Ploughing

Springy did about ploughing in her MLB today and lo and behold outside in the field opposite the house the farmer turned up with his tractor and plough. We've now got a beautiful chocolate brown field with furrows through the window.

22nd March - Spring is in the air - skylarks over fields are doing their busy song, woodpecker was hammering a bit, crow was cawing, rook nests are in the tops of trees, and our robin pair kept going into the conifer tree with bits of moss and other assorted nest building material.

13th March - We've been carding more wool too. It's full of bits - bugs, straw, grass seed. However, we have quite a fluffy pile now so we're hoping to get the dye pot out later during the week and make some orange wool. :)

 

4th march - We've had sunshine all day today so we have been out in the garden...digging up ground elder (a bit like spaghetti with its roots - tangles everywhere) - clearing the ground making way for abundance in the summer (well that's the hope). :)

 

 

 

Botany and Pin Map Montessori stuff

http://ellenjmchenry.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/botanyfirstchapter.pdf



http://www.polestarmontessori.com/Pin_Map_Continents.pdf

Class Three links

English phonemes:

http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/phon00.htm

Weights:

http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/units/oldunits/weight.htm

Class Three:
http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Clearing%20House/Spring%201977a.pdf

Class Three Steiner blocks and lessons

We've done the Old Testament stories in relation to The Creation, the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden (which Springy thought was unfair), the tale of Noah and his Ark (and again Springy thought this was unfair against the animals who got left to drown), Joseph and His Coat and the story of Moses in the bulrushes.  We went to see the Tutankhamun exhibit at the Musuem of Museums in December which tied in to Egypt and Moses.

We're reading Farmer Boy as our read aloud (although 9-year change Springy doesn't like it).

Springy can manage knitting basic knit stitches but I need to find her a teacher because I'm not getting it through in the right way to her.  I also have a spinning contact (the same as the knitting tutor) who I hope can give her a lesson in spinning wool.  She's done weaving before and also is a member of the Embroidery Guild so has done some interesting projects through that.  I'd also like to get her going with crochet but again I'm limited in my own skills with it.

Our building was a willow dome.  We still need to find a yurt to look at.  We studied about igloos earlier in the autumn.

I still need to do more on weights and measures.

In relation to farming, we have some seed potatoes.  Money is tight as usual but I'm hoping to get a raised planter to have some carrots and leeks or salad crops this year.  I bought Springy a child-sized garden fork so she can dig up the back bed herself and turn it into her own vegetable patch (or flowers or herbs).  I hope to get a little garden rake and hoe as well for her (I noticed her enthusiasm when she played with some real but child-sized tools the other week).

February 2011

The history of weights and measures is complicated but really fascinating. We've not done much on measures other than walking around the house seeing how many thumbs etc it would take to measure the table and so on. Then we demonstrated h...ow having different people's fingers, thumbs, elbows and so on would be not much use in terms of consistency so we got out rules and tape measures to work with inches and centimetres. We've weighed each other and covered it in baking. However, I'm reading up on the history of weights pounds, ounces and so on and trying to decide whether to try and approach this again later on in the year (after I've understood it myself but I now know where the d came from in old money, at least I think I do).

The crowsfoot is starting to appear and there are some wild primroses. There were 2 skylarks singing away over their territories. I'm soaked because i had to wash Lily (and remind me never to feed her sweetcorn again!) and Violet the Pekin bantam (very froo froo feathers so she gets really dirty - like a feather duster).

22nd February - Springy and I had a great time at the Willow workshop. The morning was spent harvesting willow withies (well I mainly watched whilst Springy had a go). We then helped the group to plant some willow withies in the ground. Then it was lunch. We then helped build a willow dome and she had a great time doing some gardening (mainly digging soil) in the greenhouse (an industrial one).

 18th February - we had a lovely ML this morning. We sang our morning verse and then did a poem on Spring and a movement verse on horses. Springy then worked on nouns. After that I went to my yoga class and that wiped me out so I had an afternoon nap.

Yummy cinnamon rolls

http://rosehipsandspiderwebs.blogspot.com/2011/02/by-popular-demand.html

I hope to make these soon.

We've washed one bag of wool so far and have dried and carded a small portion of it already.  However, we could do with some dry weather days so that I can dry the rest.

Springy tried one day at school the week before last.  I'd lost a lot of my confidence.  We've had constant barrages of 'school is better' and all the rest of the socialising dogma that comes with that.  With the 9-year change on top from Springy (who is more melancholic and sulky than sanguine at the moment) I felt quite exhausted because there is so little support (apart from, thank goodness, by beautiful homeschooling friends who gave some much needed esteem boosting discussions).

We have been looking at some non-verbal reasoning tests withSpringy. We've done them on a conversational learning basis. It's quite interesting to note how Form Drawing would help a child note the kind of patterns involved.

German resources

I've also found some excellent German resources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/german/lj/

and


http://www.goethe.de/lhr/mat/ffl/elm/dwn/de3680772.htm