The kids and I dyed some play silks recently. These are so much fun! The kids use them for all kinds of different things and they get played with every single day!
Here are the play silks setting in the dye. We left one white and ordered a black that aren't in the picture.
Here they are drying all over the dining room.
A pretty basket of silks all clean and dry and ready for fun!
Quinny especially loves them. He likes to dump the basket out, put them back, roll around in them, play peekaboo, etc. He smiles everyday when he sees me pull the basket down. So cute!
Ella and Reece use them for scarves, hats, capes, grass, water, blankets for their animals, and on and on.
Here's Lexeigh using a few for a "belly wobble" skirt. =D
We've been busy making a lot of homemade toys for the kids lately. This is definitely one of the most enjoyable hobbies I've ever found. I love to make fun things for them and see them get excited when they wake up to a new Mommy or Daddy-made toy. Marty and I have been having fun working on some of these projects together as well.
This is a set of finger puppets I knitted up for the kids. These were super fun and really quick. I made up the pattern for the elephant, frog, and bird. I'll have to make more of these soon.
Ella and the puppets
We've been wanting to get the kids some of the wooden animals we've seen online. The European toys like Holtziger and Ostheimer are just so pricey. So we tried our hand at making some ourselves first. I'm happy with how they turned out. Marty cut them, we both sanded, and I painted them. We have about 50 more templates to cut, sand, and paint. I'm excited to get some more finished. We're also going to make some trees and people.
They are lightly painted with a non-toxic paint to have more of a "wash" of color as opposed to being full out painted. Ella really loves them especially.
A rainbow stacking cave Marty and I made. They mostly like to take it apart at this point and use the pieces individually but that's okay with me. Haha.
And what can I say about the new curriculum we started Monday? WE ADORE IT! I look forward to school time during the day and so do the kids. I feel like they're learning what they need to know and I also feel involved. I know what they're learning and can see how they progress. This curriculum is so fun and the arts, painting, drawing, handwork, and stories that are inclusive with each academic subject keeps things so interesting. I wish we would have discovered Waldorf homeschooling a long time ago!
Here is where our books live currently
Here is a blackboard we made for the dining room/school area. We made it out of masonite board, primer, and chalkboard paint.
Here are examples of some of the work Lexeigh has completed this week:
A lesson in her Language Arts main lesson book. No textbooks are used at this grade level. As the children fill out their different main lesson books they are essentially creating their own textbooks of the things they've learned and the work they've done.
A math main lesson book entry
Science. To demonstrate the way the Earth revolves around the sun I slowly turned a ball around a larger ball (the sun), explaining that everytime the Earth makes a full turn it equals one day and everytime it revolves completely around the sun it equals one year. I think this really helped her understand the concept better.
In history we're studying Ancient Hebrew. This has been really fun and there's lots of enrichment projects we can do with this. We read about the Tower of Babel. She illustrated the story and wrote about it. She also wrote the Hebrew alphabet and vowels.
Close up. She's still getting used to writing without lines. =)
She's been working on finger knitting as part of her handwork. She's really good at it already!
She made this flower. We're going to work on a bunch of them and make a vine of flowers for her bed. We'll hang some fairies from the railing and maybe some twinkly white lights and make her bed a beautiful fairy garden. She can't wait!
Here's some of Jimmie's recent work:
A map he drew of Africa, Asia, and Europe. I think he did a great job. He'll be adding to this throughout the year.
For grade 6 we're currently studying the Stone Age. This is really really interesting. We talked about the clay figures cavemen made of people and animals and also about cave paintings. This is a human form Jimmie made out of earth clay.
Today we spent some time making a Stone Age tool. We used rock, stick, and leather. Here is Jimmie attatching the stone to the rock with the leather.
Tying it off...
Finished. This was really cool to do and really made him think about the cavemen lived. It brought up lots of questions about the Stone Age. It was nice to see him engaged in his work.
We've also started watercolor painting and we love this. It's so relaxing and a lot of fun. Hopefully we'll have some more time to paint again tonight. The kids really enjoyed it.
Lexeigh working on a painting
Jimmie trying to decide on which of the many ideas he had in his mind to paint.
A painting I made with the kids. Can you see what it is? I like the softness of watercolors and how the paintings can have so many different meanings. Mine is a woman looking over a baby. I had a great time trying this out with them for the first time and look forward to doing it again soon.
I have some more pictures to post and I also would like to post a few videos as well. Jimmie is performing a dialogue tonight of one of his assignments on the Stone Age (we thought it'd be better to wait until the little ones were in bed and he wanted Marty to be home for it). We made some wooden figures to go with it and they are really excited to perform it. I'm hoping to get a good video of it to share.
Love you all!
No comments:
Post a Comment