Native American Monday

After our lessons this morning I found Ryan in the bathroom putting on his face crayons. He said he was making his Native American face. Sooooo.... Here is Little Running Feet -



Then of course we had to make our Tepee - where else would we sleep. Notice the fire outside to keep us warm.

The big Pow Wow!!! We have been playing Native American music all day on Accuradio.


Time to get ready for our meal. Here Ryan is taking the corn kernels off the cob..

Then we run it through our hand grinder and Tada - authentic corn meal.

We enjoyed some cornbread and soup for our lunch!!

Mighty Oak Tree

"Mighty oak tree stands in the woodland fair
Holding her food high up in the air.
Little brown caps held tight on their heads.
Green nuts sleep safe in their oaken beds."

Beth Sutton - Enki


Ryan and I went on our Friday nature walk and found this gigantic oak leaf! It is the biggest one we have ever seen. It measures 16" NOT including the stem. We also found signs of deer sleeping in the woods. We could see the impression the left in the ground from sleeping. I cherish our Friday nature walks, not matter what kind of week we have had ( and usually with Ryan most of our weeks are pretty energized) the nature walks are a way to center ourselves.

Thursday is Watercolor Painting Day!

Thursday is watercolor painting day. After our morning lessons I light a candle say our verse and turn out the lights. Before I do all this I have all the watercolor painting supplies set up and waiting. Last week at our homeschool co-op our art project was watercolor painting using Autumn colors - brown,red and yellow. The mom leading the art asked the children to look at the trees outside and see how golden and red they are. The kids then proceeded to paint a picture. I was most impressed to see the progression of Ryan's paintings. Up until now his paintings have been swirls of colors as they should be. Now he has painted a picture. A beautiful tree with it's golden and red leaves.

Today we sang the song "come little leaves"
Come little leaves said the wind one day
Come over here with me and play
Put on your dresses of red and gold
Summer is gone and the days grow cold.

I also told a little story of a boy walking through the woods and noticing how the forest was changing and getting ready for winter. Painting is a very spiritual part of our week. The colors reflect the season and I set the tone with the candles and sometimes flower placed in front of us. There is always a story or song (or both) to guide us as we paint. I never lead Ryan on what to paint but encourage him to paint as he is feeling.

Today this wonderful picture appeared :

Here is mine:

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Some of our recent lessons

One day Ryan was inspired to put on a puppet show for me!! It was nice to see his story evolve with characters and a story line. This story is about a princess who want to goes out into the woods but has to cross the river to get there.

Here our story was the "Pumpkin House" by Suzanne Down. To get ready for the story I painted this watercolor picture of the pumpkin and the mouse coming to make his house inside.
This is a needle felted pumpkin and a beeswax mouse to go with the story. One morning Tony stayed home and he was able to sit in at storytime. I was able to do a little puppet show while I told the story. Both TOny and Ryan enjoyed it.

Beeswax mice. I am excitted because this is RYan's first time actually modeling something and not just rolling up the wax into tubes!! His is the mouse in the middle.


Our letter this week is Qq. Today I told the story of the Princess and the Quail then we drew Q's with our block crayons and turned them into pictures.

Ryan is 5 years old today!

Ryan turned 5 years old today! I can not believe how quickly the years go by. He was having a bit of trouble last night and this morning with the idea of being older. He is worried that when he grows up he will not be living with us. Of course we know when he turns 16 he will not be feeling this way - but for now I just tell him he can live with me until he is 100!


This is the card I made for Ryan. The picture is actually for the Waldorfsupplies.com website. I love it so decided to draw it the best I could. It came out beautiful. Ryan's birthday verse:
(written by Roberto Trostli - a Waldorf Teacher)

Like the Lilly pure and good
Like the moon so bright -
May my every thought be filled with beauty,truth and light.

Like the rose so rich and red
like the sun above -
may my every word and deed be filled with strength and love.


Ryan had requested this special birthday fairy a few weeks ago. Blue shirt,purple hair holding a baby! Below is the birthday rainbow bridge. We started the tradition last year where if the kids feel inspired to they can cross the rainbow bridge to start a new year. This year Ryan did not want to cross the bridge. He is now ok with being 5 but does not want to make it "official". Maybe next year.

Ryan's 5th Birthday Party

Ryan will be turning 5 years old on Oct. 24th!!!! The years sure do keep creeping up on me. Today we had our close friends over for a Gnome Birthday party!! Ryan and his friend had so much fun and loved everything! It makes all the prep worth it to see them have so much fun.


My mom painted this beautiful picture for Ryan. (Mom - I have a few other moms who would like one too!)



Here are the drawstring bags and gnomes I made as party gifts for the kids. They also each got to take home crystals from the crystal cave and the Gnome King gave them each a special bracelet.
As the kids arrived I had a craft set up for them. Of course the girls are all working - do you see the boys anywhere?? To much to do.

Here are the pinecone gnomes we made! they are very cute as long as the glue dries and their heads stay on!!!


Storytime!! This is a simple setting I created for the story I told the children before going into the crystal cave. It was a story about all the gnomes working very hard for the Gnome King's birthday. They went on a long journey to the crystal cave to bring him back the most precious jewels in all the land. In return the generous king made a bracelet for each gnome from the crystals they brought to him.


Everyone seemed to enjoy the story. Now it is off to the crystal cave.................

Tony worked very hard helping me build the crystal cave! Oh what a time it was. We put it on the front porch and the wind kept knocking it down. Finally we got it secure enough to last through the party. We took brown kraft paper, crinkled it and hung it around to give an appearance of a cave. We also created a tunnel that they had to crawl though to get inside.

As soon as they come through the tunnel they see the crystals on the floor. Together they worked to gather the crystals and put them in a basket for the gnome king. It was great to see how excitted they all were!

The gnomes inside the cave.

We went outside to break open geodes. What could be more fun then hitting a rock with a hammer and watch it break open. Sage took this picture of Kaya holding his geode after it was smashed open. It is a very artsy picture I think- thanks Sage. Sage was a huge help getting ready for the party today. He helped clean and offered to help many times!! He is such a great guy.

The cake!!! Yumm. I made carrot cake and Ryan and I collected flowers from the yard to decorate it. Not only was it yummy - but pretty as well. We can't forget the moose tracks ice cream!

And the end - the presents. It was so nice to have our good friends over to celebrate with us. We ended the day by roasting hotdogs on sticks over a fire!!