Pick up sticks

Our week has gotten off on a good foot!  That's always good news to share.  While it is still winter-coat chilly in our little patch of the world, the sun burned away the clouds and it's rays felt like streams of joy beaming down from the sky.

Our morning walk (which was sporadic on those grey days where I didn't feel like moving outside of our kitchen) took us to the park on a search for sticks of all shapes and sizes.  But more of that later.

You see, I won a Waldorf-inspired kindergarten curriculum from Lavender's Blue Homeschool.  And it has come in very handy for the circle time Astrin and I spend together as the other children start on their schoolwork.  The winging it on my own wasn't going very well, so new songs and verses, ideas for crafts connected to the stories, and the overall alignment of the activities with the seasons was very welcome!

Astrin has been loving the songs and verses.  I love that there is an opportunity for movement with most of the verses, and I love that the package comes with an audio file so I know whether I should be singing or speaking (though I may opt to do my own thing too).  She also seems more content to do her own thing after we've spent circle time together, which is great when the other children need my attention.

I haven't done any watercolour painting or modelling with my little ones yet.  This is partly because I'm too tired, lazy, adverse to mess, not sure how exactly to do it, or all of the above!  Perhaps in the winter though.  We also haven't done many of the crafts, mostly because I think they are above Astrin's ability right now.  It is a kindergarten curriculum after all, and she has a few more years before that!  But today I thought the curriculum had an activity that we could all enjoy.

You see, we've been singing and acting out all sorts of rhymes to do with the wind.  Last week, we enjoyed the story of the three little pigs.  And thankfully, it dawned on me that we could all do the activity of building a house of sticks.  So off to the park we went in search of sticks!

We could be making stick houses for days on end.  And it was interesting how we all took a different approach.  Astrin was satisfied to simply break the sticks into pieces and cut the string to shreds.  Nicholas made walls by weaving larger sticks and is now in the process of figuring out how to connect them all together.  Jaelyn made a teepee and is now decorating a paper cover to keep the wind out.  And I experimented with weaving many little sticks.  Yes, this was a learning project for us all.  I was very careful to express that this was a trial and error project, and that there was no "right" way to do it.

I hope your week is off to a lovely start!