The Second Light of Advent

Last night we celebrated the second light of advent.
The second light of advent is the light of plants,
Plants that reach up to the sun and in the breezes dance.

First snow of the season

About 3:30 this morning I heard the familiar sound of the street plows. Looking out the window I saw our first snow of the season. It is so beautiful when it is untouched. Nothing beats the excitment and magic of the first snowfall. After waking up and having breakfast Tony and the boys headed out to shovel the driveway and then eventually made a snowman! I took Heidi for a walk and when we got back to the house, this is what they made.

Lesson review for the week

This weeks lessons involved subtraction, the story of The Seven Ravens, watercolor paintings, and a movement journey of "Over the RIver and through the Woods to Grandmother's house we Go".. Oh and some more form drawing. It sounds like alot, but only Monday is the day where we do the bulk of our lessons, the rest of the week it is broken out by day. Sometimes it takes 45 min, sometimes 15. In most Waldorf schools they have blocks for their curric. I find with Ryan, he gets bored is I do the same subject every week for 6 weeks. Plus he loves math, so I fit it all in and use our main lesson story to guide us.

Math this week we worked on subtraction. This time poor little blue minus gnome is always loosing his jewels that he wants to give to the king.

We have been adding each gnome in the beginning of the book as we work on them. Ryan on his own added our little minus friend.

He did really well, using the jewels and figuring out this all by himself. He enjoys math so much, he asked to do it first thing instead of our usual beanbag warm up games.
We also painted with blues this week , preparing for the winter season. We needed blue painting s for our wall now that winter is here. I told a short story of a boy who work up one morning and the world looked blue to him. I forget how the rest of the story went.

I love how Ryan's painting came out.
I cheated, mine is from last year. I used the one I painted to make the star frames for our playgroup.
So we also told the story of the Seven Ravens. Wed is our day to draw from the story after we have heard it for a few days. This time instead of drawing a letter, we drew the table with the 7 plates and cups inside the glass mountain. Although our mountain looks like the lettter M.

Sorry for the blurry horrible pictures! For Christmas we are getting a new camera and my husband will teach me how to take better pictures. He is mortified right now by my blurry dark pictures - graphics designers!
Going with the Seven Ravens, we spent one day talking about the number 7 and finding all the ways we can add and subtract to get to 7.

Caring......

That is the badge the kids have been working on for Earth Scouts. It is wonderful to be part of a group that does nice things. At home we each made 3 cards to take to the Children's Hospital for the holidays and brought them to our meeting.
Then Amy who has been organizing the activities for this badge had stations set up to make ornaments which will go on small planted trees to take to the Hospital along with the cards the children made. Ryan really understood the idea behind this activity . We talked about how the children in the hospital are sick and some cannot go home for the holidays. Because he still remembers going in for his surgery when he was 3, he really wanted to help out.
The beautiful ornaments. On our way home Ryan asked if we could go with Amy to drop off the cards and trees. He really feels connected to the spirit of caring and giving.


Before our meeting Ryan and headed over to the nature center early to have lunch and walk around. We only walked for a little bit before heading in to explore the nature center. Once inside we found a couple of chairs set up in front of the window where the bird feeders are. We spent 45 min there just watching the birds. We saw blue jays, tuffted titmouse,cardinals,black capped chippadees and many others. It was very relaxing.

We found our tree

And by "finding our tree", we really did find our tree on the edge of the woods near our house. Someone was pruning their trees and threw the cuts out in the woods. I discovered it on a walk the other day. Tony went out and cut off one of the branches and dragged it home. It now has a place of honor in our living room. I have to say this is by far my favorite tree!




After the tree was ready and we listened to plenty of Christmas music, Tony started a fire outside for us. It was a nice night to sit around the fire. He was esp. proud of this fire because he chopped the wood himself. He bought an axe the other day and was a bit scared of it, so he was a little nervous about using it at first. He did great and it was a beautiful fire.

Playgroup!

Playgroup time again! Today we had just about everyone here and it was a full house - 10 kids. A lot of fun though. We are transitioning into a co-op which will be great not only for me : )(not so much work) but for everyone. Today was our last meeting until mid Jan! Hard to believe, but I know we will all be so busy with the holidays it will fly by.

We start our day with free play:


Hanging up the silks! Everyone played great til a few of the boys decided to become cougars and dump the kitchen stuff out and sit on top of the kitchen - boys! We told them all cougars must live outside they are too wild to be indoors.
Here a few of the kids wanted to pose for a picture. It turned out great , well except for my ugly living room. I will have to get Tony to photo shop a better background around them.
On to craft. We made blue window stars.

The finished product. Great for the winter season.

Lunch with friends. Most definetely a full table - I love that! From snack the kids had more free play, cause that is what a kid does! Then cleanup, circle and story. We have been telling the story of the gingerbread man and today we held an imprompto puppet show to go with the story. As exhausting as it can be - it is well worth it. An the clean up was not too bad - many hands make light work!


Last Playgroup. I forgot to post these pics from our last playgroup:


Our craft was candle making and decorating pine bases. Steph's husband came to the rescue when I discovered the birch log I had for this activity had huge black marks inside the bark when I cut the bases. Not only did he cut some for us, but he drilled a hole too! Thanks Guys!
Lu

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.