Busy mornings ,restful afternoons

Well this week is flying past ...its midweek already.And tomorrow my biggest baby turns 14.

Although Gypsies failling to show any intrest in getting on with anything that other people may refer to as "school work"( she's done a few questions from a maths work book ...) shes been knitting her baby brother a blanket , researching tattoo designs and accompanied her older sister to the park to watch the football. Shes been helping out a lot with her baby brother actually, playing and giving him his lunch and dinner .

The others are still reaching for there main lesson books without any coaxing from me at all.

Jasmine is still working on her maths block.

Summers just gone from local history ( geography, economics, climate of the isle of wight) to studying the uk.

Charlie is reviewing money , he worked from a maths workbook today filling out two pages with no trouble at all.
We have also been reading stories from the Tora.

The weather is still beautiful .So afternoons are the perfect time to lay out a cover on the lawn and soak up whats left of the summer sun whilst watching Robbie attempt to crawl, (He's so close! !! ) play football,  collect seeds,throw waterbombs and look at a book or two.

MOZART, BEETHOVEN, JOAN OF ARC, EMOTO AND MORE..........

Its the end of another day , and here's what we have gotten up to.

This morning was very busy indeed.
Summer and Eva were the first ones up, they enjoyed some books and a cuddle and some breakfast before the other three arose.

They were both sat at the kitchen table and summer had started her main lesson by the time the others got up. mind you it was only around 9 am.

 Summer and spent time looking at Africa. she drew a lovely map and included the main rivers and mountains. We also read an African folk law "Malouge escapes the humans" and she drew from it and retold it in her Main lesson book.

 As soon as Charlie woke he was eager to paint his shield. he made a great job of it .

Gypsie woke up keen to crack on with her lesson too. Today we explored the way that sound can provoke emotions. I played her Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and Beethoven's Pastorale .The idea was that she would paint how the music made her feel. It was a no go. Not something that she felt able to do at all. so we moved on. And talked about positive and negative words we read Emoto's peace project children's book together.
"The secret language of water"

http://emoto-peace-project.com/childrens-book/emotoEnglish/#/24/

His finding are absolutely amazing (although my nearly thirteen year old dispels all his work as rubbish) and his work is well worth a read.

We are trying out the positive affirmation vs negative affirmation experiment. the jar full of cooked rice labelled YOU FOOL should over time become mouldy where as the THANK YOU jar rice should stay white.....we shall see. we have done this experiment before without much success. I joked and said its because there were just too many positive vibes and love in the house...who knows!

Jasmine continued to learn about Joan of arc. it would appear she took a lot in from watching her DVD yesterday and was telling me a lot of information whilst we sat together and followed a tutorial on how to draw Joan of arc.

http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Draw-Joan-of-Arc&printable=yes

 By now it was lunch time and i hadn't got around to doing Charlie's main lesson with him.

Eva made lunch time quite stressful, she got very upset because she couldn't have my pasta (it contained egg and she's suspected as being allergic) i also got very stressed and thankfully she decided to have a little nap. and i mean little , i think it was possibly in the region of around ten minutes.

Still it was long enough for me to read Charlie part two of the St Francis story and for us to make these little clay churches.

Mum came by quickly to drop us in a new chicken water feeder that dad had kindly picked up for me and Charlie asked if he could go back with her to show granddad his newly painted shield. Of course she agreed and he spent a couple of happy hours at nanny and granddads helping in the garden , eating sweets and generally having a lovely time.

I managed to fall asleep on the sofa for five minutes with Eva climbing all over me and woke up in the most horrendous mood.Jasmine made some very gorgeous friend ship bracelets and  Gypsie  baked some delicious biscuits but got a talking to for all the mess she had made. (bad mummy moment)

We have had a lovely evening tonight , I took a stroll to the shop with Charlie and Summer ( I strolled they jogged) in the rolling mist whilst Paul took the others to see his dad for a few minutes.

Later this evening after  when Eva was asleep Gypsie did some sewing, Jasmine and i watched a documentary about stage school and then Summer asked me to play Scrabble with her. we had a couple of games before heading up to bed in time for me to read to Charlie.

And just a minute ago i got ever so excited when i noticed the security light at the bottom of the garden was on. i could make out what looked like a hedge hog so i went upstairs to see if any of the girls were still awake. Jasmine and i pulled on dressing gowns only to find that I'm either going mad (very possible) or that it had scampered off.

                                                                And on that note im off to bed.

Tomorow will be another busy day with the added fun of birthday preparations !!!



                                                                             XXX

And so the autumn term begins..................

So today was the day we got back in to the rhythm of our Waldorf home schooling.

Yesterday i made sure everything was in place for an easy day today, Our  lesson schedule hung upon the  kitchen door

The art materials all collected up and put in one place.( iv been purchasing these new materials over the summer brake and didn't have the heart to put them up out of the kids way so they have been in use a fair bit already)

Maths booklets were printed off.

And the autumn books all pulled from the shelf and placed together in the book basket.

Id like to say oh, its been absolutely amazing, but i don't tell lies so let me tell you its been a good one , heaps of positive moments but my girls have been bickering non stop. oh , and Charlie told me he was leaving home at some point too. Ha Ha.......oh the joy.

I guess having a bit more structure back in your day when you have been used to doing what you want when you want takes a bit of getting used to when your a six year old boy who wants to be watching star wars and playing outside.

Our morning started very early. for our physics lesson on sound i roused Gypsie at around six thirty (i had asked her the night before if this would be o.k and she told me it would be just fine) id pencilled out a chart for her to fill out and made us bot a mug of coffee to awaken our senses. First we sat in the kitchen then the lounge and then we headed in to the garden. our task was to see if it was possible to find silence. we had no luck . we sat and whispered about all the sounds we could here. categorising them as  man made or natural.
we enjoyed our time outside listening to the early morning bird chorus and discussing the different calls as we heard the magpies, pigeons and seagulls.And we listened to the trickling of the fountain on the pond.

summer got up with Eva whilst we were outside and after doing the animal chores together Gypsie and i headed back inside and Summer made us all croissants for breakfast. Even the hens wanted some as they jumped up on the kitchen window sill to see what they were missing out on.Of course we shared with them too.

Charlie and jasmine didn't surface till around eight thirty...Charlie woke very chipper as usual and was even happier when he  opened up a new wooden shield and sword.

Summer was eager to start her main lesson as was Gypsie. Gypsie wrote out the table she had made earlier in the morning in to her main lesson book and wrote out a poem as writing practise.

Summer did a little revision of map skills and longitude and latitude. She drew out a map of our home in the main lesson book before doing her maths and decorating the front of her book and a folder.

Gypsie  did a few pages of maths too.

Charlie and i read the first part of the story of St Francis of Assisi and he did some form drawing .He then headed of to play and watch star wars and do everything he wanted to do and more!

 Jasmine spent the morning in my bed under my duvet watching Joan of arc on DVD. she watched all but the last twenty minutes when she decided it was too boring. I'm wondering whether she will want to continue with the plan to work on Joan of arc for the whole week or perhaps to decide on something else instead.

we are our lunch outside (apart from jas who was sulking).


I chalked up a verse upon the blackboard . I'm hoping it will resonate with the girls and there love for one another can shine a little brighter towards one another!!!

 Eva obviously wanted to add a bit more.


And then we had a visit from my mum . whilst i chatted to mum and enjoyed a coffee, Gypsie drew, Jas and summer did some maths  even though id told them they had done more than enough "work" for one day, Charlie bashed nails in to a boat hes making from a crate and Eva toddled about looking cute in a swimming costume and my shoes occasionally wielding a hammer.

Eva charlie and summer enjoyed a nice splash in the pool and we soaked up the last rays of summer sunshine.

we had planned on going for a walk , but summer made it very clear that wasn't going to happen with out a lot of fuss and bother. we did have a little stroll to the shop for dinner supplies though.

So as i said possibly not THE BEST day ever but no major problems.

XXX