Happy Spring!

 An outing to see a sweet puppet play, "The Winning of Kwelanga."

 Nathan continues to amaze me with his artistic abilities. This is his pencil sketch of Leonardo da Vinci, which he drew for a 7th grade block.

 The amazing Mama who takes care of Nuriel while I work just had a baby, so there's been lots of babywearing-imitation happening at our house. 

 I had a fabulous 38th birthday. I've been dreaming about Venice, so Nathan drew this picture inside the birthday card he made for me. Noah got me banana pudding (yummy!) and Nuriel kept insisting that it was HER birthday. :-)

Nuriel planted some Easter grass on Palm Sunday morning...

 ... that evening we got some unexpected snow, which resulted in a fabulous snow day that Monday.

 By Wednesday the grass was already this tall!

 Using some pea shoot sprouts and coffee & vinegar, I dyed some of these eggs with my students.

 A visit to a local Alpaca fiber festival with these sweet little one, just a week old.

 A fabulous creation by my friend Mindi - in exchange for a set of rainbow bunnies for her daughter. I love this dress!

 No chocolate bunnies were devoured in our house this year, but the Easter bunny did bring a chocolate carrot with the bunnies I had sewn from felt for Nuriel. {She loves her chocolate.}

'Twas 4th Grade

4th Grade Waldorf work. Time flies. I can't believe I will be taking my class to 5th grade this autumn! 

Local History/Geography

Flounder (from "The Human Being & the Animal Kingdom")

Sometimes all it takes to express the essence of an animal is a poem. 

Watercolor Painting

I love seals. I loved reading more about them in Penguins, Seals Dolphins Salmon and Eels by Karl Koenig. I do believe that the best lessons are based on things that live deeply within us as teachers.

October Already!

Hard to believe. I suppose time to give the blogging world a sign that we are indeed alive. It's Virginia State Fair Time & of course we had to make some entries given the success last year. I won two third place ribbons this year, one for the green Icarus Shawl & one for Nuriel's Boheme.

Nathan won a red ribbon (2nd place) at the Horse Art Competition. It's an awesome drawing. He is rather unhappy with 2nd place, though...

... which brings us to Zeus & Athena. This crayon/pencil drawing did get him a first place, blue ribbon. Yay!

I took a picture of this awesome cake from the Youth Baking Competition, also at the State Fair. What a great cake idea, huh? 

This was Nuriel's seond State Fair, and her first time in a stroller! (Yup, you read that right!) The girl is getting too heavy for the Ergo. She did enjoy the ride for the most part, especially when she had an Elephant Ear to munch on! 

She also likes to push her face against the hallway/dining-room French door. 

I'll try to have another update soon. I just wrapped up a 4th grade Norse Mythology block & I do need to blog about that! Life is just so busy - always...

Random Saturday

I've been in a knitting frenzy. It's nice to have the time to just sit & knit & reflect & drink Barley coffee. This is my third soaker. The information on what yarn is best for a soaker is so varied. I didn't want to knit them all of the same yarn and then find out that my choice was off, so I'm knitting a rainbow of soakers from a variety of yarns. This one is a Malabrigo one. Way too big. It's so hard for me to go back and remember how tiny these wee lil' babies are. When Lil' Bean is born, it will be around 12 years to the day that I gave birth to Nathan.

I so love this colorway. I think the poop-stains would blend right in.

Up next is a square I created real quick last night using O~Wool Balance. It's for an upcoming Friendship Quilt swap. 12" square. I used the entire skein with maybe a yard to spare. I wanted a square that was knit from the inside out, like the Barn-Raising squares, but I didn't wanna do just plain knitting, so I used the leaf lace pattern from Evelyn Clark's Leaf Lace Shawl pattern. I kinda like it. 11 more to go. Yikes.

Please ignore the dusty wood floor.

And then for the proud Mama moments... Nathan drew this picture a couple of months ago & entered it into an art contest. When we checked out the website the following month to see who the winner was, we were sort of bummed out. Nathan's picture didn't make it & the winning one seemed much less sophisticated. Well, today the mailman showed up with a big envelope. I didn't recognize the return address & opened it. Inside was a note saying that Nathan won this month's art contest with his picture, but when I look at the website I still can't see it there. I called him to let him know & he was quite happy. They are on their way to Minnesota where they will spend a few days at a lake house. They were traveling through his beloved Illinois as we spoke.

Autumn Cardinal (Nathan - 11 Years Old)

My older one gave me a proud Mama moment this week, too. In 7th grade the school does give grades in preparation for a transition to a non-Waldorf high school. It was a report filled with "A" and "B+" for Noah. Proud Mama I am.

Last (but not least) I wanted to thank all of you for the lovely comments you leave me. I rarely ever respond to them, but I want you to know that they are quite inspiring to me. They make me smile & lift me up when I need it. Namaste!

Trees

Watercolor by Nathan (4th Grade)

Cherry

It's been a busy day. I had a parent evening at school & decided I would "sneak" some pictures of Noah & Nathan's work. Nathan's cherry tree is currently decorating the hallway in a frame. He is very proud of this tree - painted using watercolors on dry paper. Then on to the woodworking room. One of my favorite places. I love woodworking. Noah has been working on this pentatonic lyre all year in woodworking class. In the beginning there was a solid piece of cherry wood... Pegs & strings still needed. I can't wait to hear the sound! The tree cut-out he actually made into a Christmas ornament back in December.

Unlike their watery Mama, my boys are both solid earth children. - A bit of it is reflected in their work. I'm just so proud of them. And after this long day I came home to two children practicing soprano & alto recorders, playing beautiful music. Yay for me!

Beeswax Crayons & Lo Shu

Beeswax crayons in their second year of use. I just recently gave out a gray, so that one looks rather new. For 3rd grade I will simply replace those that need it & during the last week of 2nd grade we will clean them with a wee bit of olive oil on a rag. We do a lot of golden backgrounds. I have some students who have used up a golden block in its entirety, nothing left. Quality tools for quality work. - I love the Stockmar crayons made from beeswax. This is their German webpage, but you can also purchase them in the U.S., for example here. (I do believe this is a home-based business.)

Do you know the story of Lo Shu and the magic number squares? Quite something for 2nd graders to discover. My classroom is a worksheet-free zone - except for an occasional math practice sheet, but those are always written by me by hand & I do the math, too!

LoShu all finished along with the Chinese characters. This particular student made a really big turtle, so the Chinese symbols are a bit hard to see up there in the corner. They were so excited that I let them write something in Chinese. They copied it from my chalkboard drawing.

Then some more "magical math" on the board. It can be hard to hold the attention of a group of children who are "ready for summer," but on this hot Friday Lo Shu did the trick.

Beeswax Crayon Birds

Gratitude

This week I'm grateful for...

... all the wonderful comments left on my blog & Rhonda's post. I was quite touched. Thank you so much!

... the smile that a lovely stranger brought to Nathan yesterday when a platypus coin & other lil' treasures arrived in the mail. His report turned out great. I must post about it soon.

... Spring weather. The boys have been outside playing football with the neighborhood-kids for over 4 hours. So glad it's that time of year to be outdoors.

... memories - although sometimes they are painful. A year ago today, Good Friday, Brent & I had walked from our B&B to South Street where I got pretty tipsy on one Long Island Iced Tea. Yeap. One is all it takes. Then we went back to the B&B and walked across town to the theater. I remember the white dress I was wearing. We saw "The Complete Works of Shakespeare - Abridged." It was a great, fun play. We went to the theater a lot when we were together.

... the wonderful Waldorf education my children receive - an education where art is alive. Here's a clay frog & a clay elephant Nathan brought home today.

Have a lovely Easter weekend!

Dove Of Peace

To decorate the halls for the Holiday Bazaar, each class is asked to create a holiday themed painting. My students wondered when they would get to use the white crayon that is in their tin this year. When I visited the Christchurch Rudolf Steiner School this summer (ehmmm winter), the 3rd graders had created wonderful Noah's Ark themed paintings using the crayon resist method. That's what came to mind when I tried to find something to do with that white crayon. My students drew a white dove onto white paper - not an easy task. They added a lil' olive branch in its mouth. They then wrote words like love, joy, happiness, friendship, peace... in red underneath the dove & finally painted blue over it & - as if by magic - the dove appeared.

Clay Head

Noah made this clay bust in 7th grade.

Cheetah Love

Nathan's picture of a cheetah for his second 4th grade animal report. All done using pencil shading. I think the cubs are so cute!

Bird Love

Yeap. It's all about love here at the moment. ;-) ~ Nate did this painting at school. His teacher asked him to make the birds bigger, thus they ended up "kissing" each other. Nothing that excites a 10-years-old boy, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm loving it! :-)

Art & Love

I went to Philly with my love. While he had to be in a brainy kinda meeting, I got a morning of walking the city & slurping mocha. I discovered these awesome mosaics by artist Isaiah Zagar.

First a few on walls.

Then I ran into the mosaic garden on South Street. Yes, a toilet-mosaic. Kiwi-blokes would call it a crapper. ;-)

Awesome way to recycle bottles, eh?!

I loved looking at the details. So many little things to be discovered.

And eventually I got lots of yummy kisses in the magnolia garden. It was a great trip! :-)