Playroom

Still a work in progress here.

Now worked on the "home area"

We have added hooks for cups, pans etc and a clothes line as well as this gorgeous screen from Marmalade Trees on Etsy to create walls!

I also bought this set of cubing for MB the younger's room to help organise his stash of stuff a little better. He is thrilled he now has a plant to care for too!

And finally I attempted some needlefelting this week - I am almost too ashamed to put it up here, but still, it relieved some stress for a while lol and hopefully I may get better!

This is my gnome who has a very badly proportioned body!!


This is the "fall" picture.

Changing of the seasons..

Just like nature, our life at home is continually evolving and changing with the seasons. Here are some updated photos of the playroom and LMB's bedroom.

Here are our open shelves allowing access to the toys. Emphasis here is on wood and natural and also toys that are allow for open ended play.

Reading corner. Much as I really, really want to purge the books and have a small selection out at a time so as not to over stimulate; coming from a home where we had wall to wall libraries I find this task breaks me out in a cold sweat, hence there are still a plethora of books everywhere you look. I have tried hard to cull a bit. The picture on the wall is one that Master Beehive the elder did at school last year - fortunately fitting beautifully with the colour scheme!!

The "home corner".

Our somewhat depleted nature table (I have taken some of it into school!) and also geography area. The tall boxes house our growing lego collection. It is actually hard to find something just right to store the lego so it is accessible and easy to reach as well as tidy!


Moving onto the Little Miss's room:

One side of her home corner. I do believe Master Beehive the younger can be seen poking his head out!

This is the front entrance! As well as having her "home" toys in there, there are also bean bags, playsilks, manipulative toys as well as a growing herd of My Little Ponies!!

Her "care of the self" area, not too different, only we have now placed some hooks beside the mirror to hang her alice bands. I dont know where she has moved her little basket with her brush and hair accessories - one of the delights of trying to keep neat a home that houses a small tasmanian devil lol!

Hmmm....the ironing board doesn't normally live centre stage. Master Beehive the elder decided that it needed a higher vantage point!

Oh and finally, today's creation. Master Beehive the younger sporting his new apron for his chore this week as "Chef's helper"!! Craftily made out of a tea towel. This is the project I have for the class over the next few weeks so it was useful to have a willing guinea pig!

Sacred Spaces

Apologies for the hiatus in writing.

At the children's school the theme this year is 'Sacred Spaces'. This can be translated in the home in pretty much any way. For us we are aiming for meals together at the table as much as we possibly can, finding time together as a family for reading, excursions etc and each of us having some space that is ours to be in and relax, read or meditate.

We do the first two a lot, but having individual space when there are lots of siblings, is not such an easy task. We are trying to develop respect of others' personal spaces, but it is hard for the youngest to differentiate between when the older two need that space and when they are playing and it is acceptable to go into another one's room.

So we have decided to further develop the hide-away areas for both them. This weekend we have decluttered and moved furniture from the oldest's room and created a small diagonal corner that has draw across curtains. In that area there is a warm mat, chair and cushions as well as a box for his personal treasures. The younger boy has the same but unfortunately on a smaller scale as there is less space in his room. My daughter is getting the remaining play stand side for Christmas and then she will also have a space in which she can go. Together the children decided that they could invite the others into that space if they wanted to, but no child was to invade that private space without the invitation. I can see it working for the boys, but I am getting ready for the youngest to have to stand her ground to maintain her space as sacred!!

Here are the results:

It isn't the best masterpiece in the world, but we are working with the limitations of the rooms. A good friend has a wonderful space in the eaves of her home that she has turned into a similar area for her children. I will try to get some pictures of the spaces for you. I am also going to be writing about a fabulous stage that her husband has built in the house for the children over the next few weeks.

If you have any pictures of sacred spaces in your home that you want to share, please let me know.

Summer Activities

Okay, so my every intention this summer has been to do less - observe more lol! Here are some of the activities we have been up to so far:

Summer Scrapbooks - actually this is a continuing project. Each of my boys has a scrap book that is journalling our travelling around. We started it last March:

T has added his own writing to his, whereas W has just organised the pictures and souvenirs.

My dd and I have started this project together, using a cheap birdhouse from a craft shop. She is gluing and tiling.

And my elder son decided to paint this little model. It might not look complicated, but it was small and fiddly. He spent a lot of time working on this.

Other ideas we have for the summer are to knit some simple dishcloths with my elder son, do an outing a week and then try to "present" it later, prepare for Harry Potter night - this, as you can imagine, has taken a lot of planning on the eldest's part!! He has made banners, prepared menus for banquets etc etc.

Another idea I thought of, and have not yet put it into play, is to engage the older two in family meal planning and once a fortnight each child is responsible for the planning of and budgeting for and some preparation of a family meal. I may try this over the next couple of weeks and if it works, make it a Sunday night regular!

Summer Reading list

This summer we have been sent home a list of recommended books from the Elementary teachers at the school. It is an incredibly extensive list, but has been compiled only using the Newbery Medal Prize winners from 1922 - present day. I am aware that it isn't a cut and dry list and is only a guideline as to where one might like to start looking, but it misses off some of the great books of our time that I really feel are more suitable for children of 7 - 9. Many of these books have female characters or are quite "feminine" in their story, so of course, my son is not as happy picking this up to read and many, I feel, I too conceptualy advanced for children who are just 7.

There seems to be a lacking of a middle ground for the younger readers who are fluent and skilled readers, but lack the emotional development for some of the content. So, I have adapted a list of books that we are going to tackle this summer, either individually or together.

Some of these may not be the world's most reknowned piece of literature, but in my opinion, at this age, it is important to introduce children to a wide range of literary style and stories.

1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
2. Bridge to Terabithia - Katherine Paterson and Donna Diamond
3. The Tale of Desperaux - Kate Di Camillo
4. The Barn - Avi
5. Shiloh - Phyllis Reynolds
6. The Story of King Arthur - Robin Lister
7. The Scarecrow and his Servant - Philip Pullman
8. The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips - Michael Morpurgo
9. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
10. Kira-Kira - Cynthia Kakohata
11. The Homecoming - Cynthia Voigt
12. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - JK Rowling
13. Where the sidewalk ends - Shel Silversten
14. Missing May - Cynthia Rylant
15. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing - Judy Blume
16. The Mouse and the Motorcycle - Beverley Cleary
17. This can't be happening at Macdonald Hall - Gordon Korman

(Anything to avoid perpetual re-reads of Captain P.P Poopyhead and his amazing Underpants!!!)

If you have any books you could add to this list, I would be really grateful.

Colour theory!

I just wanted to post these pictures of the playroom now that I have painted it. I have hopefully used colours that will embue imagination and cooperative play I have borrowed a similar colour scheme as those found in the imagination inspiring kindergartens in waldorf schools- ie: not red for fire and arguments, not white for boredom and lack of creativity and not green for tranquility and sleep etc.

Anyhoo, here are the results -

I decided to put up I's canopy in this corner next to a box of books so they have somewhere to hide away to read. There is also a cushion and our storytelling doll in there too.

The sensory materials have been moved over to this area as they were a little dismissed behind the door.

This area has been laid out for a home style corner (not particularly Montessori I know, but it is an area that all of the children love to utilise!) and we are in the process of creating a nature table which you will see better in the picture down below.

It isn't very clear, but we have got our nature table on the cupboard. So far we have found some interesting wood and an empty nest. The nest was in my hanging basket on the porch until a week or two ago. The birds have appeared to have deserted it. Unfortunately I think the mail man had unwittingly scared them. The eggs were broken too. We have since put it on our table.

The final wall is a work in process!!!

I am limiting the amount of stuff I put ON the walls this time, I have only a framed painting of T's, a picture and a wall hanging and I am going to put our huge map of the US back up too. Other than that, the children's work will now be kept in their art boxes in their rooms and if they do something they are particularly proud of, we will frame and hang in their bedrooms. There is still a lot of work in the kitchen on display too.

And of course - there is a very important factor in all of this............is it working - hmmmm they are currently playing in T's bedroom!!!!!!!ah well, time will tell!

Fairy Tales - yes or no??

This post is going to directly come from an amazing workshop that I have been on over the last three mornings. Actually led by a Waldorfian rather than a Montessorian, and fascinating.

It strictly relates to the re-telling of fairy tales to children.

In my hazy recollection, there is some controversy as to whether or not Montessori was for or against the reading of fairy tales to children.

Those in the "against" court argue that they go against the grain of belief that life should be for real, not wrapped up in talking animals and good and evil.

Those in the "for" court argue that they convey a very real life message in their stories and that legend and folklore are all based on and wrapped up in fairy tales, our history is intrinsically linked.

Add to that, the fact that the true original fairy tales are not the ones we know today, are NOT those of Disney and adaptations on a theme of a theme AND that places like Barnes and Noble no longer stock Grimms tales in many shops as they are deemed "not politically correct" you may be easily of the opinion that perhaps they should be left alone, after all, what is the point?

Up to today, I was more of the vein that there was no real need for them, they seem cruel and stereotypical and send out the message that life is full of goodies and baddies and that girls are all princesses and boys either bad men or princes. This wasn't the message I wanted to give to the children, so have avoided them to a greater extent.

Today my mind has been entirely changed. Not only do I realise that I was incorrect in my own jaded adult and very literal interpretations of them, but I am doing my children a disservice by omitting them from their lives. Children do not take these stories as literal but much more archetypically which is exactly the way they are meant to be taken.

Read in their original form and appropriately aged (NOT censored!) they emit a very potent message, that life is a journey, that we encounter good and evil in a variety of forms and that when the right paths are chosen on our journies, good will overthrow evil and justice will prevail. Yes, the "baddies" meet their ends, gruesome or not, but in the case of most of these, the end comes around by self infliction. Take for example the wolf in the original version of Little Red Cap - She fills his belly with stones, but she doesn't kill him, the stones are too heavy so when he gets up, he falls down dead. The stones........getting whhhhaaaay deep now, actually represent the materialism in life that tempts us (or Little Red Cap in this instance) when we are on our journies through life. In LRC's case, the wolf opened her mind to be tempted by the flowers (greed) and he, himself, was overcome with greed to not just eat the grandmother but to also eat LRC. At the end, the wolf is destroyed by his very own materialistic greed - the stones, the densest natural material on the earth.

Of course, for a seven year old, this is not what they are thinking and nor should it be explained to them thus.

The guidelines we were left with was that

a.We should read them ourselves, and find our own fairy tale.

b.We should chose age appropriate ones; ie: the more challenges and conflicts, then the older the audience

c. We should not censor the end for something less gruesome. If you need to censor the end for your child, the fairy tale is not yet appropriate. Also look at it this way - if the wolf lives and runs off - where is he now? Is he hiding in the real world??

d. Read them during the day NOT before bed. Children process these stories better when they have just come from the spiritual state of sleep rather than before they go to it.

e. Learn them and read them unscripted, detail IS important to the stories however, so make sure you have read them and understand the significance of the detail.

It is hard to find a good book of Fairy Tales, I have just ordered the one at the top of this page which is published by The Pantheon Fairytale and Folklore Library and can be found at Bob and Nancy's Books I am thoroughly looking forward to reading, digesting, dissecting and then re-telling these tales to my boys!