Language Arts Block II: Vowels... Letter E & Felting Eggs

E is for Eagle that soars in the sky...

The short "E" was covered on Thurs and we did the eurythmy verses from Kristie's "Sixth Sense Language" ebook. She has a cute little Aesop fable in there called, "Everyone Agrees to Peace" and the girls acted it out with little characters.

For the Fairytale, I told them Grimm's "Bremen Town Musicians". Charley had gotten the set for Christmas this year, so it came in very handy! We used our eco-twig house handmade by Syrendell.

We looked at our pictures in our two alphabet books and went outside to walk the forms. Since the girls hadn't walked "A" (just their rabbits did), they walked both forms and then we made the shapes of A and E.

For "A", we used acorns.




For "E" we used sea shells.

In our main lesson books, we drew a picture of eagle eggs, which emphasized both long and short "E".

On Friday, we covered the long "e" sound. I read to them a story by Clara Dillingham Pierson called, "The Bees and the Kingbird" from her book, "Among the Forest People".

We then decided to focus on eggs with Easter just around the corner. We thought it would be fun to wet felt some eggs so they picked some wool colors...

And I grabbed some wool roving scraps...


And we headed outside with our bowl of very warm water and dish soap.


As a needle-felter, I do prefer that to wet felting, but it was a fun experience and the nice thing is you don't have to worry about little fingers getting poked!

You basically fluff up a piece of wool, keeping in mind that as it sets, it shrinks (about twice the size). Put dish soap in the warm water and soap it up, then immerse the "egg" in the bowl. Bring it out and roll it over and over in your hands, working the soggy mush into a tight egg ball.


When it starts to cool, dip it in the warm water again and keep working at it. It takes a bit of time, but eventually the fibers bind and felt and you end up with a small egg (or ball if you shape it into a ball instead).


Afterwards, rinse the soap out under running water (sink works best) and leave in the sun to dry on a bakers rack.

We also wanted to try making hollow eggs that we could cut open to put a special needle felted chickie in, so for that, get some plastic eggs that open, layer about 4-5 layers of wool around it and stick it in the hot soapy water. Work it gently with your fingers to bind the fibers.


Once the soft felting is done, you could rub it on a washing board. I didn't like this process so I went back to soft felting until I felt it was nice and tight.


And now I'm waiting for them to dry before cutting them open with scissors, removing the plastic and placing a surprise inside. It takes quite a bit of time to dry wet felt. I've heard of people sticking balls in the dryer to speed the process, but since these ones have plastic underneath, I'm just going to be patient. But if you plan to make these for Easter, start early so you have enough time for it to dry and decorate. You can wet felt designs on during the process before you dry them, or you can add your wool with a needle afterwards.

Another egg project is in the works and we had to solicit Daddy's help!


The girls and I don't eat eggs, so we waited until Daddy was ready for some good ole scrambled eggs.

If you want to save your eggs, you can blow the yolk and whites out. I won't fudge the truth, blowing out eggs is a pain and is pretty hard (so Daddy goes on duty for that)...pierce a hole on each end using a pin (a thimble also helps to push it through). Usually you make the blower hole slightly larger, for some reason. I really didn't take the time to look up why, but my mother always did it this way.


The put it to your lips and blow!


Once you're done, rinse the eggs out, inside and out and leave to dry.


We'll be making some Ukrainian eggs this week. I also have another egg project to share later this week, as well, so the egg section is TBC!