Our wand wander

Sagan has become more and more interested in my paganism over the last year or so. Yesterday he wanted to know all about herbs, wands and how to heal using plants. We got out many of my books, looked up much stuff, talked about plants, and healing. Then we decided to go to Baxter woods and get him an oak wand. Cae and Lumpy went along for the adventure. It was a nice wander thru the woods, we had to stay off the path, as it was covered in ice, but that lent it self to a wonderful walk in the trees and the finding of many treasures. We topped the wonderful adventure off with hot cocoa and donuts at a coffee shop. All in all a wonderful way to spend the afternoon.

What we have been up to

We have been very busy, what with Yule happening and getting settled in to the new house and routine. But it has been a good sort of crazy here. We have weather a few amazing storms here in Portland... an ice storm where we lost power for over 12 hours, and a really big snow storm on Yule (18 inches of snow in one day, a record). The boys have been braving the outside every day. Sagan is our snow lover and will stay outside as long as we let him. He will be out there helping Mike shovel the snow with a big smile on his face. Lumpy on the other hand has no fondness for the snow, but does like the occational spin around the yard on the sled.

There has been much baking and story reading and soup making here, a few fires in the fireplace and gallons of hot cocoa.

Audrey has decided to be homeschooled again (yeah!) and wanted to do some on-line studies, so she is doing K12 science, Saxon math, Latin, reading classic lit, and as always working on movies and stories and music.

Logan is also doing K12 science and saxon math, along with latin and reading, he is very much into his guitar and writing music and lyrics, he is also learning classical pieces on the piano and his guitar... he picks itup so easily it is scary.

Sagan is reading now. He is so happy. Just s few beginner books, but still it is such a joy to sneak a peak at him reading to himself. He is also one for the math worksheets, so the gnumber gnomes are left for Cae to do. Sagan is so interested in so many things. He is a wonder to behold.

Cae is loving doing just about everything and anything. He loves playing games and listening to stories and painting with water colors. We added some lovely wooden toys to his collection and he can get a pretty interesting game going on with those. I made a large bunch of gnomes which he really enjoys.

Lumpy, well he likes to get into everything and take everything apart then run away laughing gleefully.

It is very good here right now, very wonderful.

We are here...

We made it to Maine! Yippee. Now I should be able to get back to what this blog was intended to be... about homeschooling. LOL stay tuned...

A Life of its own...

Well, this whole homeschooling blog idea isn't going too well. LOL
At the same time I was starting this, we were making plans to move across the country and that has sort of taken over.
At the very moment that our house went on the market Lumpy got sick and spent 5 nights in the PICU with a very bad case of croup. About 800 breathing treatments later he was released home. I have never been so scared. At one point they actually thought of intubating him, thankfully he got over that hump (I kid you not 20 breathing treatments in 4 hours! His heart rate was over 200! egads!) and slowly got better. At this point you would never know that about two weeks ago he was that sick.

At the same time the house sold! I swear it was on the market 5 days! Now we are dealing with all the inspections and bantering back and forth. I am keeping my fingers crossed that all goes well, that the couple still wants the house and we can keep this ball a-rolling... because I am already gone. LOL I have moved on from this lovely house and now my spirit is awaiting me in Maine.
Keep your fingers crossed and the good moving energy coming my way. I will pick up this blog when we get to Portland and are all settled... which could be in ONE MONTH!! So much yet to do, so much yet to come. Ahhhh, adventure awaits!

Heather

This week...

This week didn't go exactly as planned. Life sort of stepped in and things got put on hold... next week will be better, we will be back to counting with gnomes and reading about another letter. :)

What the kids did this weekend

Here is what the kids and Mike did while I was at work this weekend. How cool is this??

APPLES

With the 19 pounds of apples we picked we made a lovely apple pie and 6 quarts of apple sauce... and still have a dozen apples left over. The boys did a great job cutting up the 16 apples it took to make up the apple sauce. The whole time they were pretending to be chefs in an apple sauce restaurant.

We will definitely be going back to Howard's Orchard before apple season is done. Too much fun for only one visit!

Thursday Sept 11th

Today we reviewed the Roman Numerals with the Gnomes and Gnumbers and re-read the Mrs. Applebee story. Then the boys practiced writing the letter "A" and made apple prints with cut apples and paint.
The Gnomes are a HUGE success. The boys love playing with them and counting all the gems.

Wednesday Sept 10th...

We had a great time picking apples at "Howard's Orchard" in Catalina today. After a loooong drive and getting lost, we finally found it; and what a treat it was. It was cool in the shade of the trees and so many trees were small enough so that Lumpy could pick them himself (although he did prefer to pick them up off the ground. LOL) All together we gathered 19 pounds of apples! We will be making some apple sauce tomorrow for sure!

Monday Sept 8th

We did our Gnomes and Gnumbers today. The little boys had a lot of fun learning their Roman Numeral:

We also worked on the letter "A". We read the story (with a few personalizations by me) that I found on Seridipity's blog (I found the Gnumber Gnomes there also... most fabulous). We read the "A" poem in LMNOP and we also looked in the Waldorf Alphabet Book at all the "A" things. In the boys main lesson books the drew the letter "A" and then some things that started with "A".

Later in the week we will be picking APPLES!

Up late...

Here is the gang!

I was up late into the night preparing for next week. There is so much to think about, so much I want to do. I only hope the boys have as much fun doing it all as I had finding it all and getting it together.

I have gotten alot of help from the Serenidity blog. She has wonderful story ideas and get math help. I am looking forward to introducing the Gnumber Gnomes to the boys. They are so darn cute. I am still waiting to get my gnome bodies so I can actually make our Gnumber Gnomes. This might call for a trip to the craft store (always fun!)

As I talked about before, we will be going to pick apples next week, and then it is apple pie baking and apple sauce making on friday!

To be honest this has been the most excited I have been when preparing any sort of homeschool adventure. I just really feel this is the way we need to go.

Getting ready

We are preparing to get started with this new homeschooling adventure. This summer has been busy to say the least and the next few weeks will be no different. Sister is starting high school next Tuesday, and the following week the boys and I will begin our adventure here at home. I have been reading and reading about Waldorf at home for years! And yet have not taken the plunge. But I am all ready to do it this fall.
I think one of our first adventures will be apple picking and making homemade apple sauce. Logan is very excited as he is our apple sauce eater. LOL
I will be posting some links ASAP to the sites that I love that deal in Waldorf inspired home education. :)

mama