Waldorf Goodness...

 

 

A very exciting package came in the mail the other day.  It was like a "Waldorf Christmas"!   I was beyond excited to win the Share the Love giveaway from Becca at Cedar Ring Mama blog.  She sent us the above Bolga basket filled with Waldorfy goodness.  The most exciting item, (there are many) but one of the most exciting items is the Auris Glockenspiel.  We are a bit music deficient here, beyond circle time singing.  I have been intimidated to work on the recorder.  The Glockenspiel along with the Music Through the Grades book by Diane Ingraham Barnes, are giving me the push to work on reading music again.  This little instrument is so enchanting, the boys and I are just in awe.  

Our corner cupboard in the dining room has always needed something, I've never been quite sure what.  The basket just filled that space & matches so perfectly! I was very happy to use it this Saturday at the Farmer's Market too.

Thank you so much Becca!  We are so enjoying exploring all the new supplies and materials.  Check out Becca's, Cedar Ring Circle shop, here. 

Until next time...

Our Valentine's Day!

 

What a fun Valentine's Day we had!  The day started with the table all set for the boy's and biggest boy (hubby's) surprises!  I always loved when I woke up to see my Mom had left a little Valentine treat at our plates for Valentine's Day.  The boys awoke to 2 chocolates and these little wooden Yetis from Mamaroots etsy shop.  Monsters for my monsters, thank you Mamaroots!  My darling husband gave me a card, truffles and a sweet necklace that Michael picked out for me. Oh my heart!

We had heart shaped pancakes for breakfast. I made a little rainbow heart color matching game for Owen.  He liked it very much.  Michael and I also loved using them later on in Math.

We had an impromtu Valentine story about a powerful fire, made of love & light that never goes out, is constant and is never destructive and how all the creatures, man & animal are drawn to the warmth of this great fire.  I didn't realize until a couple of minutes into the story that I was relating this great fire to divine Love.  I am beginning to love storytelling and the magic that happens there. 

We had a make your own pizza day using English muffins.  After lunch we made Valentine cards for loved ones, something we neglected to do until today! 

Yes, a fun day!  How was your Valentine's Day?

Until next time...


PS: Don't forget to enter the giveaway for Margaret Bloom's new book, Making Peg Dolls!  Click here. 

The Winter Book Basket

Our Winter book basket has come out of hiding.  I love putting away seasonal books because when we get them out, it becomes so exciting to see and read them all over again. Here are some of our favorites and even one I don't recommend. 

 

Peter and Lotta's Christmas by Elsa Beskow is a favorite.  I found this last year in our local used book store. I nearly did a flip and screamed out loud when I found it.  We do not live in a Waldorf community. Few that I've met have even heard of Waldorf so I was quite surprised to find this book. Nor have I found an Elsa Beskow book since, and you know I'm looking!  Christmas in Noisy Village is a new favorite of ours though this book is very old.  We found it at a local book swap for free and love it!

The Story of the Snow Children is one of Owen's favorites.  He seems to especially love the Sibylle Von Olfers books we have.  We love the quiet beauty and rhythm of The Tomten & The Tomten and the Fox books.  In my opinion they are must haves! 

The above smaller two books, The Night Before Christmas & The Gingerbread Man are classics and were mine and my brother's books when we were kids. My boys love them as much as I did.  Country Christmas is a book I don't recommend.  Though I love it!  Why you ask? 

Because it's horribly written and the illustrations are bad too but it's a scratch and sniff book!  Remember those!  And it still smells!  My Mom found it for 25 cents.  I love it because I'm quirky that way and how could Christmas be Christmas without a scratch and sniff ham I ask you?  My boys will take it or leave it.

These are some lovely books that tell the Christmas story.  Who is Coming to Our House is told from the point of view of the animals in the stable.  It's a sweet book and perfect for toddlers.  Santa's favorite Story is about Santa telling the woodland animals all about the first Christmas. My favorite line from this book is, "No, no, no" said Santa in a kindly voice, "Christmas hasn't got anything to do with me." Another favorite is This is the Stable.  The words have a beautiful rhythm and the illustrations are so magical.

I love the ethereal wings that just seem to hug the stable. 

There are many other favorites including all of the Jan Brett winter books, especially those about trolls!  We usually find a few Winter books under the tree on Christmas morning.  I hope to find Ollie's Ski Trip by Elsa Beskow and Winter by Gerda Muller.

What are your family's favorite winter books? 

Martinmas Lanterns

Martinmas has become very dear to me.  I love the act of kindness at the heart of this festival.  This year in addition to telling the story of Saint Martin I also told another story after circle time for both boys but especially for my littlest one. We also had a guest yesterday, a friend of ours who is four years old.  Last time he was with us he LOVED circle time, so even though it was Friday and we normally don't do any school activities, we did circle time and story time for him.  Circle time always seems to be a bit more magical when he joins us, we like the larger group dynamic & sharing the magic of Waldorf with him.  The story I told is from this post at Joyful Toddlers, called "A Story of Autumn Light".  Such a sweet story for little ones and a beautiful & simple way to explain the darkness this time of year.  My favorite line in the story is "...we can keep ourselves and others warm by doing acts of kindness, to warm our hearts.” 

We also made horseshoe Martinmas cookies from the recipe at Raising Little Shoots.  The boys loved them, although they invoked the same sugar cookie cut out frustration for me, lol! (You can read about my history with cut out cookies here.)

We made our lanterns from the instructions in All Year Round. Out of all my Waldorf books, I think this one is my favorite. It has instructions for every Waldorf craft I can think of.  I often wonder why I even bother with Pinterest when I have all the instructions to these projects sitting on my bookshelf!  We made the lovely circular lanterns from stiff watercolor paintings they painted just for Martinmas.  Then I cut out stars and moons and suns and we glued kite paper onto the cut out shapes.  I couldn't help making the 5 sided lantern as well.  I chose a gnome picture (pg 264)  at the back of the book to decorate it with.  I enlarged the image to 120% and then cut through the copy and watercolor paper with an exacto knife.  If you do this make sure you have very sharp exacto blades, mine could have been sharper.  I love how it came out though.  We glued the blue cut out gnome to Michael's lantern and he's thrilled he has a gnome too. 

I love how the lanterns brighten up our dark evenings this time of year.  Tomorrow we will head out at dark for our lantern walk and hopefully be joined by our friends as well.

How will you be celebrating Martinmas? 

Until next time...

Saint Francis & the Saints Block

Our first block this year in second grade is on the Saints.  This is a block that I was unsure about when I first began to learn about 2nd grade in Waldorf.  Why learn about the saints I wondered?  Catholicism is not my spiritual path though I see the beauty and meaning in all religions & faith &amp. So trusting Waldorf & it's approach I set off to learn more.

I decided to look up a book recommended by my curriculum, Waldorf Essentials. My Life with the Saints is such a beautiful & personal book about what the Saints mean to author James Martin.  He talks about how he first "meets" or learns of each one of the Saints. This is not a dry look at history but a personal, inside view of what the Saints mean to him. I also found, The Lessons of Saint Francis, by John Michael Talbot, very helpful.  This book was even more spiritually meaningful to me then My Life with the Saints.  It talks about how to apply to our lives the spiritual qualities that Francis expressed. Through these books and reading the Saint stories in my curriculum I grew comfortable with and excited to teach this block.  The way I see it learning of the Saints is simply learning about lives that are devoted to higher good.  Each one of them has something beautiful to offer at a time when developmentally our children are learning how to place good first and foremost in their lives. These are examples of lives filled with meaning, compassion & love. I'm ecstatic to bring these examples to my son.

Some children's books I've found helpful in learning about Saint Francis are the following...

Franicis, The Poor Man of Assissi by Tomie De Paola,
Brother Sun, Sister Moon by Margaret Mayo,
Saint Francis of Assisi, A Life of Joy by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Saint Francis Sings to Brother Sun, A Celebration of His Kinship wwith Nature, selected and retold by Karen Pandell

Michael and I read together Tomie De Paola's book after our week of hearing lesson stories from our curriculum.  We read selected stories form Saint Francis Sings to Brother Sun.  The illustrations in that book by Bhou Le Tord are lovely, very folk like, simple & beautiful.  We liked looking though the pictures and reading what we felt inspired to read.  The others I read on my own in preparation.

We really enjoyed making our drawings of Saint Francis. They centered around the story of Saint Francis rebuilding a church.  We drew the figure of Saint Francis together and then we each created the backgrounds and other elements in the drawing on our own. Our favorite stories were those of St. Francis joyfully preaching to the birds & animals.  St. Francis exuded qualities of love, compassion, gentleness, & joyfulness.  We see many Saint Francis statues about our community and now they have so much more meaning to us.

This block also gave us opportunities to talk more about our own spiritual beliefs.  On to Fables next week.

Until next time...

what Michaelmas means to me...

You know those times when you've read all about & studied an aspect of Waldorf and it seems to make sense, in theory, but then you experience it in an"ah-ha" kind of way and it all just clicks?

The year I began homeschooling, I read all about Michaelmas. We had a Michaelmas circle time. I'm not sure I remember doing much else. It was only Kindergarten and I didn't have any money for supplies.  I thought it was beautiful, in theory, then October came and winter struck.  (we were living in New York.)  Blizzards hit and winter didn't let up much before we left in February.  Suddenly I understood, I felt Michaelmas. Michaelmas is that time of year when we naturally look inward, when we truly have to vanquish our inner dragons.  If they're allowed to stay they can really wreak havoc on the mind.  I love winter, don't get me wrong.  I love being snowed in, I love watching the snow, whether it's fluttering down or blasting in sidewise.  I love sweaters, slippers, warm coffee, reading & being cozy.  But when the novelty wares off, what you're left with is the quiet reflection of winter & your own thoughts.  I found it so challenging to stay afloat mentally.  Of course, if you miss casting out dragons at Michaelmas time, it isn't too late.  You certainly can cast them out whenever they surface. When I wholeheartedly devoted a block of time every day to battle those inner dragons, letting the light & strength of truth pervade every recess of my mind, then the weight of winter lifted.  It was not easy.

I'm so grateful to be on this path.  Waldorf brings such meaning and beauty to our lives.  I'm writing more about this festival and our Michaelmas candle over at Natural Kids blog today.  Please pour yourself a cup of coffee and come & visit. 

Our First week...

This week marks the beginning of Michael's second grade year!  As I said in a previous post I decided to hold off on school until the weather cooled a bit. I find the summer heat exhausting and starting school in the middle of that did not sound fun to me.  So we waited for our Autumn creativity burst and though it's still quite warm outside, Autumn is in the air. 

For our first day Michael found a welcome to second grade card on the nature table.  Michael was also thrilled to spy a few new surprise supplies on our home school shelf.  We made our favorite pumpkin, clove & chocolate chip muffins to start the day.

We began a new circle time, including lots of fun Michaelmas verses for Michael & Owen. Owen is especially enjoying our journey in verse to find the dragon! 

We started with a review of our letters, both capital and lower case.  I was impressed to see Michael flying through our lesson, thrilled to be back to the business of letters and reading.  We played this matching game on our second day.  I made the cards from some thick, textured paper &  crayons.

We learned about Saint George & the dragon.  Michael didn't care for the dragon's head being chopped off.

Here is Michael's dragon drawing.

Mommy's dragon, which came out much more sweetly then I had at first imagined.

In the afternoon Michael was gifted his new handwork basket and was very excited to begin his castle knitting.  He picked it up so fast and finished his rainbow snake by the end of the day.  We spoke often about patience and learning to set his work down when he grew frustrated.  It was a fantastic will building experience for him.  Michael just seems ready this year. 

I can't imagine a better first week.  My only complaint is that we're having sibling issues.  My 3 year old Owen is pushing to get equal attention at lesson time. No more does he wander of content to play, he barely did that last year but this year there's a whole new dynamic going on and it's taken me by surprise, oddly enough.  I thought having a circle time & story geared mostly to his age might fill him up and give us time to work on main lesson, however, he's having none of that. I try to include him as much as possible but main lesson is a challenge. Michael is growing resentful of his time being encroached upon and it's hard for him to concentrate with a talkative Owen by our side.  Next week I will try making some play dough for him and see how we fair.  Sage advice is very much appreciated. 

Until next time...

Tiptoes Tales & House...

We LOVE the Tiptoes Lightly series of books by Reg Down.  Last year was our first year reading them beginning with The Festival of Stones.  We loved following Tiptoes, the fairy, & Pine Cone & Pepper Pot, the gnomes, through all the fall & winter festivals.  Michael was so thrilled to be clebrating the same festivals as our favorite charachters in the book.  

We still have a couple of Tiptoes books to collect, that's why I was super excited to win a Tiptoes book of our choice from Reg Down himself at Life as a Schoolhouse blog!

We chose The Magic Knot & Other Tangles & were thrilled to see he had signed and drew a picture of the gnomes Pine Cone & Pepper Pot.  This book is indeed a comedy, we laughed out loud throughout. Michael's favorite part was when the gnomes were trying to get Tiptoes' birthday present into her acorn house at the top of the oak tree.  Owen, who often runs around & plays during our evening story became very interested when a certain character thought a snake was invading his home.  Now Owen is excited about Tiptoes as well and he loves her house.

My dear friend Mari gave us this fun idea.  We found a wooden acorn ornament at our hobby store.

And I wood-burned Tiptoes' door and two windows onto it.  It now hangs over our nature table with a felt oak leaf. Simple & fun.

Thank you so much to Reg Down for our book and to Lacey at Life as a Schoolhouse blog for hosting the giveaway! 

Until next time...

Waldorf Inspired Math Gnomes

So I finally got around to making our poor math gnomes their hats.  They went through our whole math block last year with cold heads.  I decided to make a classic gnome hat this time.  My son just loves them and asked me if we could please start home school again and do math first!  Wow!  As someone who has tried to avoid math her whole life, this floors me! 

But who wouldn't love math when you get to experience it as a natural part of everyday life.  Something that's playful and fun! 

Right away Michael asked, what's wrong with Minus's hat?  This gave us the opportunity to talk more about Minus Subtraction's story.  Minus is always disheveled, never mending his clothes or fixing his pockets so he's always loosing his jewels. 

So, I now have a classic math gnome set to offer at my shop.

As well as the original MamaWestWind hat style.   To learn more about Waldorf Math, visit this post at Waldorf Essentials. Also come and "like" my MamaWestWind business page to keep up to date on all the shop happenings. 

Until next time...

A Beloved Book...

I'm writing at Natural Kids blog today, with a post about one of our most beloved books. This book has a beautiful & very important message.  

Please come and visit and share your favorite inspirational children's book!  

A Walk with a Fairy...

There is nothing like Spring in the desert!  Come & take a walk of New Mexico with me and Fae the Fairy.  I'm over at Natural Kids blog today. 

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day friends!  How are you celebrating Earth Day?  I love this post from the Wonder of Childhood about how every day is Earth Day!

We have been busy, busy working on plans for our fairy garden.  And we'll be looking for plants for it and for our vegetable garden today at our local Earth Day Festival!

In honor of Earth Day I have a fantastic sale going on at my MamaWestWind shop.  The sale will be going on until next Saturday.  Please come over and check it out! No coupon codes necessary.

Oh and I have to share these beautiful photos taken by my friend Jacque.  She is an awesome photographer and she's written a lovely post featuring two of my dolls.  Please visit her blog here. 

Have a beautiful Earth Day!