St George's Day

We took part in a St George's Day parade at the weekend. It was good fun - I mostly followed Springy around with the camera.

Our puppy is gorgeous. She's getting dog "eyebrows" now which gives her lots of expression. Today she had a fantastic time playing with another dog and they rough and tumbled on the green.

Springy and I did a form drawing session today. We also read Pico the Gnome which is a sweet story. Springy is having trouble finding the ground and the sky in terms of balancing her form drawing but is still doing very well. She made a spell book the other day - we stayed off writing for months and now she keeps writing under her own volition. She decorated the front in the Stockmar crayons and has written some spell-like poems inside. They're copied from My Secret Unicorn, a series of books she has been reading. She also sometimes writes her own poems and is forever telling me ones she has made up, on a verbal basis.

I'm reading a book on painting in the Steiner schools. It's really interesting and has given me a new insight into the colours and the way painting is covered. Rather than using nouns to describe the way the paint colours relate (which is the incorrect emphasis of many of the "waldorf" styled consultants) they say the correct way is on using adverbs and adjectives - the colours are the entities themselves. Having recently taken a workshop on Goethean and Steiner's thoughts on colour this is starting to make more sense to me. The colours themselves are the spiritual elements and essences.

The opposite of the painting is the form drawing which relies on outlines and can be done in bold colours.

'School as a Journey' by Torin Finser

Found this e-book to read:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=S_-oI4v5X3kC&pg=PA82&lpg=PA82&dq=waldorf+blackboard+drawing+course&source=bl&ots=O1NhyiGgYW&sig=pmlK3DeGK8xo-ypb8-be4VZ5_uA&hl=en&ei=RfboSenYJc6rjAfxuPSeCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#PPA12,M1

and:

http://www.angelfire.com/or/cmcquoid/VersesandSongs.htm with lots of verses and songs including this one:

Little dwarfs so short and strong,
Heavy-footed march along;
Every head is straight and proud,
Every step is firm and loud.

The Teacher's Desk

http://www.theteachersdesk.info/freeworksheets.htm

This looks really useful. Springy did a little game (actually a comprehension sheet) on her Magic Tree House book Mummies in the Morning this evening. I printed the preview PDF off and said she could do it or not and she wanted to.

I just purchased the MTH unit studies because Springy enjoys the books and enjoyed the quiz.

Three Cakes for Easter

We're enjoying the weather, although some of my potted plants have wilted slightly in the heat. We have potatoes growing (we hope) and also a few bean plants. The strawberry patch needs a bit of a tidy up.

All the birds are singing their dawn chorus each morning which is just wonderful. Our hens have been laying quite a few eggs. This morning Springy and I had scrambled eggs for breakfast. Our weaving project needs to be continued but Springy did a spring-themed crossword and wrote in the most beautiful neat writing. We haven't done much writing recently because Springy didn't want to and I was forcing workbooks on her before Christmas due to a lack of confidence - we both hated doing them. It's much nicer when writing comes from a more natural interest and the crossword was just that.


Banana Gingerbread
Ei


Cherry Crumble Cake

175g (6oz) SR flour
100g (3.5oz) soft butter
75g (3oz) caster sugar
50g (2oz) almond flour (ground)
1 egg
2 tbsps milk
1/2 tsp almond essence
1 can black cherries
25g (1oz) almond flakes

1. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper
2. Rub butter into flour to make crumble mix.
3. Add sugar and ground almonds and mix in.
4. Remove 75g (3oz) of the crumble mix (to use as a topping later).
5. Add the milk, egg and almond essence to the remaining crumble mix and blend until smooth.
6. Pour into baking tray.
7. Pour off syrup from the cherries and put drained cherries on top of cake mix in baking tray.
8. Sprinkle on crumble mix that was set aside.
9. Sprinkle on almond flakes.
10. Bake in oven for about 25 minutes, at 180 deg C.

Sultana Soda Bread

150g (5oz) wholemeal plain flour
175g (6oz) plain flour
2 tsps cream of Tartar
pinch of salt
1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
50g (2oz) brown sugar
125g (4oz) sultanas
25g (1oz) butter
175ml warmed milk

1. Mix flours, salt, cream of tartar, bicarb, sugar and sultanas together.
2. Melt butter in saucepan and heat milk.
3. Pour in gradually to dry mix until dough is formed.
4. Knead dough on surface (use a sprinkle of flour to help prevent sticking).
5. Roll out dough to form a circle and place on baking sheet.
6. Bake in oven at 200 deg C (180 deg C fan oven) for 25 minutes - the soda bread should sound hollow when tapped.
7. For crusty top wrap in tea towel or leave to cool without one for soft top.

Spring has sprung

We've had a lovely day. I did a blackboard drawing yesterday (I'm not very good at drawing but always have a go) in anticipation of the Spring Equinox and drew a daffodil and a primrose and also a night sky with moon and stars and a sun in a paler blue sky.

I wrote down:
SPRING EQUINOX
NIGHT = DAY

and we talked about spring. Springy came up with the following words that remind her of spring:

birds, flower, warm, sun, daffodil, hyacinth, primrose, tulip, lamb

Then I asked her to use her magic book (main lesson book) to do a picture in. She got frustrated by it so we used some ordinary sheets of paper for her to practice on first. She still hasn't put a picture (apart from a partially drawn robin) in the magic book but it may take a few days. Then I asked her to go out in the garden and count how many daffodils there are. She found 5 patches of them and then I asked her to count them because the fairies need to know how many there are in each patch. We did a bit of mental arithmetic adding up how many altogether. Lily-pup was out there with her, charging about and stopping to listen to birds, trying to get the chickens (who are in the run) to play with her and then Springy made a mud pie. Yum to mud pies - every child should make mud pies. I asked Springy to wear a hat because the sun is strong enough to be a summer's day today.

An Egg...and Hares...nearly Easter

Our little frizzle feathered pullet became a hen today as she laid her first egg (technically she has to be a year old to be a hen but I feel that the act of laying an egg is a rite of passage from being a girl to a woman!).

Springy knew Frazzle had gone broody and ensured she was sat in the nest box undisturbed. An hour later Springy went back out and found the little pale brown egg (pale brown is the colour of her ears).

Springy ate the egg with a potato cake for her lunch - yummy!

On our puppy walk this morning we saw some March hares in the field. It seemed to be a female and three males (the females are the ones that box and I told Springy it's because the boy hares all want to marry her but she has to be very tough with them).

Puppies and poopies

We're having a backwards step with the puppy at the moment, although she has managed to get her poopies in the right place...mostly. However, wees are going all over the kitchen floor! We've had some lovely walks so far and puppy is responding to "Sit", "Down", "Come" and today we managed a first "Roll over" in terms of doing the first stage of the move. She's a bright little puppy but Springy is a little jealous of her at times (which has been interesting).

Springy has had a nice weekend and we went to visit some friends we haven't seen in ages for a playdate and they came around today too. It was really nice and they were very interested in the puppy.

Today I wanted to do some gardening but instead the weather stopped it as we had galeforce winds (after a lovely morning start). I really want to clear up the front because I left all the Michaelmas daisies in place for all the insects etc but now the front needs a good tidy up. I'd also like to have a few more primroses in place and cut back things that are stopping the light from reaching the rose bushes and so on. Instead, I had a nap...just fell asleep on the sofa with sheer exhaustion.

Springy needs to do a little bit more knitting than she has been. She's reading My Secret Unicorn: The Magic Spell. Apparently, it's good and I've been reading the Rainbow Magic books.

We watched Prince Caspian - talk about inappropriate for under 12s! It was incredibly violent (I did read these books as an under 10 year old but don't remember them being graphically violent but...it just irritates me that the film classification was so wrong). Anyway, I've said no to any more viewings of it (we borrowed it from the library and C chose it). I want to read The Hobbit to Springy but there is no way I will allow a viewing of The Lord of the Rings. I'd ideally like her to be able to read the books first. I've told her if she wants to see Harry Potter films she has to read the books first (which should take long enough in years).

She's also reading Animal Ark: Hamster in a Hamper by Lucy Daniels (actually by a book company who have utilised the name for a whole series). Because I work part-time as an editor it makes it really difficult for me to read books these days because if I'm working on one I have to focus myself entirely on that otherwise I get the plots muddled up between books. It's a bit annoying having to wait until the next book is finished and I got a book from the library called The Various which looks quite good.

Brownies was really good again - the theme was St David's Day and Springy dressed in red for the Welsh dragon. We had Welsh cakes too.