The gift of good food

I'm in the Green Phone Booth today, sharing the tasty delights we fed a sister before she deployed.  Bon appetit!

Learning the alphabet... outside in the garden

Check out my post at the Green Phone Booth to learn more about how T is learning his letters in our Alphabet Garden.  What a fun wrap-up to Grade 1!

"F" is for Feverfew, in full bloom right now.

Lamb's Ear grows under the "L",
with its purple spikes about to burst into beauty.  

Lions! Löwen!

These are the books we used for learning about lions:

• Lions, by Ann O. Squire
• Lions, by Sandra Markle
• Face to Face with Lions, by Beverly and Dereck Joubert
• And for fun: Akimbo and the Lions, by Alexander McCall Smith

Soaring on eagles' spirals

With our next homeschool review coming up, I'm working on my documentation.  Here are a few notes about our second Man and Animal block before I return the books to the library...

• Eagles: Lions of the Sky, by Emery Bernhard
• Soaring with the Wind: The Bald Eagle, by Gail Gibbons
• Eagle & Birds of Prey, by Jemima Parry-Jones
• Keepers of the Animals, by Michael Caduto and Joseph Bruchac (Eagle Boy story)

Interesting, I thought S would love "Eagle & Birds of Prey".  It's a Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Book, and has loads of photos in it.  I checked out "Eagles: Lions of the Sky" just for good measure: it has lovely but simple illustrations, and my guess was that S would find it too easy.  Surprise!  The latter was by far his favorite.  When I asked him why, he told me how much he liked the pictures, and the fact that it told a story about eagles.  Score another point for the power of stories!

How to evaluate main lesson books

My first "issue" of the Waldorf-Ideen-Pool e-newsletter arrived today. Among the contents was a link to an easy method for main lesson book evaluation, or Epochenheft-Beurteilungen.

The author uses smiley faces to rate students on these factors:

• How well the notebook was taken care of (Heftpflege)
• handwriting (Schrift)
• page borders (Ränder)
• illustrations (Bilder)
• completeness (Vollständigkeit)
• Descriptions (Beschreibungen)

So far, we haven't provided our children with any formal evaluations. Still, it's nice to know in which areas this classroom teacher evaluated her students' work.

To buy, or not to buy a Buch - maybe we can help you

We are fortunate to have a branch of our public library system nearby.  Between all of our family members, we go there several times each week.  Many, many titles have come in and out of our house.

There's just one thing... the books are all in English!  When I was a child, the library system included some German books, too, but that's no longer a language it supports.  That means our selection of German-language books is limited to those we have at home.  That's why I'm all the happier to know of Alphabet Garten, an online bookstore for German books, videos, and DVDs for kids... on this side of the Atlantic!  And, it's a mama-owned home-based business!

When the opportunity came to review books for Alphabet Garten, I submitted an application.  The result was that... a box of books arrived on the front porch for me!

Sarah, Alphabet Garten's owner, added some thoughtful touches, including this colorful Buchwurm bookmark.  The bookmark wishes Viel Spass beim Lesen!  Thanks, we did have a lot of Spass, so much so that T asked me to reread one of the books to him right away.

My first review has been posted, and there are a few others in the pipeline.  Viel Spass beim Lesen!

Gruesse zur Wintersonnenwende

The heaps and heaps and heaps of snow which fell this weekend created a fitting backdrop for our family's Winter Solstice.  We ate by candlelight, and the intermittent glow of the temperamental string of LEDs we have in the kitchen.

After dinner, the TruffulaBoyz made pomanders with tangerines and cloves.  The results smell fantastic!

We then revisited some of the songs we used during our recent Advent Spiral [with better candelight for the lead musician this time ;-) ].

I hadn't realized that the Winter Solstice is also called "Thomastag", recalling said apostle's reluctance to acknowledge the risen Jesus (and the longest night before the return of the Light).