Poetry

This is a very useful resource (and I hope it will be ready to purchase soon becuase it sounds like a keeper for the bookcase):

http://www.waldorfpoetry.com/look-inside.html

I loved this poem by Dorothy Harrer:

The Four Sentences by Dorothy Harrer

Commands

Listen to the night wind blow.

See the swirling flakes of snow.

Close the window. Shut the door.

Keep out the wild wind’s angry roar.

Light the fire.  Let it blaze.

Exclamations

How wonderful the morning is!

Oh, what a sparkling day!

Sky’s blue around the golden sun!

The wind has died away!

Statements

The golden sun shines on the snow.

The trees blue shadows make.

The colours of God’s own rainbow.

Twinkle in each snowflake.

Questions

Where do snowflakes come from?

Why are they so white?

Who gives them each a separate form?

How far has been their flight?

And what creates the rainbow

In which each star of snow?

We've also been working on the number 11 (using the Earth School Grade 2 Maths Block and augmenting it with our own ideas too).  Springy has enjoyed being able to work out the multiples of 11 from double digit numbers and doing it as a trick.

E.g. 22 x 11 = 2_2
2+2 = 4 (put the four in the space)
22 x 11 = 242

We wrote out some sentences about 11 e.g. The Chancellor of the Exchequer lives at No 11 Downing Street and The Mariana Trench is 11km at its deepest point in the ocean and Aquarius is the eleventh sign of the Zodiac.

Irish dancing

Springy has been twice now to an Irish dancing class.  She loves it. I'm so pleased because it's a good cardiac workout, along with being enjoyable and good for her co-ordination and posture.  At the moment she's dancing barefoot and is doing "soft shoe" style reels.  She picked up the 1-2-3 move in a week (practising on the farm tracks).  It also reminded me of how I used to love dancing.  I did ballet and tap until I was about 11 years old and in tap I used to get distinctions.  I've been learning some of the moves so that I can help her practice at home.

Springy gave the guineapigs a bath this morning.  It was new guineapig Martha's first time in a full bath bathtime.  With piggies that means they go swimming.  They look like mini capybaras (who are also South American creatures). Our dog fell asleep on one of my knees earlier.  We played three rounds, as a family, of Bananagrams. We love the game - it's a good way to increase vocabulary and spelling awareness.  I'm surprised how many words Springy knows at times.  She's currently reading a book called Dog Detectives.  I'm reading The Lord of the Rings - I read it every year.  I see it as a holiday (since we don't have a holiday otherwise) to voyage to Middle Earth and read of first Bilbo Baggins' adventures in The Hobbit and then travel with Frodo and Sam.  I liked the films but feel they fell short of the books by a long way.

I've been working on the garden a fair bit the past few days.  It's been quite cold outside but dry enough to dig up some of the borders, pull out some of the old and decaying plants e.g. the angelica.  I've kept back some of the angelica stalk to make a musical instrument with.  We're also hoping to do some willow workshops over the next week as we're moving into our block on Shelters again.  This time we're hoping to have some hands on opportunities.

We finished our Old Testament block.  We've covered since last year Adam and Eve (which is about questioning and disobeying authority and the loss of innocence), Noah and His Ark, Joseph and his Coat and Moses in the Bulrushes.  I dislike the Bible generally speaking because I find that the deity is rather nasty and into smiting.  However, I took the stories that I felt had general wisdom in them and that would meet some of Springy's 9-year change aspects.  It's interesting how prone to melancholy she is recently.  She was always very sanguine in nature - happy, skippy, la-de-da like a butterfly.  However, in the past 6 months we have much more of a huff and a "not fair" and general "I'm not doing that" going on.  It's involved at times lots of psychological ploys including the melancholic empathy thing whereby I've done "Oh I remember that when I was your age..."  Some of it has been peer influence.  There  are a few friends that I'm having to stop her seeing - they're not bad per se but they don't have the same curbs on pop culture that I prefer.  I know that this too shall pass but it can be a little exhausting at times and also a little sad to see some of them go through this change into 'attitude'.  Ho hum as some of my good friends would say. 

Winter Reads

Schoolroom in the Parlour by Rebecca Caudill
The Children of Green Knowe

Crow and Dog

There on the path was a crow. It was minding its own business when along came a certain defective Shih Tzu with a short, curled but wagging tail. "Play with me," the tail begged but the crow decided to jump to the ditch and then took off to the west, away from the lonely canine.

In other news, Springy has been working on a scrapbook about her pets.  I had a beautiful scrapbook set which I had always intended to use but never got round to doing so.  I find the whole thing too time consuming so I have been glad to pass it on to Springy.  She seems to be really enjoying printing, writing, cutting out photos, sticking bits of paper and so into the book.

We've also started a new book today.  It's called the Children of Green Knowe.  We're reading it aloud.  Springy was leaping about during the story - she wants to be a wildebeest trying to cross a river with crocodiles in, during the migration season in Africa!  She has an amazing imagination and she can leap off the floor from all fours onto the sofa in single bound.

Christmas 2010

After a very  long and stressful night drive (6 hours + stops)) with 1 child, 1 dog, 2 hens, 2 guineapigs we arrived at my folks. They had snow.  It was the kind of snow that is powdery and looks like it has glitter in it.  My dad's garden has an old-fashioned decorative lamp-post so it gave it that Narnia look.  Any second a lion could have run through the snow, along with fauns and a sleigh but they didn't.  Springy went outside on Christmas Eve to sprinkle reindeer food on the lawn (oats).  She left a glass of milk, a home-made mince pie (Jamie Oliver's recipe) and some carrot sticks for the reindeer too.  She heard jingle bells as she lay in bed.  "I heard them mummy but I wasn't asleep so Santa must have gone away again until I was," she said.

On Christmas Day for some reason we didn't get around to opening gifts until almost evening.  Springy was incredibly good waiting that long and it descended into chaos as there was so much going on. This is the first time we have ever stayed elsewhere at Christmas.  We normally have a very quiet Christmas (essentially we are quiet people) but since my MIL died we didn't have her this year. Christmas Day was still snowy so it still looked incredibly pretty outside. 

Poor Lily was in trouble on her stay.  After a very long journey she ran into Grandma's house and emptied her bowels onto Grandma's wool carpet.  Not only that but she had a really bad case of diarrhoea -oops!  She also went into season and had to wear a nappy (diaper) during her stay.  We really missed cuddling her because at our home, which is very small and messy, she goes up on the bed at night. At my folks' house she was banished to the kitchen.  It was also too cold for our bantam hens to go into the shed my father had provided (-7) so they had to stay in the utility room. The piggies stayed there too.

End of Brownies

Springy has been discovering that the snow today is not as it was yesterday and is different to the snow a few weeks ago. It's crumbly and not sticking for snowman making.  Why have a laboratory when you can have a garden and the weather?

We got back earlier from our daily walk. The Moon was almost full to the east and a golden egg yolk sun dropping down in the west turned to a strata of red, pink and orange. The temperature was bracing and underfoot was slippy - great fun and very beautiful.

 The other news this week was we ditched Brownies. Springy is glad and so am I. There was an unpleasant atmosphere there and it was having a negative influence on Springy. They did do some nice things too but some of the attitudes and behaviours from some of the girls was affecting Springy.

Covered wagon family

http://chasingcheerios.blogspot.com/2010/12/meet-ingalls-family.html

 Thought the above was adorable.

It snowed overnight - not good sticking snow but rather slushy and sleet.  However, it was a whiteout this morning and still snowing.  We had a lovely walk around the harbour this afternoon. Lily got very muddy, Springy got very cold but we made it back inside after the fresh air, the slippy slush and seeing the Brent geese, the lapwings and the oyster catchers.

Springy has also been writing a story about a goose landing in our garden (based on a chapter from Schoolroom in the Parlour by Rebecca Caudhill about the Fairchild family).  She also did Fl words in her Main Lesson Book.  She's been reading for a good few years and although this kind of simple spelling would have normally been done last year (in the Waldorf or Enki Curriculum), we've focused elsewhere.  We're going to do a whole load of words and finish off this MLB.  I tell her the start of the word, she has to come up with words and I join in too.  We compile a list of words in her regular text book - I write them out, she then copies them and then she transfers them all to her MLB in her best writing and for homonyms or synonyms she does a little illustration.

We're going to do Ch, Tr, and St words tomorrow.


Springy also had a playdate with a friend this morning when Scouts was cancelled.  They built a magnificent snowman.


Several of our relatives have received Springy's poetry book which we published through Lulu.  It has her poems and photographs in.  It's such a nice way of gifting a number of people with something personal.