Bread and the beach.

Over the past couple of days there has been an evening stroll to the beach to investigate the shore.

A stall set up at my gate . (Yesterday summer made £7 selling dog treats)

A trip to the library for Summer and Gypsie and as well as books and a puzzle for themselves they kindly thought to bring back a book each for Eva and Charlie.

We have also made bread in a bag inspired by my new book "The waldorf book of bread". Basically you pop all your ingredients in a lip lock bag and massage and knead the dough through the bag. It was good fun!

Gypsie has baked yet more lovely chocolate cookies .

And Eva has been copying letters from the alphabet wall.

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.

Sometimes I wish everyday could be a monday.

Mondays seem to be the most productive day of week here.

Charlie  had  painted one of his airfix models , jumped on the trampoline and completed his main lesson before ten am leaving him the rest of the day to do as he pleased. (Minecrafting, painting, football, colour mixing .....)

He really seems to be enjoying the main lessons from the waldorf essentials curriculum so far.
Today we reviewed the symbols for greater than,  less than and equals,  we read a maths gnome story, solved some problems,  read some information about Rosh Hashanah and the creation story and he also practiced some form drawing.

The girls also were keen to get on with there lessons. Jasmine worked on persentages and Gypsie did some addition work.

Summers just began a social studies block and drew and labeled a map of the island and wrote about the climate and economy we have here.

Evie was happy to draw ,play and be read to all morning,  her favourite books at the moment are the wonderwise series.

All our "work"  was done by mid~day.

This afternoon the weather was gorgeous and while I enjoyed the sunshine with robbie and Eva , the others were busy inside.

Charlie and Gypsie painted some wooden photo frames which we intend to stick twigs and acorns to as a fun autum craft project.

Jasmine and Summer made a video to an Ed sheeran song which they unloaded to YouTube.

This evening when we went outside to lock up the hens Jasmine took her camera out to take few photo's of the super moon. 

It was truly beautiful !

Xxx

St patrick's day 2014

Well would you believe it.
It seems Charlie's leprichorn tea party did indeed lure some mischievous leprichorns in to the garden last night.

Summer and Jasmine had placed traps in the kitchen too that showed evidence of a visitor!

We tiptoed down the garden to the magical party venue that Charlie had so carefully created, and there was evidence of some shananigans to be found . A sprinkling of green glitter covered the whole area. And a tiny little card thanked Charlie for the dinner and told him they had hidden a surprise in our garden!

For some reason Charlie thought they might have burried the surprise and so he spent a long time digging .
Summer strolled down the garden and saw the treats straight away and I think she may have given a big hint as to where Charlie should look.

Charlie was extremely happy with his jelly beans and rainbow strips and shared them with his sisters.

After all the excitement had settled I helped Charlie and Eva make Irish soda bread . We had never made any before , it smelt great but as it happened Gypsies the only one who likes it!

I walked in to the lounge later in the morning to find summer curled up on the sofa with a maths workbook ,her phone and her journal .She was copying out a st patricks day poem....I love when they are self motivated .
The same can be said for Gypsie who decided this afternoon to set up a sugar crystal experiment and Jasmine who has filled out a form to take part in "The great Bembridge bake off" which is happening in our village shortly .

This afternoon Gypsie took Charlie to the park and once again Jasmine  went cycling and walking with my sister.

Eva has had a day where shes been quiet boisterous and feisty.
There's been busy moments and quiet drinking hot drinks with a story moment, running round crazy moments and tender hug moments ...lashing out moments and calming bath moments. on the whole life in our house is full of moments that I'm glad I don't miss  !

The week so far.....

This month, according to the waldorf essentials curriculum that we dip in and out of, is maths month. . .

I don't like maths much .

In my opinion so long as you can weigh, measure and use money , thats your basic "life skills" maths sorted.

Three times I took my maths GCSE ,THREE....I took extra classes in order to get the C grade that I narrowly missed each time in the two previous attempts . This all important c grade was apparently needed for me to keep my place in the sixth form were i was studying Art, religious studies and history.

It was torture , my teacher ,a fan of the gothic look. He always dressed from head to toe in black. The belt around his tiny waist had a skeletons hand as the clasp. A black cord around his neck had a silver charm and I remember him wearing rings too .He was embellished with skeletons.

I remember one specific lesson were I was told to do star jumps. A classmate had to guess how many I would do in a certain amount of time.
so there I was doing star jumps trying desperately hard not to flash my knickers .
The teacher even commented to the male classmate behind me that he probably had a great view.

I digress , so basically you see why I don't like maths.

My children , (with the exception of Charlie , who says he quite likes maths ) also are not keen on maths.But at least I can be sure they won't be remembering there maths lessons with feelings of fear and embarrassment .

Gypsie didn't want to take part in the first couple of activities but she  quite enjoyed today pretty multiplication pictures.

so... Monday morning Jasmine ,summer and Charlie made times table circles.

Tuesday morning, they filled out multiplication grids .

Today Gypsie made times table pictures.
Charlie asked me to write out some multiplication and addition problems for him on a sheet of paper whilst summer chose to do multiplication word problems from a work book .

As well as maths there was an impromptu biology lesson this morning . Charlie asked me if his esophagus  and his "breathing" pipes were the same thing.
We got out a couple of books from the shelf and answered his question. And I asked if he would like me to draw around him in order to make a life size diagram of his digestive system . summer also decided to join in!

I now have a life size Charlie hanging on the fridge and a life size summer hanging on the kitchen wall.

yesterday was shrove Tuesday so i as well as maths we took a look at how other people around the world celebrate . Jasmine ,Gypsie ,summer and Charlie all worked together to compile all the information in to a lapbook.

The weather has been more spring like these last few days too.This of course means more time outside walking, trampoline bouncing ,and viewing the frogs pawn in our pond!

Jasmine has spent most of today with one of my sisters .They have been cycling and looking for crabs ...loveing the sun shine!

Spring may finally have sprung!

Epiphany

I had so much planned for today.
It didnt really go according to plan but here are the good bits .

This morning Charlie lit two tea lights for circle time and we read all about Epiphany and then the story of Baboshka .

Last year it was Gypsie that found the treasure in our three kings day cake therefore today it was her responsibility to bake the cake .Her and Charlie worked together and made a tasty vegan chocolate one decorated with white icing and a yellow crown.

This year it was me who found the treasure ...im already looking forward to my turn at baking next years cake.

Tonight i gave each child ( except baby Robbie)  three small gifts.
I didnt quite finish Evie gifts but two king finger puppets is better than no kings ....right ?....