continuing our journey

I had thought that I might write a homeschool post this evening. Not like the recent ones, where I am just catching up on the past year. But more like a.. here we go, beginning our year, deep calming breaths...

I realized this weekend that what needed to happen was not lots more plannings, lists, scheduling... but perhaps a little extra rest, a little creative time for myself, (something that has been neglected the past couple weeks as I felt school time so soon approaching). Long days of play for the girls, with dinner and bedtime a little extra early. And of course enjoying making the house nice and tidy for our new week.

So I feel that we are ready to begin our lessons, but I still don't quite have the time to organize and share my thoughts. Soon though. I hope to share much more here as we go through our year.

And some of you have been offering so much homeschooling inspiration and words of wisdom, thank you thank you thank you!

Now, I really hope you do not mind another set of camping photos. I admit it may be getting to be a little much, I will spare you the remaining 100...

Such tall trees!


This place sure did entice our imaginations!


I love when they love each other so much and just have to be together.

And more important camp chores. We did our best to leave our camp just as we had found it.

When we first made our fire circle we carefully removed the clumps of dirt and vegetation and brought the pieces to a cool spot down by the river.
We filled in the circle before we left and gently placed the plants back into their original homes.


And then we headed back towards our home.

Well wishes to you all as you journey through these coming days!


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morning along the river

Oh yes, there was lots and lots of wild berry picking too. A very nice addition to our ash cake breakfast. Raspberries and raspberries and raspberries! Yum.

Happy beautiful weekend to all!


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campfire...

About three or four miles down the trail we headed across a large meadow and chose a camp, nestled into the trees, with the river nearby.

I will tell you though, the night before we left Jason and I wondered if we were really going to be able to do this as a backpacking trip. The alternative being to go somewhere we could drive into, with warm blankets and extra food in the car. It just seemed like we might not be able to carry everything we needed for a two night trip. We decided we might be crazy, we laughed at ourselves a lot. Glad we decided to try...

Our girls are such good little campers, even after hiking all that way. We had to get started on camp chores right away. Gathering firewood, filtering water. And Chessa was the cutest little campfire helper!


She was so pleased to be helping with this important task.

And then daddy started the fire.

And the girls rested and watched. It can sometimes take a while to start a fire when you aren't using matches. (But don't worry, we had some matches just in case.)

Little tiny coal.

Little bundle of tinder.

Hands that work so hard to take care of us!

And fire to keep us warm during the chilly evening,

to cook our yummy dinner of carrots and potatoes,

and to dance for us in the dark forest night.

Next morning, back to camp chores, you want to get that fire going again quickly!


(It seems there is going to be a camping theme here this week...)


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Adventure Into the Forest

The long dirt road to the trail...

It was beautiful before we even got there.

Into that valley.
On this trail.



Beside this river.


For three wonderful days.

That is where we have been.

I will be back soon to share (lots) more pictures, I cannot even begin to look at them all right now, must rest, must prepare for our week...

Hope you all had a wonderful beautiful weekend too!


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bagels and pretzels and book winner...

So first of all, I am very happy to announce that the giveaway winner is Wabi-Sabi Wanderings.

I know she will enjoy this special book with her family, and I am excited to imagine something I have made finding a place in her beautiful home!



And now just a couple quick questions for you all if you don't mind...

I need to make bagels. I have made them only twice before. The first time they came out really good, but that was more than a decade ago and I don't remember much about it. The second time was last year, it seemed to take the entire day, and it was not good. It may be the only time I have ever made something entirely inedible. I sure did make a nice big mess though!

So anyone have a good bagel recipe that will definitely work? If it uses some whole wheat flour in addition to white flour then that would be especially good.

I also want to try the pretzel recipe in the Waldorf Kindergarten Snack Book. Have any of you made that recipe before? I am mostly just wondering how many pretzels I should be dividing the dough into, or how big they should be? We have never baked pretzels before...

Of course the Five Little Peppers had many exciting baking adventures!

Thanks so much to everyone who entered the giveaway, it was quite exciting. Some of you have blogs that are new to me and I look forward to visiting soon!

I hope you are all having a very nice beginning to your week. Wishing you many beautiful days!


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a little more Waldorf 3rd grade

Really my head is so in 4th grade world now, my notebook, papers, books often in my lap, even accompanying me outdoors this weekend. Lesson planning is so much fun, even if I am a little bit behind.

But more on fourth grade another time, for now here are the last of my 3rd grade pictures...

In November as part of a main lesson on time we made our calendar for the coming year.

I think I mentioned before that I let Chloe have a lot of freedom with her drawings last year. While I did miss sitting down and working on a picture with her it was also neat to see what she was coming up with on her own. I think this year we will do some of both ways.

We also wrote and illustrated a calendar verse that we had learned the year before. Since we had only recently introduced cursive this was good for practice.


In the middle of winter we did another time lesson. (I think our first block was 3 weeks, this second one was much shorter.) I am realizing just now that I don't have a picture of the clock that Chloe made, it was cute with flowers and butterflies, she enjoyed that activity.

We used a Dorothy Harrer verse to learn about second, minutes, hours...


So here is a more simple blackboard that went along with our lesson. But see how I managed to get some form drawing into the lesson? Chloe did similar borders on some lesson book pages. I'm feeling kind of clever for it. (Though also feeling not clever for neglecting form drawing for much of the year.)


And now on to fourth grade. And kindergarten too!


(And I guess depending on where you are there is still a bit of time left to enter the giveaway. I will announce the winner some time tomorrow evening.)


And oh yes, I must also say thank you to everyone who shared kind words on my last post. Really, thank you so very much, and you prove my point, there are nice people :)


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