Spring Chickens

First of Spring and a new block in our homeschooling journey - gardening! After many cozy days working indoors, it feels so great to get out into the sunshine and explore what the garden has to share. I have been reviewing what Steiner describes as the Twelve Senses lately and plan to bring a more conscious awareness of these senses into our daily activities. Rhythm, movement, balance, artistic work, time in nature - all of these are so vital to the healthy development of the senses! I can certainly feel the positive effects upon myself.
Our own chickens are clearly happy that the days are longer and sunnier! They are full of fresh feathers and laying just about an egg each day (except Olivia, our senior hen, now entering her 5th year! This is a record in our coop on the edge of the forest! The hen in the photo is one of our younger Buff Orpingtons, a fabulous layer of large brown eggs.


Last week our homeschool group met and made wet felted wool eggs. What fun! The warm, soapy water was very inviting, and the finished eggs are just the right size for a tiny needle felted chick to live inside. I enjoyed the activity so much that I decided to make more with Rowan this week. He was feeling a little sick on Monday so we focused on crafts and indoor activities. It seemed to me that the practice of molding and shaping the wet wool around an egg form was a calming activity for the two of us.



Here is how we made the wool eggs:





1. Take a layer of natural wool roving and wrap it around a closed plastic easter egg.
2. Add additional layers of colored wool on the outside to cover white wool.




3. Add a few drops of liquid dish soap to wool, dip quickly in and out of a bowl of warm water.
4. Gently massage the soapy wool egg, trying not to allow any of the plastic egg to show.
5. You can layer small "patches" of dry wool to cover any weak spots or white areas.
6. Continue to massage the egg for 2-5 minutes.




7. Rinse gently in cool water and squeeze out excess water.



8. Slide damp egg into a clean dry sock.
9. Put the egg-sock into the dryer for about 15 minutes.




10. Remove the egg-sock from the dryer and remove the egg from the sock.




11. Carefully snip open the wool egg, making sure to cut through all layers of wool, making the opening just big enough to pull the plastic egg out.




12. Toss the loose wool egg into the dryer for a few more minutes to help it gain a tighter shape.




13. Make a little needle felted chick to live inside your egg if you like!

More Rainy Day Fun

Rain has come again! In our yard that means mud and mushrooms! We have discovered Elfin saddles, Witches butter, Candy Caps and more well-named fungi all around our house. In honor of our Clothing and Shelter block, Rowan and had some fun with wool felt and natural dyes, including two different mushrooms that grow near us. The one in the photo above is a coral mushroom. The dye was fairly boring, but it was fun to watch the color in the pot change and to see the very white wool felt become a pale tan color. The second dyer's fungus, the Dyer's Polypore, produced the lovely golden sheets you can see in the upper right hand photo. I love getting out the dye pots and mixing up funky brews! This is what my stove looked like that day.

Old Stories, New Questions

Today, as part of our block on the Old Testament, I told the story of Lot, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt. Rowan declared, "I think God is a jerk. How could he kill all those people, including children? What about the animals when all the fire and brimstone fell?" Hmm. This is a hard one for me. It all started with Noah. Rowan did not think it was fair that only two of each kind of animal was saved. He could not understand why God would drown all those animals due to the "badness" of humans. He hears these stories and notices the highly judgmental nature of God in them. I try to bring a fullness to them, get a sense of the deeper meanings so that I can imbue the stories with that feeling, create a beautiful picture, but I am not sure if it is working. I suppose Rowan's reaction is a normal nine year change thing that questions authority and the fairness of things. Still, I wonder how I am going to possibly tell the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac without Rowan being aghast at the idea of a father being asked to kill his son to prove his love of God! The points are stacking up against the God of the Old Testament in Rowan's book. I hope by the end of the block that I can help him have a more balanced understanding.

On the other hand, my attempt to bring in lessons on shelter and clothing along side the Old Testament are going very well. Right away this week Rowan was very interested in the types of houses that Abraham lived in. He wanted to build a clay model house immediately. We do not have access to a kiln like we did when older brother made his ziggurat, so we had to settle for the DAS air-drying clay. For the past two days we have spent a bit of time molding and stacking small clay bricks, modeling the structure on photos and drawings we found of Biblical clay houses and ruins. This was a very satisfying activity for both of us.

We also spent some time today learning all about wool. I dug out my old drop spindle (although I don't know how to use it!) and we went around finding things in the house that were made of wool. Rowan had fun working with the carding brushes. We discussed how cool it is that so many different animals can give up extra hair by combing or shearing without needing to be killed. We also talked about how in some places, like in Greenland or Alaska, animal fur and skin is essential for human survival. I had Rowan write an essay on the subject of wool in his Nature and History main lesson book.