w e e k e n d i n g

 

Our Frances

 

Our sweet girl, our wild one, who spent the majority of September and October with an enormous bruise on her forehead.  Oh how we love you.

Going on.

Autumn is in all it's glory here in Philadelphia which means for us lots of playing outside, working on our "playschool", knitting, growing, laughing, and savoring. It also means not a lot of blogging.

 (visiting Robb at work at the Morris Arboretum)

 (Sunday afternoon in the backyard...knitting, snacking, squeezing sweet baby feet)

(my little readers!!!)

Since you don't have much to read on this blog lately, why not read this fascinating and important study conducted by the Alliance for Childhood regarding children, education, and play (link below). I'd highly recommend it to anyone with small children or educators. I found it very encouraging! Enjoy!

Crisis in the Kindergarten

Squeeeeeak!

Robb went to town with some WD-40 after dinner tonight...no more squeak!

We've been

It's been a while my friends!  Much working, playing, thinking, eating, learning, reading, digging, discovering, running, jumping, twirling, and loving....just not so much blogging.  Which I think is probably a good thing. So, here's what we've been up to:

  

.: soaking up every last bit of summer we can 

.: cheering Neva on as she is starting to finally get the hang of her tricycle! (She is quite taken with this new sense of freedom.  She likes to direct me, "Mama, you just stay there and I'm going to ride far away from you.)

.: listening with joy at Frances' almost constant "chatter", every now and then we actually recognize a word!

.: making a day trip to the beach last weekend (we saw dolphins are the Jersey Shore y'all! Crazy)

.: taking down every last bit of bamboo on our property (that's really more of a "Robb's been...."  I've been looking at the now empty spot of thinking: chickens) 

.: happily adjusting to our new rhythm of "playschool" twice a week (hopefully I will have a chance to tell   about it some time this week!)

 

.: enduring the tumbles that come with a very adventurous toddler (see second picture below)

.: smelling, hearing, and watching autumn makes its entrance

my "students" Liem, Frances, Neva, and Jubilee.  A pretty sweet bunch.

Sandbox (and the 100th post!)

One of the other highlights of this summer has been our sandbox!  I found the pattern here and thought it was such a sweet and practical design. As you can see in the picture, the cover opens up to form seats, creating a really cozy and happy spot to sit together.  I showed to it my father and, naturally, it arrived about a week later!  He never ceases to amaze me.

We've already had so much fun with it, playing there many times each day.  Thank you so much Popeye!

 

As a side note, perhaps some of you know that we've begun a new rhythm this week in hosting a small Waldorf inspired group here with our dear little friends Jubilee, Liem, and my friend Kristen.  It's a new adventure for us all!  If you're interested, I'll be sharing occasionally here what we're up to!  If you want to read a bit more about Waldorf homeschooling, I recently read this article by Donna Simmons that I thought was a good introduction. 

Grange Fair

This past weekend we were very excited for what has now become a Grace family summer tradition:  the Wrightstown Grange Fair.  There's truly something for everyone: cows, chickens, bags of raw wool, chainsaw displays, Belgian horses, piglet races, handwork competitions, goats...you get the picture.  You can reminisce about our trip last year here.

But the absolute highlight of the day (I think for us all) was Neva getting to ride a real horse!  What a delightful moment.  Neva sometimes has the tendency to be very excited about new experiences but then sort of panic in the follow through, so this mama couldn't help but think that maybe Neva would have a bit of a breakdown upon actually getting on the horse.  I was wrong!  She was quite pleased with herself, and I was beaming to see her feel so confident.  She even went with "no hands!" for about a half second.  ooh how I love that kiddo.