Why waldorf?

Whilst we are in no way die hard anthoposofist we do take a lot of inspiration from Steiner and waldorf education. I found this blogpost breaking it down nicely.

In case you where curious as to why :)

Ugh

The boys all have croup. so it has been sleepless nights for the last 3 nights. Thankfully it is coming to an end now.

We had another fox visit this morning and somehow he managed to get our Oskar. I found poor Valen huddled up in the house this morning, obviously he is inside now. Both of them are old and oskar was going blind. Valen seems to be ok he's eating and comes for a snuggle so hopefully he'll be fine.

We got our book order yesterday, Euan got a couple of Elsa beskows books (pelle & forestchildren) We got a craftbook to share. We got a story, song & poembook for everyone.
I am really pleased wih all the books. I *love* the elsa beskow books. the drawings are fantastic very very sweet. The story is cute but not in a sickenig way. animals die, animals eat animals all in a way that its just part of the story, not scary or something that needs atention just a fact of life.
The craft book is great its all 3 previous books in one (easter, christmas, harvest). It has an enormous amount of crafts in it for all abilities. from different types of lanterns to acorn snakes bread dragons harvest wreaths, well I could go on and on. I'm sure you'll see a bunch of the crafts pop up on the blog.
We got a book on storytelling to. Yesterday was the 1 year anniversary of opa's death and the first page I opend the book on was a little witch you mae with your hand, just like opa used to do it was weird to see that picture I hadn't thought about it for a long time.

I've also been enjoying a bunch of blogs. Now I have figured out i can follow these blogs with blogger I don't forget about them. I will see if I can put my bloglist in the side somehow so you can see what I read. If you're reading and you have a home ed blog let me know :)

Sweet porridge

The brothers Grimm - KHM 103

There was a poor but good little girl who lived alone with her mother, and they no longer had anything to eat. So the child went into the forest, and there an aged woman met her who was aware of her sorrow, and presented her with a little pot, which when she said, "Cook, little pot, cook," would cook good, sweet porridge, and when she said, "Stop, little pot," it ceased to cook. The girl took the pot home to her mother, and now they were freed from their poverty and hunger, and ate sweet porridge as often as they chose. Once on a time when the girl had gone out, her mother said, "Cook, little pot, cook." And it did cook and she ate till she was satisfied, and then she wanted the pot to stop cooking, but did not know the word. So it went on cooking and the porridge rose over the edge, and still it cooked on until the kitchen and whole house were full, and then the next house, and then the whole street, just as if it wanted to satisfy the hunger of the whole world, and there was the greatest distress, but no one knew how to stop it. At last when only one single house remained, the child came home and just said, "Stop, little pot," and it stopped and gave up cooking, and whosoever wished to return to the town had to eat his way back.

END

Sweet porridge is our story for this week. We read it just after snacks before the twins naptime. We finally found some tealights and now have a storytime candle. Still looking for a verse I like nothing seems to do it for me so far. We picked up some oats today as I didn't realise before that the last bag was fed to the chooks (they are more spoiled than the cats...)

It is still really cold here, I have to put fresh water out every 3 hours or its all frozen up again. I love it in a strange way it really feels like winter not just an extension of a very wet autumn.
The kids don't mind since they are dressed well and in many layers. It is rather odd how many people you briefly meet that are shivering in their half open coats, not a scarf or gloves in sight and are complaining its cold.

This did put my gardening plans of over the holidays as I was planning to more the blackberry bushes from the back of the garden to the front.
Once it warms up enough for me to be able to get to the compost squish and I will start wintersowing. I've never wintersown before so I have no idea how things will work out but its worth a go.

Duty calls :)

Basket full of gnomes

a basketfull of gnomes. A found branch has been turned into 6-7 gnomes a bunch of tree coins and we still have more left