Saturday, September 06, 2008

A Life with Fewer Regrets

Our homeschool year started yesterday. It's funny - in the preceding days I realized that our lives are already starting to naturally look like what I envision "school" to be.

Sunday, the girls watched a show on the formation of the Rocky Mountains (not particularly Enki/Waldorfy, but the TV is another topic I'm reassessing my position on right now - the little box causes so much discontent in so many ways, but so much expansion of knowledge and horizons in others), then Katja played with some of her stuffed animals while Niesha went outside to play with Jeff.
Katja joined Niesha and her dad shortly thereafter and they all dug up some potatoes together. Sometime into the digging, Katja and Niesha got bored and grabbed big branches with leaves that Jeff had just trimmed off the trees a couple of days ago and used them as microphones, tails, brooms, etc They brought in a sunflower for the nature table, had a quick visit from grandma (who came to drop off the chickens her friend had just delivered), watched their dad use the mulcher on a few of the tree branches.
Then they came in with their dad to watch football and draw (Katja drew our family and Niesha drew volcanoes). After a while we had a really nice chicken dinner, then the girls played in the bath and we put Niesha to bed. Shortly after, Katja, after tucking in ALL (40 or so?) of their stuffed animals, each in turn, told us that she was tired and wanted to go to bed as well. She elected to take about 10 of her stuffed friends with her.
I don't remember exactly what we did the day before that, but I do know that we made muffins together :)

Yesterday was our first official homeschool day - we're using the Enki Kindergarten curriculum, and it was a resounding success!
My plan for the year is to focus on seasons. So our "theme" for the next three months is Autumn. Our "sub-theme" for the next two weeks is grain harvest.

Our circle goes kind of like this:

Opening=Morning Song (Enki)
Autumn Recorder Song (Enki - gets them used to how they should be holding their hands when they start playing recorder in Gr. 1)
It's Autumn. We harvest corn in Autumn, and we also harvest wheat!
Sickle (Enki)
And after all the wheat is cut, it needs to be made into flour!
The Mill (Enki)
We can bake bread with flour. What else can we make? We could make a cake! The baker called out, Let's bake a cake!
Backe Backe Kuchen (Alle singen mit! Mein erstes Liederbuch)
Closing=Round and Round (Enki)

Here's the rhythm I had mapped out for us:

Morning Block wake with N
light snack
yoga with N
make breakfast (& lunch in crockpot?)
wake K and A
eat breakfast
cleanup/helping&free play
pick up toys
circle time
story time
gardening/nature walk
lunch prep
Lunch eat lunch
cleanup/helping&free play
Afternoon Block rest/project prep
project
snacktime
adventure time
settling in & supper prep
Supper eat supper
cleanup/free play
Evening Block family time
N bedtime
project with K
yoga with K
K bedtime

But because she went to bed earlier, Katja actually threw a wrench in the cog by waking up at the same time as Niesha!! That never happens LOL!!
So, we changed things around a bit.
We started our day by watching Wild Kingdom, then an episode of How It's Made. Yes, they're TV, but they're educational right ;)? In my defense, Niesha was up for a good hour and a half in the middle of the night (scary invisible men and dinosaurs in the bedroom and whatnot - you know, the usual), so I was very tired.
After I downed some coffee and shook off my exhaustion, and after we'd eaten breakfast, I managed to put the baby down for a nap, start the chicken stock (I make it in the oven), start a load of laundry and hop into the shower while Katja and Niesha did some cutting and drawing. Then Niesha and I got dressed and brushed our hair to get ready for circle time. Katja elected to sit off to the side and watch while she continued to cut paper.
By the time we started our circle Anja had woken up, so I put her in the BabyHawk to join us (BH borrowed from my friend Erin . . . I love it so much I'm going to get my own!). She laughed through "Sickle", an Enki harvesting circle song that crosses midlines and bounces up and down. Niesha did very well at crossing midlines as well!! After Backe Backe Kuchen, Niesha asked for 'pider (Itsy Bitsy Spider), and was so very excited when we went through it! Then we finished up our circle and Niesha played outside while Katja continued her cutting and I prepared lunch.
When it was time for Niesha to come inside, I told her to put the piece of wood she was carrying down. As she was putting it down, she said "no, it's my piano" (she was objecting to me calling it a piece of wood, not to my request that she leave it outside) . . . well, I decided immediately that she could bring her new "piano" inside, and she happily sat on the couch playing it for a while.
After lunch we had our quiet time - the girls rested while I packed the bags for swimming lessons that night.
The rest of the afternoon consisted of making noodles (working with flour), making chicken noodle soup for supper, and folding and putting away laundry.
After supper we went straight to swimming lessons, then out for ice cream afterwards. Niesha fell asleep for the night on the way home and Katja put herself to bed right after we got home (she's elected for an early bedtime every night for the past 4 nights!)

Today was not as smooth, but considering Niesha woke up for the day at 5:30am (she did that Sunday too!!!!) and Niesha and Anja both have stuffy noses and I have a scratchy throat, I think we did very well. We managed to pack the diaper bag and be out the door in time to go to our Pretzel Hour yoga class at Bodhi Tree yoga . . . except I forgot the diaper bag with my wallet and house keys inside! It was a great class though, the kids really enjoyed it and so did I - I'm not used to physically pushing myself, and it was nice to have the opportunity to do so!
The afternoon was slated to make playdough . . . instead, our project turned into a different kind of science project, exploring the nature of water. Also known as "playdate - with - friend - where - we - all - dump - water - on - each - other" LOL, they really enjoyed themselves. The rhythm of our afternoon was pretty good though, we managed to get our quiet time in and everything! Again after supper Katja was in bed early, this time before 8 (unheard of!!) - I hope all this sleep will help my girls get over this cold quickly.

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Holy cow what a deadly school, I wish I got to do that stuff when I was little... damn public school systems~

9:34 PM  

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