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 Goals for Autumn

Springy's Learning Wishes and Nice Things to Do
Autumn 2008

Learn how to knit (a toy)

Learn how to sew (pretend toy)
Maths – Times Tables (1, 3, 2, 10)
Multiply and Divide, Plus and Minus (numbers up to 20)
Learning how to do half pasts on the clock
Springy wants to visit a Butterfly Garden
Pretend the kitchen is the South Pole
Blackberry picking (more)
Make mummy play with my Beanie Babies
Play with Barbie dolls

Spelling: archaeologist, information, geologist, guineapig, learn how to knit toy lion

Yesterday and today - so different

Yesterday was a beautiful day. The sun shone, it was warm and we went to the beach. We had a lovely time. I stayed at the flat for most of the time and knitted and Springy and C went body boarding (well Springy did - C supervised) and then Springy dug along the breakwaters in the sand. "Can you tell I'm having a good time, Mummy?" was her question - yes, I could because she was smiling and covered in wet sand. She was looking at anemones on the breakwaters and gently touching the ones with their tentacles in. We spotted barnacles, mussels and then did a bit of fossil hunting. Some men were digging up lugworms and they had a little group of children with them so Springy got to play with them. I also found some hermit crabs and brought them up shore for the children to see. We then returned them to the water.

Today the rain came. It's so grey and damp out there. We had about an hour or two late morning/early afternoon that was grey but dry so the bantams and guineapig girls went out on the lawn to have a graze. Springy has found that if she picks up the pullet and takes her to the bottom of the garden she will run very quickly, using her wings with a flap, to be back with the hen. It's very funny but I've said to Springy she must not do it too often because it could stress the pullet.

Re: Playing in the garden

We had a lovely morning playing in the garden. Springy and I played kicking the ball with the swing as a goal. We each had ten kicks and Springy got five (with a little help) "goals" in whereas I got three. We then played bounce the ball and catch which was great fun. Springy decided that if we missed we had to sit on the ball and cluck like a chicken.

This afternoon Springy went swimming and she is doing so well, as is her friend C. C swims like a mermaid in that she can swim really well but best of all under the water, rather than on top. They did star floats, mushroom floats, swam on their backs and on their fronts, had to turn over in the water and so on and they worked so hard at everything.

Yesterday, Springy did a bit of fingerknitting and managed to use a whole ball of wool. Her daddy and I were so amazed. Next of all will be needle knitting.

I'm knitting a number of gifts at the moment. I made Springy a little blue horse and a friend of mine who has twin daughters will be receiving a pig and a lamb in the post for their first birthday. I'm using the patterns from The First Book of Knitting by Bonnie Gosse. It's brilliant and I finally understand knitting. I've noticed that since my awareness of Waldorf education has increased and since I've been putting into practice some of the elements of it, it has acted in a good way on me too. I went on a bicycle at the weekend which is very brave considering it must be almost 15 years since I last had a go and I'm very clumsy. I've noticed my motor control has been improving - I've always been good at fiddly, small things but it's the medium and gross areas that I have often had difficulty with.

Faery Tales and RPGs

I am ever so happy tonight. Springy played her first RPG and it is a really sweet and gentle game. D&D is very much combat based and does have a level of violence which is not so easy to avoid without a lot of tweaking. However, Faery Tale Deluxe has been designed with children and non-violence in mind and is available from Green Ronin publishers:

http://www.greenronin.com

We played Jack and The Beanstalk whereby Springy played the part of a Brownie, along with her squirrel companion and they headed up the beanstalk to rescue Jack. The game is non-violent and is ever so simple. The attributes of each faery character are Mind, Body and Spirit and then each type of faery has different gifts. For instance, Brownies have Invisibility and Household Tasks (so they can churn butter, sweep the hearth etc with ease). Springy loved this and it was a great way to have fun and learn. The feats are based on getting even numbers on the dice (or you could do it without dice). What was so good was getting it as an e-book PDF which meant not having to wait for it to ship.

Language Ideas

This worked so well today. I have a BBC German CD and phrasebook out from the library. Springy and I played restaurants and then shops. I was the customer and I had to order from the menu (Speisekarte) and didn't talk English to her. She was amazing in terms of comprehension because I barely spoke in English to her (used German, pointing, hand gestures etc) but I guess because of the similarities between English and German and the language roots it makes it easier to work out.

We did shops with her play food (some Haba ones from ninnynoodlenoo and things like pinecones, conkers and so forth). I asked for a lemon, an apple, a pear (ein Birne), strawberry and so on and she had to work it out and bring me the right thing. If she got it wrong I just said "Nein" and shook my head. It worked really well and I'm going to be doing this much more. Immersion through play :)

This is also an excellent link and resource for Comptines (nursery rhymes) in French:

http://comptine.free.fr/

Chocolate and play

I'm hoping to visit this place soon: it's called Demel in Vienna and it is a delicious cafe haus.
http://www.demel.at/en/frames/index_demel.htm


I love sachertorte.

This is an interesting article on play:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514

Springy jumped in!

Springy's swimming lesson went well. This week she jumped in from the side without holding on to anyone and went under the water and, thank goodness, came up and smiled. It was the first time she's ever jumped in on her own and she really is almost swimming by herself - she managed a second or two. She keeps putting her head in the water at the pool and also in the bath at home.

French is working out and I really like our new tutor. She seems to understand under 7s need to move about, sing and so on.

Springy is so little at times. She smiles her way through life most of the time. The night before last it was quite upsetting though because she had "forgotten how to sleep". It appears that the Sandman has not been coming to help her sleep; even the Sandmama couldn't help. I ended up sleeping next to Springy and tried to settle her down but she was wriggling away. I felt so sorry for her.

Yesterday and today we cut out all TV, not even 5 minutes. We had cheese for breakfast, followed by a little cereal. We went for a walk in the afternoon and popped to the playground and had some nice storytime and then Springy settled down fine. Tonight I took Springy for a walk in the early evening on her tricycle - a bit more fresh air before bathtime and then we spent the evening colouring drawings (we did a park scene each) and then we had a story (October Little Acorns on St Francis) and The Tiger Who Came To Tea (Springy read it to me).

Update on Springy - she's now taken to reading books in bed. I tell her a bedtime story but then she wants to read a book to herself as well. I'm not going to stop her because I know that we are working within a very holistic approach so all the other stuff is being played and worked upon too. She built an amazing den this evening too using the Disney poncho from Grandma and Grandpa and 2 kitchen stools. This morning she used her cowrie shell as a telephone and held a rather amusing conversation with her daddy. I had to be the shopkeeper who sold it to her, along with the stone sausuage (it's a stone we found at the beach on holiday and it looks just like a sausage!) and a butterfly.