Pumpkins and Headstands

Happy Fall everyone! Oh, how I love this time of year. The leaves in Charlottesville are simply beautiful. Kyla has become quite found recently of learning all she can about trees and can probably recognize, name and remember more trees than Pete and I put together.

It's been quite awhile since my last entry. September and October have been months full of blessings and also full of weddings for our family. In September I found out that we are expecting baby Davis # 3 due sometime in June! We are very thankful...and I am trying to keep the attitude of gratitude throughout the 1st trimester nausea and sleepiness. In October, we have had a wedding to shoot every Saturday, including one this Saturday on Halloween. We did have one weekend with a "break" from shooting weddings to attending Dave and Amy Casler's wedding in Northern Virginia. It was a wonderful time seeing friends that we had not seen in a long time! It was also a much needed get-a-way with just the two of us!

An October entry could not be complete without pumpkin patch pictures and also, I had to throw a picture in of what Kyla spends most of her days and evenings doing....standing on her head. She really loves gymnastics. A lot :-)

Till next time!

What are the needs of Five Year Olds?

An article that I have found helpful in homeschooling our five year old, based on child development and academic readiness.

Avery's first day of preschool

Avery had her first day of preschool last Tuesday and today was her first full day of preschool. (The first week preschool was only a half day.) She was apprehensive at first, but today she did really well and when I picked her up she had a huge smile on her face because they had just finished playing a game with the parachute!

Avery goes to Mollie Michie preschool, a co-op preschool, so I was actually in her classroom for her first day helping, and then Emili Hays was co-oping on the 2nd day of preschool and she knows Emili really well, so that really helped ease her into preschool life :-) It's nice Emili's little boy, Oliver, is in her class. Today she ran over to Ollie and gave him a hug and said, "Goodbye, Ollie!".

Kyla and I enjoyed a full day of homeschooling today while Avery was at preschool. She practiced writing her numbers 6 through 10 in her Handwriting without Tears book. Then we baked a pumpkin raisin cake to kick off the beginning of September. Pete taught Kyla measurements this weekend and she was able to hand me the 1/3 cup when I asked and would tell me how many scoops I needed to make 1 cup. She's a fast learner, for sure. After baking, she was off to catch crickets from the backyard in put them in her bug catcher. To finish off the morning, she knitted on her knitting tower and I almost finished knitting a pink scarf for her to wear this fall. This afternoon was Kyla's first day of gymnastics class and she loved learning cartwheels and handstands and swinging on the uneven bar. She met some other little girls her age, one of which lives just down the street from us.

What a blessing of a day. I cannot stop thanking God for my wonderful family. I love my husband and girls to pieces, and though we're only at the beginning, we're loving homeschooling. I love being able to be the one to listen to Kyla read her first sentence..what a blessing to be able to stay at home and teach our girls. I've also been thanking the Lord over and over for how wonderful Avery's skin has been since our move to Charlottesville. We feel like we have a big piece of our family back. Everyday life became very difficult and stressful when her eczema was bad in Charlotte and here she spends most of her days just like other little girls: playing, laughing, singing songs, dancing, doing crafts, etc. She spends less and less time scratching. Life is so much better. Thanks for praying for her and for our move.

Carter's Mountain

Carter's Mountain is just about 3 minutes away from our home, and so the other day after Pete got home from work, we packed a picnic dinner and went to the mountain to pick the first apples of the season! We've enjoyed baking apple crisp and eating lots and lots of very tasty apples. The girls LOVED picking the apples off the tree and playing peek-a-boo in the apple orchard. I became a little obsessed with getting the prettiest, reddest apples which happened to all be at the very top of the trees, of course. So, Kyla was our main apple picker and climbed up on daddy's shoulders to get the best apples of the bunch! I attempted to climb some of the trees and managed to get one or two from the top...it was a very fun day with temperatures being a very pleasant 70 degrees! Then on Tuesday (baking day), Kyla helped chop the apples for our apple crisp. I think eating it was her favorite part, though :-)

Nature walk collection

This past Friday, on our "nature day", we went on a long walk around the neighborhood. Kyla has been really loving the themes to our days. On our walk Kyla collected a bunch of favorite things she saw along the way. I thought she was going to draw them, but she had other ideas, like making 3-D art. :-)

Nature Study: Butterflies

Kyla and Avery have had a lot of "catching up" to do since we've moved into our new house. We lived in an apartment until Kyla was 3 1/2 in Los Angeles and so running around outside all day in her barefeet didn't happen very much unless we were at the park. We were in Charlotte until Kyla was 5 and Avery was almost 3, and even though they were outside more, our small little backyard wasn't very "exciting" for them...not much to explore. Just a patch of grass. Adding to that, Avery's outdoor allergies, we spend a lot of time inside.

Well, Kyla has been spending about 70% of her days outside in our big backyard catching butterflies all day long. She's also caught a praying mantis, and other little bugs that roam around. Then, she comes inside and draws them in her nature journal and this is the science portion of her homeschooling for kindergarten this year: observation. Simply soaking in and absorbing all of the nature around her and then drawing pictures of what she sees. She loves every minute of this and I do too!

A Waldorf-inspired Kindergarten Year

With September just around the corner, I thought I'd dedicate a blog post to our first year of homeschooling with Kyla and Avery. I say Avery because even though she's attending preschool 2 days a week, if you ask her, she thinks she is being home schooled just like her big sister.

After spending endless hours on the computer, talking with other homeschooling moms, and reading through lots of different books, we have decided on combining the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling with Waldorf education. It's a big plus to be living in a town with such a wonderful Waldorf school. So, there is quite a network of other Waldorf and Charlotte Mason-inspired homeschoolers here in Charlottesville.

So, what does Waldorf Kindergarten look like?

First, the teacher engages in every day activities that children can imitate. Examples of this in our days would be cooking, baking, sweeping, mopping, cleaning, as well as painting, knitting and other crafts. Children learn via imitation. One key here is don't say it if you can do it. Show it instead of tell how it's done. In trying to show how to do things instead of telling my children, this is definitely an area that I need a lot of work in!

Children learn best through whole body activity, so another aspect of Waldorf ecducation is to give children worthwhile activities to imitate. Not by instruction, but by seeing an adult doing those jobs and the child joining in. They may choose to join in or not, but the option is there. And, having been doing this for quite awhile now, our children choose to join in about 90% of the time! Sometimes this can be difficult when we just want to simply get the job done quickly. But now with homeschooling around the corner, I see it even more as part of schooling. as well as part of simply living. So, if dinner takes 2 hours to prepare, but they are helping chop vegetables, measure flour, wash dishes or sweep the floor, then our afternoon has been spent in a healthy way and our kids have had opportunities to participate in useful and important tasks. I also adapt some of my work to the changing seasons and celebrations around the year (Harvest celebrations, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, spring and summer celebrations). This might involve a special adventure such as apple picking and coming home to peel the apples and bake apple pie, or it might be lighting our Advent candles in December as we anticipate celebrating the birth of Jesus on Christmas day.

So, in waldorf kindergartens the child is engaged in work, they play with open-ended creative toys, media exposure is kept to a minimum or none at all (more on this one later), children play dress up, and they also hear stories and participates in circle time. The arts are also a big emphasis of Waldorf education. In our homeschool, I tell the same fairy tale or Bible story every day for a solid week. Then we do a movement game or a fingerplay. For example, this week we are telling the story about the Sheep and the Pig. I get almost all of the stories from www.mainlesson.com for free. The emphasis here is on storytelling and not reading the story. Telling the story helps with their imagination as well as their listening skills. I'm going to have to work on this one, as it will take extra time on my part to really learn the story so I can tell it without having a "cheat sheet". :-) Our fingerplay this week is:
"Two little birds sitting on a wall, one named Peter, one named Paul...fly away Peter, fly away Paul...come back Peter, come back Paul." I remembered this one from kindergarten myself :-) After we have circle time, we do art based on the story of the week if we can.

I could continue to write about Waldorf and the Charlotte Mason Method. There's so much wonderful information out there. But instead, I want to show you what our general schedule is for the day. So, here are some links that have helped with our homeschool planning and explain a little more about Charlotte Mason and Waldorf:

Simply Charlotte Mason

Ambelside Online

Christopherus Homeschool Resources

Why Waldorf Works

Head, Heart, and Hands

So, in our home we are going to try to have our days named by activity. Monday is errand day, Tuesday is baking day, Wednesday is cleaning day, Thursday is painting day, and Friday is nature day. This is so much fun for our girls so far and really helps with the routine of things. Our girls often ask us, "What are we going to do today, Mommy?" and I say, "Well today is Tuesday and Tuesday is baking day. We are going to bake blueberry muffins together." This gives the days somewhat of predictability to the the girls and helps them make sense of the week and how it generally flows.

Here are is our schedule for the week. Avery is in preschool on T/TH so those days are going to look a bit different and it will be the time I do more 5-year old appropriate things with Kyla.

M/W/F

7:30 Breakfast. We sometimes light a candle (the girls love watching this) and we say our Bible verse for the week. Pete reads a Bible story from A child's book of character building or from the Bible.

7:50 Get dressed the girls dressed and ready for the day. Kyla dresses herself in clothes she laid out the night before.

8:15-10am- Morning walk. In our yard, around the neighborhood, to the park

10-10:20- Circle Time. Storytelling. Fingerplay games. Movement games.

10:20-11:00- Craft project based on story or the season.

11:00 Kyla helps with lunch preparation...usually fixing her own sandwich.

11:30 Lunch. We say a prayer, light a candle and eat.

12:00 clean up

12:30 Read aloud a book on the Ambelside and Waldorf list of books for Kindergartners.

1:00 Rest time for Kyla...nap for Avery

1:45 Kyla and I read a couple pages in her chapter book (Right now that's Little House on the Prairie) Then we read one page in either her Usborne book of Nature or Living Long Ago. Then we play some math games with dominos, counting seashells, etc. For example, today and yesterday the girls have been collecting cicada shells that are everywhere around here! They look gross to me, but the girls think they are fun and cool. So Kyla has been adding and subtracting these things. It wouldn't be my personal pick to do math with cicada shells, but she's having a grand time!

2:15/2:30 Avery is now awake with us and we usually have a protein and fruit or veggie for snack. Sunflower butter on banana is usually a big hit!

3:15 Outdoor play or visit with friends

4:30 Read aloud (A Poem of the week from A child's garden of verses and another favorite book)

4:45 Dinner preparation

5:30/6

6:30-7:30 Playtime with daddy. Clean up from dinner.

T/TH

Same as above except: After morning circle time Avery goes to school from 9-11:30. Here is our schedule while Avery is in school.

Tuesday:

Baking day! Bake bread, muffins or scones..or make a pot of soup when the weather gets colder!)

Reading (from Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons)

Writing letters (from Handwriting without Tears)

Thursday:

Painting day! (Wet on wet watercolor painting)

Math games

Nature walk and draw/color in nature journal what we just saw in nature that morning.

Just as a little side note: in Waldorf kindergartens they do not emphasize academics such as reading, writing and math before the age of 6 or 7. However, Kyla has been teaching herself how to read and is hungry to know more and the same goes for adding and subtracting by using objects. If she were not interested, I would probably wait until she was 6 to begin this, as they do in Waldorf, but since she is interested and loving it, we're doing it! :-)

Joining the 30's club

My wonderful hubby turned 30 on August 11th. We had a small little party with just the family. Kyla and Avery thought it was the greatest thing EVER that their daddy was having a birthday. Kyla helped me make a chocolate cake and Avery enjoyed her rice dream ice cream. I believe the first picture is of Pete trying to pretend that he's depressed because he has now turned 30. Kyla and Avery were cracking up at Pete posing for the picture at the bottom in black and white. And, no party is complete without the pink birthday crown. I don't know why Pete wouldn't wear this...so Avery did!

Happy Birthday, babe! Welcome to the 30's club!

Welcome to our new home!

Happy Times in Charlottesville

The girls love playing house outside on our big back porch.

My favorite part of our kitchen. A vintage, early 1900's china cabinet refurbished.

Standing in the kitchen, taking a picture of our dining room, with the living room in the background. We had just finished breakfast, so please overlook the mess!



On August 1st, the day finally came to move into our new home in Charlottesville, Virginia. We had a wonderful bunch of people help us, including our good friends Audrey and Doug Woodhams who offered to help while on vacation in the US from Switzerland! (You guys were so awesome to give up a vacation day to help us move!)

Now that we are mostly settled into our new home, I'm finally getting around to blogging. Our days here have been simply wonderful. We love Charlottesville. Avery's skin seems to like it much better than Charlotte, for sure. (Though we're not sure if that's simply because it's summer...we will truely see come fall.) There has been mostly lots of laughter and joy coming from our home the past 2 weeks! Kyla and Avery LOVE this place. Avery tells me about once a day that she loves her new house. I love our cozy home and being on one level again.

I made a list of all the places we can walk to within a 10 minute walk or less from our new home. We can walk to 2 parks, the downtown mall (full of unique coffee shops, local shops, restaurants, etc.), the Discovery place for kids, a free merry-go-round for kids to play on, a walking trail near the river. Our church is a 2 minute drive and so are most other places. It's wonderful not spending so much time in the car and also so nice only having to fill up our Honda once every 3 weeks!

We love it here. I'll keep saying it again and again...I feel so blessed to be here with our family. :-)

More happy times in Charlottesville

A tree swing for our front yard, thanks Daddy!

The girls LOVE this park, especially the fountain on these hot summer days!

Making birthday cakes in the dirt...

I love this picture. Avery was watching daddy cut the grass...something she has NEVER seen before, because until now, we have never had to cut our own grass!