Sarah Crows and fairies

Springy has had a lovely week so far. Today I'm ill so she was spending much of this morning in her room playing away.

She loves some books called Rainbow Magic. They are all about fairies and a very clever marketing idea in that each set in the series is 7 books and there seem to be about 10 sets. We're lucky in that many of them seem to be in the library. Springy has arranged the books along her bed and when I was listening in to her playing earlier I realised, plus she also confirmed this, that she was using the book covers as characters in her games. She came in saying "Mummy, Pippi (Longstocking this is, which is another book we had from the library this week and which I need to do as a read aloud) took something so the fairies have put her in the dungeon." This was alongside the joke, "What do fairies travel in around the world when they've lost their wings?" "A fairy boat."

We've also had some lovely walks this week. The autumn leaves are always spectacular and we've been lucky to have some dry but cold weather. Springy also made a scarecrow. We had a hazel stick whittled down into a stake at one end, another stick as a crossbar - tied on with string onto the hazel stick and this represents the arms. Some material with a small hole cut into the centre of it so it drapes across the crossbar and hangs down like a dress. This we tied with raffia and then we found an apple to use as a head on the pointy bit (which is the neck). We added some cloves to make eyes and a smile and our apple already had a lumpy bit which became the nose. We also glued on some wool as hair.

This afternoon her daddy and she went out in the garden with the bantams and now they're out at the playground. Yesterday I had to bath our Serama bantam as she had sat in one of her unviable eggs and was covered in egg yolk which a) stank, and b) matted her feathers (I told her glazing with egg yolks is for glazing, not that she'll listen or even understand!). She's such an adorable little bird - she's our Zen hen with her placid nature. We're not sure if our other bantam won't turn out to be a he rather than a she.

I've got a horrid cold which makes me feel really sluggish. I've taken some echinacea tincture but need to do some steam inhalation later.

Springy's maps

Springy loves making maps of our house and garden for treasure hunts. We hide things and then play using "hotter" or "colder" to tell each other whether the other one is near to the hidden object. These are good games for cold and wet autumn days.

Update on the shed

I forgot to update this - our chicken/piggie shed is fine now and has been refitted with a slide lock and a load of bricks to stop ratties and foxes. I think I saw a rat up a tree that goes on the shed roof last night so need to be extra vigilant for them. It could have been a squirrel but we tend not to have any so I'm thinking it may have been a rat. If I see another one or two then we need to sort them out because they can create a problem with small bantams - basically small bantam = takeaway meal!

It's gone so cold today and the westerly winds really add an extra chill. We're going to have bangers and mash tonight for dinner. I love cooking with Springy and she is able to make sandwiches (as well as tell bad jokes about sand witches!). I really enjoyed the soul cakes today because she enjoyed them so much. They're also not too messy to make which means washing up afterwards is simple.

Language

I've been working on phonemic awareness with Springy quite a bit recently and in particular making her aware of the sounds as they apply to her oral and nasal areas. For instance, we've been doing fricatives and I've been asking her to "feel" where the sound is. She's picked it up very quickly and seems to be aware.

In terms of vowels and consonants, we have been doing a rather Waldorf-inspired thing with the AAGGGH or AYYY, EEEE or eh, ih/i (as in aye) Ooooo (going on and on) or oh, Uwww/ur and so on. I've been explaining the vowels don't stop and then we got on to mmmm and nnnnnn and the fricatives (since they don't stop either) but she seems to have understood the difference by sensing the feelings that the sounds make and give.

Our Magic book (main lesson book) is coming along well with the capital and lower case letters (4 per page) and also the numbers (one per page but with a drawing). I don't want to overdo them in a Steiner Waldorf way because she knows her letters already but at the same time I wanted her to have a book to look back on and it prepares the way for her to apply her will and to be careful with her "work".

All Souls Day Cakes

These were made a little early but were great fun for our "lesson" this morning. They involve a lot of simple mixing and at the end the dough is nice to roll about and then squash and mark. They smell really nice too (not to mention the taste - yummy!).

All Souls Day Cakes

1/4 cup of caster sugar

1/4 cup of butter

1 cup of plain flour (sifted) + a little extra flour for dusting

1 egg yolk

1/2 cup of raisins, currants or sultanas

1 tsp allspice

1 tsp mixed spice

Splash of milk

1. Cream sugar and butter together.

2. Add the egg yolk

3. Sift flour into mixture

4. Add spices

5. Add in enough milk to make a soft dough.

6. Grease a baking tin

7. Heat oven to about 180deg C

8. Take dough and take enough in hand to roll small balls out. Squash ball slightly to make a small cake shape and then put a mark on the top of the cake (in days gone by people used to make the sign of the cross on the All Soul cakes but you can mark on initials etc).

9. Put the cakes onto the tin and put in oven for about 15 minutes.

10. Cakes should be golden brown upon removal. Cool slightly and then eat (care with sultanas as they may be hot still). You can add butter if you wish but they are moist enough to eat on their own.

Our current read at the moment is Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson. We love these books and Springy listens through the chapters which are quite long and peculiar in nature. We talked about the North Pole today and the way the sun goes to bed for months and then doesn't go to bed for months. Springy thought this quite strange. she knows that where we live the sun sets either over the church at midsummer or over the fields in midwinter and we always watch the sunsets (as they are so beautiful) so she seems to be quite observant of where the sun goes to bed (we can't see the sunrises here though). A few months back, Springy and I watched a Joanna Lumley documentary on the aurora borealis which was amazing to see - one day I hope both Springy and I can see it in person.

Back to the Moomins - I grew up watching a beautiful stop-motion animation of the Moomins. Since then they have been tragically turned into a cartoon animation of extremely low quality which we won't be watching anytime soon. The books though are always a delight and this particular one is very relevant to the impending cold of winter coming upon us. We were reading the bit today about the troll (Moomintroll's forebear) who lived behind the stove. It made me wish we had a woodstove because I'd love to imagine a troll of sorts rattling around behind one. Ah, atheist pagan that I am...

Steiner Waldorf Handwork and Science Resources

http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/Handwork.pdf

and

http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/Scienceonline.pdf

Our first formal recorder lesson

We just had a very successful recorder session playing The Fork and the Spoon (from the Oak Meadow recorder book). It was our first formal recorder lesson and Springy really did very well (I helped her with her finger from A to B).

Years ago I learnt to play recorder too and I wish I could find my old book because I remember it being very user-friendly.

It's October...

I realised this evening that the nights are really starting to draw in close. We had the bantams out just before 6 pm and I felt the rush to put them to bed because the sun was starting to descend and darkness was coming in, along with the feeling that predators were starting to be out and about.

We had a nice homemade soup for lunch today - chopped an onion, fried it in my soup pot with some olive oil, added a crushed clove of garlic, some celery, a bit of chopped up butternut squash and added some boiling hot water from the kettle. Then added a cup of red lentils and boiled and then simmered it all up for 20 minutes - about 3 minutes from the end I added some miso and also added a handful of fresh garden herbs earlier in. I also added a dash of canned tomatoes. It was very yummy.

Springy and I made some herbal honey for the winter. We stuffed a glass jar full of sage and a little bit of thyme and then poured honey onto it. This is sage honey and is excellent for coughs and sore throats.

I really love Samhain. I always feel the magic at this time of year and I think it is because of the darker nights. There's something very primal about eating dinner and then getting all snuggled up in blankets later on in the evening as the cold creeps in.

There's a pumpkin craft link here:

http://cjstitchingandblooms.blogspot.com/2008/08/wool-felted-pumpkin-tutorial.html

It looks the same as the one in Living Crafts magazine.

On to home education (not that the above isn't related) but Springy has been working hard on her main lesson book thing. She only likes to write either in her best Magic book or if there is a purpose. She will write shopping lists and also we sometimes play at restaurants and she writes down my order. Other things that seem to encourage her pen control are those mazes in puzzle books and she loves word searches. We have a small chalkboard too and she will write with chalk on that (because she can rub it out). She uses that to practice her pictures and writing before putting them onto something more formal (her idea, not mine since I'm not that fussy).

First Grade Readiness article

This article by Joan Almon is very useful:

http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/firstready.pdf

Illness and hens

Today has been a beautiful October day. We spent a lot of time with Springy outside as today was the first day she has not had a temperature for three days. Springy has been ill since Sunday. She came home from a Beaver event with a headache which we just put down to being overwhelmed. However, it seems that there is a bug going around and Springy developed tummy ache and a very high temperature for the past few days, along with frequent toilet needs.

Today was gorgeous. We had the bantams out on the lawn and Springy and I played a little bit of football (just kicking the ball back and forth). We also baked some bread (I've been reading a book called Bread with Children). Later on I drew some chalk numbers from 1 to 12 in a line on the path and Springy did some maths that way (moving between numbers with plus and minus). I think tomorrow will be nice too because the sky has a nice pink flow about it.