Squirrel Nutkin Verse & Book in the Making

Aside from our Main Lesson Books, we have decided that we will stitch together several other books from this Grade 1 year.

One of them is going to be a watercolor book of our favorite pieces. The rest we will turn into cards.

The other is going to be our Verse book and it begins with our Autumn tales - the first being of Squirrel Nutkin. The verse is taken from the Wynstone's "Autumn" story entitled, "Autumn Story" by B. Marking.

I told the story over the course of one week and we worked at our own pace, drawing our picture and then copywork of the verse. Elena was done in one day while Charley took three days to copy her verse. After listening to the wonderful online session on the temperaments with Kristie Burns, arranged by Donna with The Waldorf Connection, I could see how it was important to work with the girls varied temperaments and why one might take longer than the other.

Here are a few pictures. I will post our weekly verse and at the end of the year, show our stitched homemade verse books! Can't wait!

Of course, if you haven't read Beatrix Potter's tale to your children yet, it is a classic (though some more sensitive children might not be ready for it, so please preview it first). You can access it for free here.

Autumn Nature Journals

Autumn

Yellow the bracken,

Golden the Sheaves,

Rosy the apples,

Crimson the leaves;

Mist on the hillside.

Clouds grey and white.

Autumn, good morning!

Summer, good night!

~Traditional

For Grade 1, we are making a nature journal for each season. For fall, we decided to use one of our leaves from our maple tree.

I had been saving cardboard and we taped the leaves to our covers and used acrylic paints in fall colors.

After we removed the leaves and the paint dried, we went back and using colored pencils, drew the veining and shaded the insides so the contrast wouldn't be so stark. We tore up drawing paper for the inside and punched holes in the cardboard to tie up with hemp string. And here's how they turned out!

Once a week, we have been taking our journals out to capture nature in the fall. Here is some of what we drew...

In Southern Cal, the hibiscus can bloom all year round. 5 years ago, we moved about 30 miles north & it actually drops just a little too cold now for our hibiscus to survive in the winter, but in our old house, it used to bloom profusely and I miss that...

It was a gift to journey to the midwest this fall as the vegetation is so different and lush. The trees are so thick that you can't see through them and the colors were just amazing - definitely not desert-like! Here are a few shots of fall pictures we drew in our journals from our trip...

This is my Granny's Macintosh apple tree and this year, it had many, many apples. My aunt made some delicious apple sauce with them and we drew the bounty in our books...

Happy Autumn to all!

Making Wooden Blocks

Making wooden blocks is really, really, REALLY easy...did I mention it is easy? Oh, and it's CHEAP :D

This picture on the left is from a set made outside the USA and it sells for over $50.00 USD...

Now these ones below, they were free. And they were made by little hands, with big hands doing the dangerous work...a Waldorf emphasis is on the child actually being the one to make things - imperfections that an adult's work might not have make the treasures all the more priceless. And the process and heart that goes into the project results in a wonderful whole child experience that we can all treasure...their creations become *that* much more valued as they recognize and appreciate the hard work that goes into every little toy, snack, piece of art, etc...

Tony did the dangerous work of cutting down a dead tree in our yard (notice his top of the line saw, special ordered to have a missing handle...)

Because we live in such a warm climate, I like to pop the wood in the oven at a low temperature so we don't end up with an infestation. Then we take sand paper to each block outside (the shavings are messy) before applying a natural beeswax polish to each block.

Notice the difference in color - the darker one having just been polished with beeswax. The beeswax is optional. Also, the bark can be removed before polishing, if you like a smoother, less rugged look.

This is time consuming, so if you have a lot of blocks, break it down into doing a few a day. That's what we're having to do and it will be a while until we're finally done, but we sure are enjoying the ones that are finished! I hope to post a final picture once we're all done, but they make wonderful scenes for the nature/seasonal table!

Here is a scene that Charley set up with the blocks we finished...Now, let's play!

Our Halloween Fun!

"A witch once went for a ride on her broom

Up through the frosty sky.

She zoomed and zoomed, and she dipped and zipped,

And she winked at the moon as she passed by,

at the moon in the frosty sky.

She wore a hat that was pointed tall,

And a cape that was flowing wide,

And a fierce black cat with a stand up tail

Rode merrily by her side,

Rode merrily by her side."

~ from Wynstone's "Autumn" book

Halloween came and went quickly this year, but we enjoyed changing up our tradition and drove 5 hours north to the East Bay area to celebrate Halloween with the girls paternal grandparents. We were still not 100% after what we believe to have been the swine flu, but had as much fun as we possibly could!

Grandma is a wonderful seamstress and is an artist so she is quite fun and theatrical. I was thinking the night of Halloween, as I lay in my bed, how blessed I am to have her in my children's lives. This is no ordinary grandma....no, this grandma has gone down a baby pool slide on her tummy, fully clothed...this grandma made up a deer game with the twins in which she captures them with her car net and they try to break free and chase her...this grandma will go on every single scary roller coaster (first in line) and laugh the whole way down...this grandma has more energy than most young mothers I know and she has a heart even bigger than all her other gifts.

This grandma loves our animals and surprised us by making a "Wizard" costume for our corgi, Farley...

He was to be her companion (or perhaps her minion) :D

When we pulled up at 3pm on Halloween, we couldn't find Grandma K, but we instead found this scary, old fashioned witch! With "Wizard"!

After hugs and kisses and putting our things away (including our four rats as she insisted we bring them, as well), the girls got changed. Grandma had made bat wings last year for the girls to wear for Halloween after they fell in love with the Stellaluna book and character. We went through just about every bat story for children after that one - lol!

Well, Elena decided she wanted to wear three costumes - the first of which was Mulan, so she got dressed in that, while Charley insisted on being a bat again. We took a few pictures...and then went inside to carve pumpkins - yeah Grandma! She thinks of everything :D (we hadn't carved them due to the swine flu illness)...

Well after carving pumpkins, Elena wanted to change into her bat costume and there she stayed! Here is an expressive shot of the two pet bats and the scary witch! Where's Wizard?!?!

Then some fun shots of the girls "flying"...

And one house in the neighborhood was elaborately decorated, so we took a few shots there...the girls weren't frightened at all. They seemed more scared by houses that played ominous music with hardly any decorations (at least Charley was more frightened), but they had no trouble with these horrific scenes and slept soundly all night long.

When we got back home, the girls dumped out their stash and we adults ate wayyyyyy too much of the candy. Luckily the girls haven't had a lot of sweets and consequently, don't find them that tasty. So daddy will be taking the candy to work so Mommy doesn't get tempted!

Hope you had a marvelous Halloween!

Halloween Witches & Books We Love!

Hay-ho for Hallowe'en!

And the witches to be seen,

Some black, and some green,

Hay-ho for Halloween!

~Anon.

Tomorrow is Halloween, but we're not anywhere near ready for it. We were on the road for 3 weeks, driving from California to Illinois to visit family, and along the way, we picked up the swine flu (luckily at the tail end of the trip so we could recover comfortably at home). In any case, it's been a l-o-n-g illness and I realized that we never went to the pumpkin patch to see the scarecrow we made for it, we never picked or carved pumpkins, we never even decorated our house; however, we did read lots of books about fall and Halloween on our road trip and at home.

And over the past two days, I got the urge to needle felt a large witch with purple curly hair and here's how she turned out!


We draped some silks over a 1/2 wall we have and Elena decorated it with the Fall treasures we made by hand this past year...(except for the mini witches from Magic Cabin)...


As far as favorite books, a complete seasonal treasure and one of my absolute favorites is "A Time to Keep: Book of Holidays" by Tasha Tudor. I had forgotten all about this book, but on my trip to Chicago, I spotted a copy from 1977 that was hand signed by Tasha Tudor, made out to my sister, Caroline! (Yes, Car it's still at Mom's house!!!) I am in awe that my mom had waited in line at a book signing for some of Tasha's amazing work.

Of course, I had to buy my own copy and here is an illustration from the October section:

I am also so partial to Tasha Tudor's work, because she LOVES corgi's and they are always in her illustrations. We are corgi owners/lovers, as well.

Anyway, some of the other books we have read this fall in preparation for the season are:

- "Woody, Hazel and Little Pip" by Elsa Beskow
- "Autumn Story" Brambly Hedge series by Jill Barklem
- "The Little Scarecrow Boy" by Margaret Wise Brown
- "Tops and Bottoms" by Janet Stevens
- "Autumn Leaves" by Ken Robbins
- "Pumpkin Light" by David Ray
- "Pumpkin Soup" by Helen Cooper

Tomorrow, we're heading to Grandma & Grandpa's house to Trick or Treat! Luckily, the girls want to go as bats, like last year, the wings were hand sewn by our crafty Grandma :D

And I'm hoping that Daddy will bring home some turnips for us to carve into lanterns for the big trick or treat fest! If he succeeds, I will post pictures of them asap.

Happy Hallow's Eve to you all!