Letter G

 Olly did not find the "G" in my drawing yesturday. He did notice a lot of things though.

After I pointed out the "G" we drew our "Gs" together in our good books. He did his like we do with form drawing. Going over it and over it again and again until it was dark enough to see.

We also had a verse that went with the story. The verse has a lot of "G" sounds, so he is getting the phonics in that way.

Letter Story G

 Olly and I have started our first Language Arts block for first grade.

We used the Enki Education story "The Little Falcon". One day I read Olly the story. The next day we recalled the story and we colored our pictures.








Olly's picture did start out with a Golden Gate. He also drew the boy and some trees, with tree roots.

Then the dreadful thunderstorm arrived soaking the boy in rain dark black clouds in the dark black sky. He did give the boy his crystal so that he could control the storm and his fear of it.

Tomorrow we "find the letter" in the picture.

Finished Pillow Made From A Finger Crochet

This is Olly's pillow. The picture of Rolly's pillow is very similar. For some reason the picture corrupted.

I improved the weaving in this pillow by replacing the cut up t-shirt spokes with yarn that matches the outside of the pillow. I think this looks a lot prettier than the t-shirts. However, the yarn makes it much easier to pull too tightly. I pulled so tightly that even when I put the backing on and filled up the pillow, it is still misshapen.

The backing is made from fleece that I hand sewed on.

For the stuffing, I used the insides of our boppy. Our boppy broke after two children and I didn't want to throw away the insides - so I repurposed them.

The kids do not realize that they are a little awkward and Grandma just loves receiving a gift, so it worked out well in the end.

Walking in the Middle of the Road

This is a picture of Rolly's weaving. As Rolly has gotten older (he is ten now) I have realized that I am holding the goal of perfection too closely. We have not done enough crafts. One of the reasons is because I can hold to unrealistic goals of perfection.

In this case it is perfection of materials. The inner circle of mixed purple, blues and pinks was made by dying wool yarn in food coloring. We used a method shared from the Living Crafts magazine. Here is a link:  http://www.livingcrafts.com/blog/category/dyeing

That was a really great experience. However, the wool was thin and while I can do that once or twice. I can't do that with every ball of yarn.

The second layer was made with an inexpensive acrylic yarn I bought at Joann's Fabrics. I bought this yarn for a class of a bunch of kids. I don't buy this for myself and it was really difficult to buy it for others. But since it was for a class, I could not afford to purchase wool yarn for all of the children. This was fine. And the kids in the class did love it.

And for me, the experience was freeing. Because I ended up with a bunch of inexpensive acrylic yarn sitting around the house. Grandma doesn't personally care what we use in her gift, so this yarn works out fine.

It was super easy to finger crochet and it looks pretty. The light color was needed to balance out the darks in the center.

What's A Girl To Do With All Of This Finger Crocheting?

Grandma's birthday is coming up in only one week. She really appreciates it when the boys give her something personal for her birthday. And although Brother is ten now, he is just really becoming comfortable with finger crocheting.

We use two different types of finger crochet methods.

This is the type my older son uses, except that he keeps one loop on his finger after the sheep jumps off his finger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMQr_nLn4FM

My other son holds the loop on his lap and grabs it with his fingers to pull it through. This is much faster and easier for him to control.

My understanding is that usually kids will learn and take off in the skill of finger crocheting in Kindergarten (4-6 years old) in a Waldorf type school. My oldest son has some sensory challenges that we are evaluating. He did not enjoy the rhythmic movement of finger crocheting until he was ten years old.

Ten years old is truly late for a child to develop this skill, so if your younger child is not finding finger crocheting easy (or joyful) by age seven, I would just make a note of it for later.

Now my ten year old loves to finger crochet and he did over half of the pink portion during today's Seahawk's game. which meant that he wasn't "living in his work" but we were on a timeline, so this is where "heaven meets earth" and we just had to do the best we could.

Anyway - we used the information from this blog: http://www.flaxandtwine.com/2012/02/woven-finger-knitting-hula-hoop-rug-diy.html to make our "place mat."

I did use my husband's shirt for this project. You can see that the color of the shirt matters for the center of the weaving. I did not quite realize this when I followed the directions. I think it would have been nicer if I had chosen a shirt to match the yarn. And I would have cut the shirt slices a little thinner.

Anyway, here is the result before I finish cleaning it up and weaving in the ends.

The Eagle And The Wren - Scottish Trickster Tale

This is our last trickster tale of the unit. Phew! The energy is getting really wild.

The different types of birds were chattering about which was the best flier. The Eagle overheard and joined the conversation. It was decided that the highest flier would be considered the best flier. Yes, the Eagle was the leading force behind this decision! So everyone tried to fly as high as they could. But no one could fly as high as the Eagle. When he was sure of his victory Eagle began to celebrate. And who should stir in the feathers of his back - but the wren. Being well rested, Wren was able to fly even higher than Eagle - so she won the contest.




Brother loved the story and was giggling uncontrollably when he realized what had occurred. He figured it out before I was finished reading and laughed through the rest of the story. It was really cute!

Here is his picture. His energy is CRAZY. Way up in the left, you can see the Eagle and the Wren. He has decided that they live on an island, and that the island was made by volcanos. So his entire island is filled with exploding volcanoes. Kind of like how he is feeling right now. He thinks the volcanos are beautiful and brought a volcano book down to show me after he was done his pictures.

Also, we exploded our volcano with baking powder and vinegar last night. I think that he incorporated our science experiment into this picture.

The Two Foxes - Scottish Trickster Tale

The next story was about two brother foxes who stole the fish from out of a basket on the man's back. One fox laid in the path pretending to be dead. The man picked up the "dead fox" and put him in the basket so that he could sell his pelt. Once in the basket, the fox started throwing out the fish for his younger brother to cart off. The man didn't hear any of the squeaky noises in the basket or the sounds of the fish hitting the ground. He was too excited thinking of his future with the proceeds from the sale of the fish and fox fur.



Brother included a thought bubble to show the man's dreams of his future.

I thought it was rather selfish and wasteful of the foxes to steal ALL of the fish. It felt like more fish than they could eat. But brother just thought the story was hilarious!

His little fox sure is cute. He definitely caught the energy of the fox with his flash of red with a long nose.