About two years ago, Rainbow Girl told me she wanted to have her ears pierced. We went to the mall, she sat down in the chair, I filled out the paperwork, they went to put the marker dots on her ears, and she flipped out. She was obviously not ready, and we left.
Since then, she has said every few months something to the extent of, "I don't think I'm ready yet to get my ears pierced." Up until this particular Saturday. She had been talking about having her ears pierced and how she might be ready. Then up popped a picture on my Facebook of one of her best friends, who is younger than her, who had just had her ears pierced. "Wow," She said, "If SHE can do it, I can totally do it! She's so much littler than me!" After much discussion about the process and making sure she did not want to do it just because her friend did, we went to the mall, doll in hand.
She sat in the seat, had her ears marked, and then pierced. All without crying one tear. (I personally remember crying A LOT at 6.5 when I had mine done, and was SO glad that she had a more peaceful experience.) Immediately said said, "I FINALLY HAVE MY EARS PIERCED!!" She was so proud of herself.
The next day it was time to put Christmas away. Some people wait until the Epiphany, or even later to take down their tree but I like to start the new year without a tree in my living room. Lots of space and nice and clean.
I turned on the Pandora Christmas station and let the un-decorating begin. The kids were very helpful taking the decorations down and putting them away in the proper boxes. Such helpers they have become! When we took the star off, they put it on the floor and started talking to it- as if it represented Christmas. "Goodbye Christmas star, I will miss you." "Goodbye Christmas, see you next year!"
A few days after Christmas, we went with Grandma and some friends to Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens to enjoy their beautiful Garden Fest of Lights. We bought tea, hot chocolate and smores fixins from the snacks booth and walked around for a couple hours. It was thankfully not a very cold evening. We eventually made our way to the fire pit and roasted marshmallows over the fire together.
In the fall I had read about a Waldorf Homeschooling Planner designed by a homeschooling mama. It interested me, but I didn't think it was something that I needed. I have tried many planners to try to organize my homeschooling plans. I've tried store bought planners, teacher's planners, and just writing my thoughts in a notebook. None of these options have worked for me. None have kept me on track and inspired me to plan ahead. I have thought about the Waldorf Planner a few times since the fall, but couldn't justify buying and printing a planner that was half obsolete since many months has passed. On New Years Eve, she released an updated version, January-December 2014!
I read through her description and it really had everything I was looking for in a planner. I promptly paid the $15 for the PDF version of the planner to be sent to me. I spend the majority of the remainder of the day searching through different printing options. I thought it would be time saving for anyone looking into this, or something similar if I shared the gist of my results.
The planner is 144 pages of colorful, very well thought out planning pages and calendars. Office Max and Fed Ex/Kinkos wanted between $60-$100 depending on the paper type and how I had it bound. UPS wanted between $40-$60 depending on the paper. I looked at at least twenty online printing sites. Several had very attractive prices, but were very sketchy websites.
I very much preferred to have the planner printed out on card stock for durability's sake and for the fact that the pages would be printed on both sides. During my research, I received an email coupon from Office Max for 20% off. This inspired me to go and price buying more ink for my printer and a ream of card stock. I ended up going with this option. Based on the amount of ink and paper that I have left, it cost me about $26 to print out the planner by my self. It took a little more of my time, but it is printed out beautifully on card stock and bound in a sturdy binder.
The below picture is what my New Years Evening looked like: going through the January plans in my Waldorf Essentials Kindergarden for the 6 year old and planning things out in my spiffy new planner. I loved having places in the planner for everything, and it felt so good getting things written down.
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| At 11:50 PM, Daddy carried Rainbow Girl out of bed so that she could watch the ball drop on TV and see the New Year begin. |
On New Year's Day, we began using our new planner. Rainbow Girl loves having the verses written out all on one page.
On this day, she wrote her first letter to her new pen pal. She is so excited to have someone to write letters to that is her age. Later, we did some salt painting, an idea from the Wee Folk Art homeschooling companion that we used a couple years ago. The process for the project began by drawing a wintry picture with crayons or colored pencils. The children then painted the drawings with water color paint and while the paint was still wet, sprinkled kosher salt over them. We left them overnight to dry.
After calling around to different cleaners to have my wool braided rug cleaned and getting obscene price estimates, we decided to take the cleaning into our own hands and beat the dirt out. The kids took turns beating it with a children's baseball bat and it came back inside nice and fresh!
For a few months, I have been a member of a Waldorf craft swap group on Facebook. I have watched the swaps start up, and have seen all of the beautiful things that the talented mamas have made. Although it was very intimidating seeing all of the master craftsmanship in the items, I decided to get in on the Three Kings Day swap when it came up.
There were 15 mamas in the swap. Each mama had to make five things, made entirely of natural materials. Three mama's were signed up to make crowns, three for capes, three for wands, three for gifts, and three for nature table items.
I was signed up for wands. I ordered some beautifully hand dyed wool and acquired some oak dowels. The kids said that the King's wands should be diamonds, so I cut out diamonds of the wool and then felted magical spirals onto one side. Then I felted the sides together, leaving an opening for the dowel. The dowels came in 36 inch sections. I cut them into thirds and rounded down the ends with my Dremel tool. With the help of some Tacky Glue, I then attached the diamond toppers onto the dowels. I was hoping to add silk ribbons, but they did not arrive in time. They eventually did arrive, and I considered adding them to the wands that I had made for my kids, but the simplicity and durability of the wands was already very magical and I did not want to compromise that.
I mailed the wands out to the host mama a couple of days before Christmas. She collected everything from all of the talented, crafty mamas and divided it so that everyone received one crown, one cape, one wand, one gift, and one nature table item.
It was a good day for mail. Another package from different trade was also delivered. In this instance, I traded a bunch of books for a box of wool roving. It ended up being way more wool than I thought it would be and such beautiful colors! I LOVED the blended colors.
The main project that I wanted to get working on as soon as possible was Super Sam's house. Super Sam is the main character in the stories in Waldorf Essential's Kindergarten book. To make his house, we used a large amount of white wool roving that I wrapped around my foam needle felting pad. We took turns felting it until it was nice and firm. I added the vines while the house was still on the foam. I then felted the roof of his mushroom home using white and red silk and wool blend. Before felting it to the meadow playscape, I reinforced the door with some brown wool and added a door.
To make Super Sam, I felted a gnome hat, cape and sweater and glued them all onto a large wooden peg man. Lola, his turtle, is made of two different shades of green wool, needle felted.
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| Rainbow Girl loves the ritual of lighting our candles and doing Circle Time. |
The salt on our paintings had dried overnight and we took large paintbrushes to dust off all of the loose salt. What remained is sparkly and looks like snow!
Our big project of the day was mittens. I traced the outlines of their hands, then made another outline a quarter inch larger all around. We went to my massive fabric stash and each child picked out the fleece of their choice. They helped me cut out the fabric, and I sewed them up rather quickly. These mittens have been a huge hit and are even worn during play. They love telling others how they helped make them and how Mommy sewed them.
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