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.