Cultivating Childhood

I've seen this book on some book lists for a while, and we finally got it from the library.  I'm in love with How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman.  It is a delightful book that takes you all over the world finding the freshest ingredients for making an apple pie.  It is quite witty, and all four of us are really enjoying it (adults and kids alike!). Of course, you can't read about making an apple pie without making one yourself.  And thankfully, the author kindly provides you with the recipe on the last page. Buddy was my eager helper. Daddy and Button prepped the apples while mommy and Buddy made the crust. We love our apple peeler/corer! The piling on of apples. And of course, there was licking of the cinnamon sugar off the spoon! It was so rich!  What a fun activity for these cold, winter days.

Mini-cookie sheets from the Dollar Tree are the best.  We use these for playdough, magnets, and now marbles! This kept the kids entertained for a long time!

Ok, so this week is a blurr.  My husband left for North Carolina on Thursday, and I'm struggling to keep up with things here on my own.  Here is what I remember from this last week... Monday was good.  I think that we usually start out well.  Noah really liked the exercise DVDs we tried, and I think that we will continue those on rainy days.  The paper bag craft wasn't a big hit.  I made mine to show him how it works, but I'm pretty sure my son is a perfectionist.  He doesn't want to do something that he knows he won't do really well at.  Also, Zach kept wanting to eat the wiggly eyes so that was a bust.  Finding age-appropriate crafts for kids under 3 is HARD.   Noah's still excited about Monet.  We didn't put up a new picture this week, but looked through a Monet art book instead.  He really likes the train pictures. Tuesday was a nice MOPs day. Wednesday was rough, but we did manage to collect a bunch of leaves and make our ...

So, here we go. Our Weekly Topic is about starting school and making friends. This may seem a poor choice considering this is a homeschooling blog, but I think it makes sense for us. Noah will be starting his once-a-week preschool this week, and I want to help ease the transition. I'm sure this same topic could work for moms who wanted to put their children in some kind of sports or music program in the same way. Our Composer of the month is Camille Saint-Saëns of Carnival of the Animals fame. We have been listening to this great piece in the mornings. I also just got a couple of books by the same name that I hope will be intriguing and start some conversations about the music. Our Artist of the month may not begin until October. I'm not a very creative person, so this is going to be a bit of a struggle for me. I'm also trying to figure out how I can make the Charlotte Mason approach to art study work for us in a preschool setting. Our Bible verse of the month is ...