Signs of Spring

We started a notebook called ‘Signs of Spring’ and the signs were all over the place.  The air was fresh and fragrant.  Mother Nature’s rainbows were surrounding us everywhere.   One of my favorite plants on this property is the Wisteria.

It is especially striking when the Belle of Portugal roses bloom, too.

Karl suggested I point out to the boys how few leaves there were on the Black Walnut tree in the back garden.

And note how quickly it would change …

We put a light on a timer in the chicken coop so we’d start getting more eggs.  Jack recorded the eggs collected daily is his notebook and did a bar graph at the end of the week ~ a fun math lesson ~ and a good visual representation of the egg production.  Sadly, boy duck was not being nice to any of the others, so he moved to the local lake and now lives with a bunch of mallards and seagulls.  We visit him sometimes, and he seems to be doing fine.

Things picked up dramatically between winter and spring, as the days started getting longer…

And the 2 walls in the boys’ room finally got buttoned up by Karl and his helper.

The bulbs the boys planted in the fall sprouted.

I’m a sucker for red tulips ~

… and, of course, white daffodils.  Spring is here.

Our Friday Friends group made wet felted eggs with using plastic eggs and colored wool roving.  We had so much fun doing it, we came home and made more.  My friend Jennipher suggested making baby chicks for them.  Check out her awesome blog on 3rd grade and how to make these wool eggs here.

We had an Easter egg hunt here in the morning ~

I make them sit on the same bench every year for a picture I put in our calendar.  They are good sports about it.

This was last year’s shot.

We went up to Pescadero to a friend’s farm for the afternoon, with some friends and enjoyed a fun potluck and a short break in the rain …

These two are super close buddies ~ happy as clams in raincoats.

Motivated husband got a garden started along the walkway next to where we have an outdoor shower.  It has good sun and good water drainage.  Fortunately, we have some good compost dirt that worked well for the soil for the bed.  Jack learned how important soil is in successful gardening.

The kids were begging to play soccer after dinner, which made us old folks feel like we were staying in great shape …

So many changes I wanted to witness, it’s been hard to keep track.  Somewhere there is an after shot of this iris.  I’ll post it when I get there…

Jack attended an amazing Thursday Newts at Riekes Nature Awareness program.

Every week, they met at an old ranch, just north of here right out of town ~ called Wilder Ranch ~ and spent from 9-2 there exploring the area, along with a bunch of other kids around his age.  They learned animal tracking, mapping, and played awesome games with really fun teachers.  They met rain or shine, and only had to resort to the alternate plan in Bonny Doon once, when the back country was closed due to heavy rain.

Our family joined J a couple of times and what an experience!  The first day we were there they started with a game of coyote and hunters.  Everyone took turns being various animals on the food chain and the hunters.

They had a potluck and got to make fire.

Wilder is pretty spectacular place, from an original old ranch with farm animals open to the public, to amazing hikes and creeks and ponds and fields of produce and even amazing beaches!  Anyone visiting Santa Cruz has got to see this place.  Lucky Jack got to have this as his classroom one day each week!

Our good friends got baby chicks, so of course, we had to hold them in the closet-converted-into-a-coop-for-the-chicks.

Once again, our Friday Friends shared another wonderful day, this time with awesome hot cross buns.  What an honor to be sharing the same space as these amazing families.

With the new spring growth, we took a day trip to one of our favorite day hikes to the Pinnacles.

There are wonderful hikes with amazing rocks to climb and caves to explore.

Did I mention another amazing resource for Waldorf third grade ~ the book “In The Child’s World” written back in the ’20’s by Emile Poulsson?  It’s free to download online (check it out), but if you can get a hold of it, I highly recommend it.  It has great stories for a lot of the topics we covered this year.  We continued our fibers unit with the study silk.  We tried 3 times to keep silkworms, thanks to our friend, Meridith, and her family.  They just didn’t like it here, and they didn’t make it.  Well, we tried.  The boys got a chance to see real cocoons while visiting a classroom in a local school, those worms were HUGE!

I took a visit solo to visit my Mom in Spokane, and also check out the scene in Sandpoint, Idaho.  Mom and I headed over to Wallace, Idaho, to see the old mining town, also known as the silver capital of the world.  Wowza … what a crazy place!  I was intrigued just by the pure oddness of it.  A very historic town, with backyards, if not back doors, touching a tall steep mountain.  I decided it was the perfect place for an offbeat movie to be made.  And as, it turns out, several have been.

Back at home, the signs of spring continued.  Here is our bound and determined apple tree, growing sideways, bursting with buds.

The study of flax and linen inspired us to make paper.  Landen had as much fun, if not more fun than his big brother…

For his birthday, a few weeks later, Nana gave Jack a calligraphy pen.  Jack used it write a thank you to her on one of the pieces of paper.

While studying about log cabins during the shelters block, the boys worked together to make this Lincoln log cabin.  It’s so nice when things just happen, unexpectedly.

We are so fortunate to have friends who live in amazing places around here.   The boys, of course, love to play in any water body they can …

The big ninth birthday rolled around the end of April.  Can’t believe my first born baby is now nine!  He invited a bunch of his friends and their families over for a backyard BBQ and fun…

Back at school time, I tried out a game from the book ‘Games For Reading’ by Peggy Kaye for Jack.  He had fun jumping around my crazy chalk drawings, helping him learn and move simultaneously.

I took piano lessons for many years as a child.  I vowed to never force my kids to take it if they didn’t want to.  With Jack learning guitar, it felt natural to have access to a piano to show him a few things.  Oma sweetly loaned us her upright piano ~ we loaded it into the truck and hauled it down.  Never say anything is impossible.  With the help of some friends on hand, Mister ambitious got it in the house in no time.  A piano!

Landen is picking up spelling right along with Jack.  I found this one morning when they got into the math pipecleaners from my last year’s visit to the Waldorf in the Home Conference ~ it was a wealth of information.  I cannot believe how much he’s getting completely on his own.

A Time to Farm

A good portion of the third grade year in the Waldorf curriculum is spent learning about farming.  Spring got us eager to get into the dirt, so after we poured through the seed cataloges and the seeds arrived, it was time to plant them into flats and in the ground.

I sometimes joke about the fact that if we had X-ray eyes, our entire garden would be a maze of gopher tunnels.  Everything has to be planted inside gopher cages, or in pots, or raised beds.

Landen loves taking photos with my camera.  He took this one of me and for some reason I didn’t delete it.

The boys planted wheat grass seeds with our Friday Friends group, which yielded almost immediate gratification.  J measured the growth daily in his notebook.

We jumped into the swing of spring sports with soccer.  J really had a blast with it, especially since several of his friends from babyhood were on the team, both boys and girls.  His coach was awesome, and it made for a good start to organized sports for him.

One criticism of homeschooling often is the social aspect.  We have been fortunate to have an incredible community of friends here, which has made the transition really easy.  There is no shortage of friends ~  many parents we’ve known since we were in prenatal yoga and early baby groups together.  As grade school entered the picture, we have all stayed connected whether we are homeschooling, Waldorf or public school.  It’s usually about how to reduce the amount of things we have going on, so we can just hang out at home!

While studying fibers, we got the chance to check out sheep shearing at beautiful Live Earth Farm in Corralitos, where we have gotten our farm shares in the past.

The boys got to card and dye the freshly shorn wool.

Lately, the most common request is for Papa is to read Hardy Boys to them.  Even though J is reading by himself some, we’re not complaining about being woken up to the climbing into bed in the mornings with requests to be read to by both kids.  Childhood is so sweet and goes so fast.  We’re savoring these days like crazy.

Worms and Words

The worm jar was another inspiration from Nature’s Nest blog.  With the rain and garden of dirt and worms, I couldn’t resist.   We put marbles in the bottom, then sand, then dirt and worms.

The earthquake followed by tsunami which hit Hawaii had the coastal areas anticipating a huge wave surges.  It became a good science lesson in how movement from the earth can affect oceans all around the world.

It was crazy to watch the water come in and go out at such a rapid pace.

So many of the projects here are never preconceived;  they mostly just happen.  Clearing the growth off the old wagon was one of those times.  There were lots of blackberries strangling a fig tree.  We got the kids to help out on the overdue pruning.

A bit later, things looked a lot better.  I don’t know about the cones, though.  The kids are obsessed with them.

Each morning, we light a candle to signify the start to our homeschool day.   This particular week we heard some stories about gnomes who found crystals so the boys got out some crystals to set out on the table.  I love their enthusiasm for such seemingly simple things …

Karl suggested a scavenger hunt to get Jack motivated about reading.   The rain added to the fun when he read a clue that lead him to my old Ford pickup for the next clue.  Chocolate flying saucers from Trader Joe’s were the reward at the end.  It seemed to work really well.

Ever notice the correlation between sweets and tears?  For us, it usually takes about 1 hour or less before it all kicks in.  Each time, I threaten no more if they are going to cry.  Will I ever learn???

Anytime my kids bring me flowers, my heart just melts.  Landen especially likes to cut flowers for me, sweet thing.

The boys got to perform the play, “Noah’s Ark” with our Friday Friends group.  They were villagers and birds and really enjoyed memorizing their (short) lines and the songs.

Immediately following the play, we hit the road for LA and Disneyland.  The next day was jam packed with rides and we managed to avoid the long lines thanks to some creative planning ahead!

I was excited to show the boys the side of LA I remember from when I was growing up there.  I had so loved the big rings and hoped they’d still be there in Venice Beach.  Apparently, lots of folks liked them too, as they had taken out the Muscle Beach barbells I remembered and added more RINGS.   We rode bikes from Santa Monica to there and back.

A stop at Gaviota was mandatory for Papa and the boys.  It was nice to have absolutely nothing to do but just play on the beach for the day…

My little (and big) bridge builders …

Mountains

We went to one of the highest mountains in the region the week we studied mountains.  Grandpa lives right next door to the lookout tower, so he asked his buddy if we could come up for a visit, and really see out from the tower …  it was pretty spectacular.And very high up.  The top of the van and the dogs looked completely dwarfed by our height.

At lunchtime, Grandpa had a request that J and L help him locate a marker that was somewhere on the ground which marked the highest point exactly on the mountain.  J’s great uncle Jack McPhereson had put the marker there, changing the  name of Mt. Bielawski  to Mt. McPherson.

We had almost given up when J hollered out he’d found it!  A very proud boy had a good story for his Papa that night.  (This was Karl’s grandmother’s brother).

No trip to Grandpa’s house is complete without a visit to the adjacent property that had once belonged to Karl’s grandmother and her brother.   One house still stands, the other, burned to the ground. The only remains are the stonework including the fireplace.

While talking with a friend about Disneyland, she was feeling like she didn’t want her son to get too old before they went and miss out on that special magic.  I felt the same way.   So with a quick computer search, I found out we could get free tickets to Disneyland by volunteering with Give a Day, Get a Day.  We went to Quail Hollow Ranch and pulled up lots of Scotch Broom, with several others.  It was easy for the boys to identify, they pull it up whenever they see it.  Papa had trained them well as it used to grow prolifically at his Dad’s place.

Afterwards, we stopped by Roaring Camp Railroad and checked out some of the trains and equipment.  Definitely boy stuff.

Jack finished knitting his lamb.  Finally.

Wintery things

Here it is May and I am still posting about January!  I gotta get going on this…

It was a rainy winter here, the rain really pours when it comes down.  The boys grabbed umbrellas and ran outside during this downpour.  So I had to grab the camera.

J continues to work on reading.  I never realized how incredibly complicated this whole process of learning to read was …  Now I know.

January snow and friends with a cabin beckoned us to Tahoe early this year.  We had a lovely time.

Back at the ranch, K continues the hard work with his helper, fixing up the Victorian, also known as ‘ The main house’.  Here, they have doors from the upstairs drying from being newly fixed and painted.

The front porch works well as a spot for stuff to sit before it heads to the dump.  A LOT of stuff has moseyed its way to the dump from here…

Here is the main house, the original Live Oak Ranch.  That’s where I came up with the name for this blog.

We had a goal of getting things to Stage 2.  I don’t know how many stages there will be in all,  but we feel strongly that we’ve moved beyond  Stage 1.   A lot of things have changed on the place.  A party was a good incentive to get things dialed in better than they had been up till this point.  We had some friends over, a first for an inside gathering there in my time here.  A good time ~ good people, good food, good music.

It was bee time again.  Our friend J the bee guy came over to check on some hives.  It’s always fun when he includes the boys, too.

He suspected there was either a disease in one of the colonies, or the queen had left.  The boys got to be detectives and check out the hives up close.  If there was a sticky substance inside the cells, then they were diseased.  Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong and it just seemed the queen had moved on.

The dead bees were a treat to the ducks and chickens.  L was eager to dump the treats into the coop.

The bee project lended itself well to a lesson on bees and math.

The wax became a fun candle dipping project (again!) for the boys.  They LOVE dipping candles.

A  review of the 6 times tables was prompted by the 6 sided hexagon cell.

Here are the candles from the week, along with sachet bags we filled with dried herbs with our Friday Friends group.

Papa has become the master bread maker, giving J pointers on measuring.

K’s grandmother had more things than any human being could possibly have.  Whittling tools are no exception.  Anything to do with wood captivates my boys to no end.

It only took about a year for J to finish this wool lamb he started knitting while still in second grade at the Waldorf school.  He did not hesitate one bit that this little lamb would be a present for Papa when he finished it.

Here are two boys with branches and clippers.  No end to the things they end up with.

Oh, and those swings.  We have quite a few.  They sit unused for weeks, then all at once, they are back in action again.  K used an arborist sling shot to put throw lines over the tree branches to make the swings one year for J’s birthday.  They were and continue to be a huge hit.

The days little brother is with us, we do more fun, crafty things.  This was a watercolor project, experimenting with mixing colors to eventually cut into Valentine’s.

Sometimes things appear completely out of the blue, without my involvement.  This was one such time.

An unusually nice evening and being light a bit later prompted a romp in the field.

Perfect for rolling around in.

I saw a blog (again, Nature’s Nest) where they made watercolor flashcards for math.  I was inspired to do something similar, only with vocabulary words.  I thought it would be fun to write the word in white crayon, and when the boys painted over them, the *secret* new word appeared.  This was especially fun to include little brother L in, too.

The words were associated with the study of mountains we were doing that week.

Bee guy J stopped by again, this time with bee suits the boys could borrow.  Time to get closer than before.

And the kids were a bit sillier, too.

The smoker held special interest to my younger boy, who silently took over the job of smoker guy.  He was super focused on it.

Of course, the sweet rewards of having bees.