Spring on my doorstep

 

I found a little bit of love on our doorstep yesterday, just in time for the first day of spring!

This sweet bunny traveled all the way from Canada to grace our nature table.  From one mama's hands to another's.  Just the idea of that warms my heart.  He brought some lovely pictures, a rose quartz, and shell fossil along with him.

The kids were very surprised and delighted.  They made space on the nature table right away.  He looks right at home, don't you think?

Happy first day of spring!

Middle Ages

The kids and I are all down with colds, but I wanted to give you a little peek at some homeschooling from the past few months.

I thought I'd start with Sunburst.  We had so much fun studying the Middle Ages.  We're on a break from it now, but in a couple of weeks we'll go back and finish up our admiration of Gothic architecture and put the final touches on our maps.  We have big plans to create something special, and frankly I need the downtime to brainstorm a way to make it work.

We decided to incorporate a lot of illuminations in her main lesson book this time, and they turned out beautifully.  Lyra makes a metallic gold pencil which worked perfectly for this.  I simultaneously drew only a couple of the drawings with her this time, far fewer than I have in the past.  It's a sure sign that she's growing up.

For this lesson I pulled ideas mainly from the first half of Charles Kovac's Age of Discovery, various online resources, and Eugene Schwartz's grades 6 and 7 files.  As you can see, the artwork is still our gateway into learning.  Sunburst enjoyed mixing it up by drafting letters between the major characters, as well as trying her hand at different calligraphy styles.

As always, Sunburst would love to hear what you think.

 

 

 

  

 

 

  

Spring crafting

One of my goals for the year is to craft more, so earlier this year I joined a seasonal swap group.  I struggle to find enough time in the day as it is, but crafting brings me such joy, I knew I had to make time for it somehow.  A swap was the perfect answer.  There is nothing that motivates like a deadline.

For Candlemas I made a little child candle-bearer inspired by a Sulamith Wülfing image.  I even whittled a stick from the garden to make the candle.  My kids were so taken with it that they couldn't bear the thought of me sending it out into the world.  They hounded me until I made a second one to grace our own nature table.

With the candle-bearer, I sent a little postcard of the Wülfing print, some walnut candles, and a knit snowdrop to help urge spring along.  They arrived safely in Germany, and the following day I discovered the most delightful package on my doorstep:

It's a willow catkin child!  The kids and I were a bit breathless that someone would send us something so incredibly lovely.  And I love that she sent us a poem in German to go along with it.

For our Spring Swap I crafted this little gnome-- sort of a guardian of the birds.  He has already arrived at his new home in Canada.  He brought a spring painting, herbal tea, and a song along with him.

 

 Any day now there will be a package on my doorstep... and I can't even begin to imagine what will be inside.  The anticipation is almost as exciting as the crafting.

En garde

Apologies for the blurry picture, but you know how it is.  Life moves fast, and fencers inevitably move even faster.

Sunburst has been itching to take a fencing class for longer than I can remember.  Einstein fenced in college, and in his enthusiasm to share it with the children, we've gone through more than our share of foam swords over the years.  There is always some battle of epic proportions just simmering under the surface of our household-- all in good fun, of course!

Two of my younger sisters happen to be excellent fencers, which fueled Sunburst's desire more than you can imagine.  She has been waiting patiently for her time to come, and at last it has!  Last month we discovered fencing classes quite near our house.  Sunburst finished the introductory course and was invited to join the local fencing club.  She's completely in her element and more than a bit scary with a sabre in her hand.  Just look at this happy grin!

Moonshine came along to watch and decided to jump into the fray this month and give the introductory lessons a try.  Her class size is a bit overwhelming, as is the instructor's heavy accent, but so far she's managing to keep up.  She's a bit like a fairy surrounded by giants at the moment.  As long as she's having fun, that's the important thing...

 

And for those of you wondering about Kitty Bill, he's absolutely desperate to be old enough to try it.  He watches everything and is already trying to give the girls advice.  He's hilarious!  The poor guy... eventually his time will come.

Hungering for Spring

We've been trying to adapt to the weather changes in our new environment.  It's not always easy.  Each time we move to a new site on the globe we find ourselves in a strange predicament.  Getting used to a new climate takes time.  A whole year in fact!  I find that once we make it through a complete cycle of the seasons, I can better predict what to expect.

No one expected the harsh, icy blast that came in early February for Candlemas.  Back on the farm in Switzerland we hear it got down to -23 C / -9 F.  It wasn't quite so bad here, but it was cold enough.  The kids were thrilled with the snowfall, but I ended up with chilblains on my chilblains.  My feet haven't been warm since October, and I found myself hungering for Spring much more than usual.

Here are the kids enjoying the February snowfall:

 

The snow has since melted, but despite the continual grey skies, spring appears to be coming.  Here are some signs of spring that have been popping up in our garden since the end of February.  What a difference a few weeks make!

 

 

 

First clear day

On Sunday we had our first clear day in I don't know how long.  I can't remember the last time I saw a sky that blue, but we spent almost every minute of it outside soaking up the sunshine.  It was such a welcome change that the kids immediately lost their shoes and socks.  At one point I discovered Moonshine hanging from a tree in only a t-shirt and shorts, while Sunburst announced that it felt like January in Arizona.

Einstein and I made the best of it by getting to some much needed yardwork-- the final layer of autumn leaves that we never quite got around to and cutting back everything that had died in the icy winter.  It wasn't long before the kids climbed down from the trees to help us, and then everyone went back to playing.

Kitty Bill was delighted that the pond in our garden had thawed so he could sail his wooden boat.  To his delight there was something moving in the pond. (Click to make them larger.)

In all fairness, Einstein discovered them first and later scooped out a few eggs to show the kids.  The green stuff is duckweed.  The kids each thumbed through the field guide and independently decided that our pond friends are called common frogs.

Later, we sat around burning stuff with magnifying glasses, because... isn't that what everyone does? Who knows when our next clear day will come again.

Of mould and mayhem

If it's not one thing, it's always another.

We have moved countless times over the last few years, and the above statement seems to hold true for each one of them.  Every move is completely different, and yet each one is riddled with some kind of mayhem or another.  It doesn't matter where we move to or how much planning we've put in.  Something always manages to go completely berserk.

Like the year the car transmission died and we were stuck in a hotel for an entire week on the outskirts of El Paso.  Or the year we had to stop every five miles because the van overheated.  Or the time the computer in our car melted, we crashed into a hotel canopy, and I had the police called on me for not accepting ice cream from a strange, hairy man with a large dog in a deserted park. Seriously.

Traveling always has its ups and downs, but after we arrive things usually calm down.  Not always.  The same year our car's computer melted, we had no transportation and our temporary accommodation had surreptitiously been taken over by someone's mother-in-law.  But usually, once we get into a place to live and begin unpacking, things begin to settle down fairly quickly.  Not this time though.  This move takes the cake.

After Stratford, the hotels were all booked so we spent a week on the floor of another professor's vacant rental apartment before moving into our new house.  The first week was dedicated to unpacking, and except for a lack of cupboards, it was going fine.  But then the trouble started.  One morning I went to open the curtains in the kids' bedroom and discovered mould growing up from the baseboards across an entire wall.  We had been in the house less than two weeks, and despite cracking windows to air out their room, there was mould.  I quickly pulled their wooden dollhouse and other toys out of this alcove and freaked out a little bit, before I went back in armed with bleach.

Over the next week, we found mould growing in every room-- in windowsills, doorjambs, on ceilings, on baseboards, behind furniture, mirrors, and creeping up my nature table and homeschooling bookshelves.  The bottom of my bookshelves held all of our loveliest picture books-- Beskow, Von Olfers, Ott-Heidmann... and seagrass baskets filled with games, math manipulatives, and early readers.  Those baskets were completely saturated with mould.  I ended up tossing quite a bit and saving what I could.  It was heartbreaking.

Meanwhile, we couldn't get internet access because we couldn't open a bank account.  Despite our finances, good credit history in two countries, and a UK job contract, we couldn't readily find a bank that was willing to open an account for us.  Finally, we found one, and promptly ordered internet.  But the internet company forgot to send us a router.  And when it did finally show up, we plugged it in and discovered that the gas boiler was off-gassing in the office.

As soon as one problem was fixed, we faced another: missing items from our move, a second invasion of mould, (including under our bedroom carpet), both faucet handles and door handles snapping off... things just kept popping up everywhere.  And then our gas boiler died, twice, which meant that while it was no longer off-gassing, we were without both heat and hot water.

It's an extremely old boiler, so new parts have to be crafted with fairy magic, or something like that.  We were instructed to arm ourselves with space heaters.  The kids were cold, so we set out to the store to buy some and discovered that our new bank cards didn't work.  In fact, our entire account had been fraud blocked, as I would find out the next day, because I tried to pay the rent.

And that was only our first month in the new place.  Since then the bathroom light fixture exploded in a haze of melted plastic.  The boiler keeps shutting off, not quite enough to require replacing, but enough to make things a little complicated.  The sewage line has backed itself up twice, to which the local plumber tells us that our lines are bad and we can expect to call him out a few times a year.  The mould, or "rising damp" the locals call it, seems to be waning, though I'm sure it's just waiting for me to look the other way.  And I'm not even going to mention the explosive kitten diarrhea...

If nothing else, moving is an adventure.  I'm not sure what the take-home message is, but as far as homeschooling goes, I'm sure the kids are learning a lot.

Exploring Shakespeare

We spent the last two weeks walking along the Avon, seeing the sights of Stratford, and exploring all of the houses that have a historical link to Shakespeare. 

It's a fantastic village-- there is so much to see and do!  Kitty Bill's favorite part was helping sieve through dirt at the archeological dig going on at Nash's House.  Moonshine loved Anne Hathaway's cottage, and Sunburst couldn't get enough of the falconry and animals at Mary Arden's Farm.

The girls had questions about everything, and Moonshine had to walk through some of the houses more than once to get her fill of them.  We're leaving Stratford in the morning to head to another village, but we're taking a big part of it in our hearts.