Back to School day 2

 Again, Healer is on the left, Salix on the right.

 Using the yarn we dyed, Healer started weaving on the loom he made at Children of the Boreal, a homeschool cooperative inspired by Waldorf philosophies

 Salix learned to finger knit and made himself a new bracelet- the orange one. He used the yarn we dyed earlier.

 Fred Meyer was out of Ricotta cheese, so we made some ourselves. It took a whole half gallon of milk!

 we drained off the whey and saved it for boiling noodles

 the curds

 squeezing and pressing the cheese

 Time for our first Spanish lesson.

 Keeping these two quiet was not easy!

 Salix is so ready for his lesson to start

 When we got home, we made a filling out of the ricotta and boiled manicotti in whey, then stuffed the noodles.

 The home made ricotta is so much more flavorful than store bought. Yum!

School at Home

Monday was our first day following our new school rhythm. I was worried about getting everything into our day, so to help me keep on top of things, I wrote out our schedules on the board first thing. Healer's schedule is the left column and Salix's schedule is on the right.

 Before we started, Ryan helped the boys start making a mini hovercraft. They are making it from an old CD, a plastic bottle cap, and a balloon. We broke all of our balloons trying to get them onto the bottle cap, so we will have to get more before we see results.

Our morning story this week is Ignis, which neither of my kids had ever read. Healer picked it up later for silent reading.














Form Drawing

 Music

 This little guy's along for the ride, as always!

 Salix and I made some wax figures of the characters from Ignis and he played with them the rest of the day

 After a pretty full school day, we got out of the house on time, at 1:00 and went to our friend's garden to play.

 I harvested my pumpkin when I came home, since there are rumors of frost.

Back To School

This week has been our "Back to School Week." We are reviewing last year's work and refreshing our memories about what we have learned, as well as getting used to our school schedule and where a toddler fits into life with school.

Our week started informally on Saturday with wool dying. I heard about a local spinning store hosting a bring your own fibers natural dying day, so the boys and I got together two skeins of wool and a gold playsilk each and brought it for dying.

 We made variegated yarn by first dunking all but the end you are holding of the skein into the madder dye and moving it around a little. then I pulled out a bunch of it and hung it over the edge and brought out more yarn bit by bit until only the other tip remained in the dye. Then I threw the whole thing in marigold to brighten it up and make it red and orange instead of red and pink.

 The green came from a certain kind of sage plant with yellow flowers. I made it variegated with marigold dye in the same way as with the madder.

the boys are so proud of their yarn! They can't wait to use it!

When the dye ran out, the woman who had harvested the dyestuffs told me that they were not going to harvest anything else from the Botanical Gardens dye garden and that I should go help myself, so we drove down the road to the Garden, the boys very happy to get a day at the Botanical Gardens.

 and speaking of cute toddlers...

 Little Ollie Stomper finally got to put on some stomping boots!