pirate map craft day!

A dear friend had the idea we should make treasure maps. We took it to a pretty rad level!!!

One of the many things I love about home school is that we have the freedom to just let my girl do what she pleases for hours of the day. And she loves to sew and craft. I like that I don't have to 'make her' - it just happens! Here is Tilde hard at work.

Felting!

 Here are our felted soaps Tilde did the main parts - she is so much better then me and I did the needle felting on top.

 these are some wax gnomes she did. Just a bit of randomness.

 Here is her march lion. Her first needle felting! I couldn't believe it ! She did not poke her self even once.

Here is our bunny. He is needle felted! She did the pink ears.
We love felting! I was so intimidated by it at first. It took ages to find all the materials. But in the end I bought a kit from our local Cable Arts Store. We have a couple of books - Magic Wool and the Needle Felting book from Paper Scissors Stone. But the Crunchy Parent from You Tube was the one who taught us wet felting. And BAM! We are felting fiends! Though its my little girl who is best at wet felting. She is so much more patient then me.

T'was the night before Christmas

And oh~ how easy this makes my homeschool inspiration for the week! So each day we go through and memorize a phrase from the verse! And this is just Tildes favorite sort of thing. She memorized ~ the Walrus and the Carpenter and the Owl and the Pussycat~ all while she was just 4. So this is right up her alley.
And then we're using the images from the the verse for the Christmas cards she is making. Easy peasy!
There are many things as a Waldorf mama that come easy to me. Pictoral speaking, story telling, singing and art are a few. But things likes creating a schedule of activities and following through- eeekkk! And then there is basic writing skills and rifts in my education. So I will be learning writing, grammar and general fine academics along side her. My hope is that by next year this will all smooth out. And we will be just awesome. But in the mean time - all of this is a struggle. And I am grateful for moments like these - where inspiration comes easily and the lessons seem to work themselves out!

Homeschool for reals.

Homeschool isn't easy. We all have hang ups that make our job as parent teacher harder - but I keep reminding myself that while I know I fail in some ways - I have plenty of success in others.  I have a very hard time taking notes of what we have done so far. So much of waldorf first grade is hands on work - not so much of me sitting around typing up reports of the day! ( I also have a 1 year old) Sometimes I try to remember what we did all week - and I am stumped!  But taking photographs seems to be a quick easy way to remind myself just how much we have done! And while I am no photographer - and I bought this rather crap camera on clearance - here are the last couple weeks in our home~! Enjoy.

These are the completed paper from the paper making project.  

I think they kind of not so beautiful - but act of making it was so fun. We learned a lot about wasps!

This is our sound of music lesson (tee hee) We were lucky enough to have a sound of music sing along here at our local college. we took the opportunity to learn the songs as the verse potion of each days lesson. As Tilde is not yet reading we illustrated the lyrics to help her memorize them. And boy did she! She has - Favorite things, Do a dear, Climb every mountain and most of The Hills are alive- completely memorized! Oh she had a blast. The theater was full of other homeschool kids as well - and I am just thrilled that or community is so lush with such enthusiastic families.

 Here is the crisp apple struddle - we didn't know what is was suppose to look like - but it tasted good!

 The next week started with the family having the stomache flu. When we finally recovered I could not think what to do for school - but as Tilde had already humming Mary Quite Contrary -I went ahead and had a lesson on cockle shells ( thank you google) and then we drew her pretty maids all in a row.

 Here is Tildes beautiful winter night dress. She designed and sewed both dresses for herself and her doll. I threw in a little help here and there - but still - this was all her and her awesome sewing skills. I gave her most of the week to do this project. I don't know if i could stand that much hand sewing- myself!

 We also threw in a bit of baking that week. These are molasses sweetened blue berry muffins. They were crazy good. And thanks to Tildes delicate hands, they were soft and fluffy. And did I mention soooo good?

So that is the last 6 weeks of homeschool. I don't pack a huge amount in at a time.She seems happiest with slow and steady.
We are currently working on Christmas ornaments and cards - but I think I sent most of  them away before I could take pictures.

Started the school year !

We prepped for paper making and a lesson on wasps.

  

                                 

                                                     
         And a big yeah for setting up the school room! Very thoroughly! Tee hee!

                                         Here is our little mouse house / nature table for the week.
          We live in Port Angeles next to both the mountains and the ocean -so both get   to be represented.

All in all a good start! I will post on this weeks lessons soon - though I started the week with   a  stomach flu - not the kind of lesson I really wanna focus on!