homeschooling also means learning to do things for yourself. Making your own eggs and toast:

Oh he also makes a great cup of coffee. Don't worry he does not drink it - believe me when I say he will never need to drink coffee to wake up.



Ryan and Tony went and turned in all his coins at the coin star machine and had $40 bucks. He was skipping through the store with excitement to get a new hot wheel car. He was giddy to be able to get a whole pack of cars that costs $6.oo. Imediatly he began to play with them and made use of our recyclables to make a town. The chocolate syrup bottle is the chocolate factory, the spagetti sauce jar is the pasta factory, the half and half is the coffee shop, ect....
I am so poud that he can use jars,boxes and his imagination to make a whole town.




This week we also met friends for a swim at a local YMCA and had a cooking class at friends house and made pretzel cookies. Oh and also had a snow storm that involved ice and rain whch lead to more sledding- not bad for one week.

Ryan's solo performance

SO last night Ryan and Tony treated me to my own private concert as I rested on the couch. These days it is getting harder to move around as the baby keeps growing- only 2 more months to go - so it was nice to relax to some live music. They worked together on a playlist of about 13 Beatles songs - how lucky am I.

Sorry about the sideways view.

For Grandpa

And anyone else who would enjoy watching Sage playing Bball complete with Tony's commentary.

Ryan's Version of Horseback ridding

Ryan asked me this morning where his video was of him ridding his horse - so here it is Ryan.


Coming soon for Grandpa - Sage's Bball game video replay..

Pluggin along with lessons

I am very proud of myself and Ryan for sticking to our lessons despite the urge to hibernate for the rest of the winter! Our rhythm here has focused inward as things do during this season. In the mornings Ryan has set up a seating area right next to the heater where he eats his breakfast and listens to his books on tapes. He can easily spend an hour there , but I have noticed if I let me do that, he becomes tired and cranky so we cut it short now and that is helping. Then through out the day he wanders back to his area and listens to his stories. We have also spent most of the week at home with a couple trips to the museums - no visiting friends this week. Again the urge to hibernate!

For our math lesson this week we talked about the number 8 and how many ways you can add to get to 8. We played beanbag games and used our puppets as tangibles for adding. This ended up leading into Ryan playing with his puppets and play table. He has not done that in awhile. I love to see him play with these toys and when he says "mom, I love the puppets you made me" it is all worth it.


Our Alphabet Journey continues this week with I,J,K and L

The prince sees a jester in the distance and approaches him as he is juggling. We practiced writting our J's and I's and wrote a few words for each. Ryan was really into drawing this week.
The prince found a castle where the king invited him inside where he found a beautiful lovely lady picking lavenders. I like that he added the prince on his horse over there on the right.
Math focused on the number 8.
Another surprise was that Ryan on his own got out the beeswax to model. He made this cool motor boat and played with it for a while.

I finally finished the hobby horse I had been working on since before the holidays. Ryan kept giving him kisses - I think he likes him : )

New Fairies

This weekend I worked on these cuties to post in my Etsy shop Naturalplaygarden.etsy.com.
It has been a while since I worked on a fairy for the shop and I thought they came out very nice. I do love working with wool! I am keeping a close eye on the new toy testing bill coming into effect Feb 10th!! If it passes without change I will no longer be able to make toys for the shop : ( along with millions of other people.

Happiness

Happiness

So Frog Creek has tagged me to list six things that bring me happiness.

Well, Ok!

The first would be my kids and the wee baby on the way.

The second, I am happy to be a homeschooling parent.

The third is my handwork - I love working with wool.

The fourth is the support I receive from my family and friends.

the fifth is the solace and peace I find in the woods. (Kim, I took that from you , but I feel the same exact way and right now I am missing being able to go for hikes)

The sixth but most definitely not last is my husband who supports us and tries his best everyday.

Indoor Time and lessons

This week our lessons were rather laid back and relaxed. Although most of the time our lessons are pretty relaxed, it is just this week they were more relaxed than usual.

For Math we worked on Ordinal numbers. In our Alphabet journey I told the story of the Golden Goose and that also worked well with showing the people in order who got stuck to the goose. We talked about 1st,2nd 3rd ect. for a few days. He seems to get the idea rather well.


By the end of the week he was asking for math problems - he really seems to like math. So I made a few problems complete with a little gnome and squirrel drawing of course. I had the idea to make the circles for him to put the rocks in after he had a the rocks out and was having a hard time counting them. He can be a bit distracted at times if there is too much going on (don't we all?) These circles worked great to keep him focused - well...


somewhat focused. After a couple problems he decided to show me how to write a fancy 9. It turned out looking like a bag he said - "a bag of beans" Then he drew the man holding the bag. That turned our math into - ok the man has 5 beans in his bag and he finds 3 more , how many does he have? After each problem, R would add more details to the drawing, such as the pond the man is standing by and the hat on his head. Math was done and a very creative picture drawn : )

We also played beanbag games. Tossing it back and forth counting by 2's and 5's.
This week in our Alphabet Journey we taled about the Letter G and H.
The Prince docked his boat on the other side of the sea cave and found a meadow before him. He walked admiring the flowers in bloom and feeling the fresh spring air around him. He then came to a pond with many golden geese swimming around. That turned into the story of the Golden Goose.
This week Ryan was not much in the mood to work on his drawings or writting. He did it, but not to excitted about it.

FOr the letter H, I decided to have more movement on our story. So I put on the horse harness and Ryan was the prince. We rode all over the kitchen until we come upon a house just like Mother Holle's house. That day Ryan had no interest in drawing and decided to only write the sentence.

I also decided to make a way to work on form drawing while standing up. It was a hit and we worked on our drawings this way too.



Of course there was plenty of time for free play. With the shorter lesson table on the kitchen table, that led into a boat. He spent a long time up there listening to his boks on tape and fishing.
By Friday he docked the boat and took to converting the coush into his space shuttle. I love seeing all the creative play. It is such an important part of childhood!

Outdoor time

Despite the fridgid temps , Ryan and bundled up and headed out to discover icicles and animal tracks. The sun was shinning that day so it did not seem to cold - at least not mentally.

We saw some rabbit tracks,deer tracks
and bird tracks. It is always mesmorizing to see these undisturbed tracks in the snow.
Then we came upon our favorite place to find the most gigantic icicles. This year I could not get up and climb around on the icicles like I did last year, but I still enjoyed watching Ryan explore. He loves to see if he can break the biggest ones.
An icicle cave.
Today it never went above 17 degrees, but that did not stop the boys from heading out for the 3rd day in a row to sled and snowboard off the back porch. They have a ramp down at the bottom of the stairs also.


Of course then there is the annual winter trek to find patches of ice for iceskating (without skates). This one is always the best and is right near our icicle rocks.



Winter can be so much fun. I can say that now - I am bundled up and sitting by the heater and watching my kids from the window : ) Come morning when the house is 50 upon waking - not so much fun.

Snow

Lounging in the snow.
Tony took the boys sledding to a local hill - well actually it used to be a ski mountain a long time ago - so it is pretty steep.
The view looking up the sled hill. There is a jump on there somewhere that Sage went over on the snow tube. - thus the need for his helmet when sledding! Ryan too, he wore his bike helmet although he did not go over the jump he and Tony did go down the hill from the top for the first time.
Inspecting the frozen pond.





I added this one in that Ryan took of me when I was on the phone.I kinda sums up how I felt today - tired !!!