Along the Serendipitous Path with Elizabeth and Katherine

Elizabeth tells us she is lonely... Katherine is busy taking care of her family while her father is desperately ill... but Elizabeth has been trying to hold down the fort over at Serendipity… very well I might add.She wanted to know, for a small fairy fest, what others are doing with serendipity.

In all honesty, we don’t use it as written YET. M’Lady is just a little young, at (almost) 4, while Rebel is a little old at 8… but we use parts of it :)

Until Serendipity, nothing I had used with M’Lady to teach her the alphabet had worked. She wanted to learn, but her attention span seemed a little weak. Along came Michael and Mrs. Applebee, and suddenly she can recognize ALL the letters we’ve done so far!

She loves the book suggestions to read (when I can get them) and has been working on the alphabet -although I think we need to redo these a bit thinner than we’ve made them so far…luckily she’ll need something to do this week while Rebel does schoolwork ;)

Tea time… well you KNOW tea-time is a hit around here. I love the food suggestions :) Sometimes I actually get to make them because I have PLANNED it properly.

The lovely art work provided has made great attention holders while I help Rebel with his schoolwork, and the math gnomes… oh those gnomes.

All our math gnome supplies. Minus one red gnome which I had to hunt out and the story binder, which Rebel has hidden.

M’Lady calls them ‘Gnomens’. The seven dwarves are now ‘gnomens’. Anything small with a beard is a ‘gnomen’. So is anything with a pointy hat. The ‘gnomens’ are played with constantly. Indeed I had to make TWO sets just so each of the kids could have one!

The two sets of 'gnomens'

Rebel LIVES for the next installment of the math gnomes, running off and reading it as soon as I place it in the math gnome binder. THAT is how much he loves it. I only wish it went a little further (you know I’d write the stages for him if I could LOL).

Here is the 'fairy house'. Rebel was most disturbed that we had not put it outside for the fairies BEFORE winter started! I told him it was for decorating and putting INSIDE. This is part of next week's plans ;)

I have plans with the botany. Like starting in spring ;) And I have saved EVERY plan these wonderful ladies have made… JUST so I can use them with M’Lady in a few years… this being right up her alley. I MAY even work on some of the lessons with her come Septemeber, when she’ll be a rising 5 and more ready for ‘schoolwork’. And then I may wait an entire other year until she is nearly 6 :) It is all dependant on her age and skill set!

Elizabeth and Katherine, this is SO appreciated in this house.

Artwork

Some of you know that we've been dabbling in the world of Waldorf... at least as far as art goes!
Taking the Waldorf ideals of rhythm and beauty and making them Catholic has taken up a great deal of time over on the 4Real forums recently, but my kids were already making their way.

Here are some pieces by M'Lady (Rebel has managed to hide his stuff ;))

This is a picture she drew of a tornado. She also wrote 'tornado' on it. She was very proud of it!

This is a duck she drew on a 'magna doodle' style pad.
M'Lady: "I weally, weally wike your drawing," (to Jacobite)
Jacobite: "Is it a picture of me?"
M'Lady: "No! It's a duck. I just drawed it's wing!"
Apparently the picture was FOR her Daddy! So I had to photograph it!

Attempt 1. I had to teach her how NOT to push so hard with the paint brush.

This time she did not push so hard, and she had mixed up the paint more.

This is the most recent effort. The paper was super wet this time. She was experimenting with mixing colours.

All the paintings were wet on wet using tube watercolours. I mixed up about 2 fl. oz (guesstimate) with about a 1cm long 'worm' of paint. She could 'visit' the worm to get a brighter colour.