We have taken the leap. We have taken drastic steps to Waldorf our home..... All the precious plastic baby toys, in a heap, and ready to be sold!

I will be using the proceeds to buy beautiful silks and sturdy wooden toys, quality art supplies and inspirational books! What a trade off!!! No comparrison. I am so excited!

To be honest, I felt totally overwhelmed today. I have been studying Steiner, and trying to cram my head and heart with so much information, that it left me feeling a little drained today, and so totally inefficient.....

Anybody out there relate to that?

Is anybody even reading this blog apart from my family?

I am really tired tonight, so just wanted to post our resident photographers pics of the day.....


God bless

T for tadpole

T is for Tie Dye.... our first attempt... yippee!!!

The wonderful thing about homeschooling is the opportunity to rearrange your schedule at a moments notice. We had an unfortunate death in the family, and attended the funeral on wednesday, with that and daddy coming home, our week hit a little speed wobble, which resulted in us only continuing on thursday afternoon with lessons.

Our letter introduction for T took place under coconut trees, so we went out to source a coconut, and as Melissa Neilson suggests, asked Warrior to attempt opening it. We had some laughs, watching the boys try everything.

Finally daddy lends a hand with the rolling pin, and finally the sharpest knife in the draw..... It finally opened, and the boys tasted coconut milk for the first time.

We made coconut crunchies... yummy.

We went off to the Magical Magnolia Dell to look for tadpoles, but the flash floods seem to have washed them all downstream. The boys were pretty dissapointed, as they were looking forward to raising some frogs.

We did find a gnomes home, though.... and this marvellous tree

in the perfect shape of T.

It was wonderful to have daddy with us for the lessons, I think he really enjoyed them, and was suprised at how much the boys are learning. They explained to him how the earthworms come to the surface after heavy rains, explaining the masses of hadida birds, and then they showed him our earthworm farm and explained how they make tunnels for water and oxygen to get to the root babies under the earth.

We saw this marvellous sunset and rainbow on the way home.

Daddy even memorised our bedtime story, so after I told them the story of St George and the dragon, he told us the story of wise king Soloman.

letter S

Today we continued with S.


Warrior and I walked around the garden after circle time (sing a song of sixpence went down well, I have a crow puppet) while he retold the story of the 6 swans to me. On the walk, we found a little baby woodpecker that had fallen out of its nest. We fetched a towel, careful not to get our scent on the birdie, and put him back in his nest. I really hope it worked. He looked so frightened, the poor thing.

After all the commotion we finally settled in to our work for the day.




This was my blackboard drawing for the story. (apparently my chalkboard skills will improve with practice)
Warrior drew 2 beautiful pictures of the Swans and of the king and queen.

We then made Streams in our Sandpit. (yes, its red day. Gift got wet as usual).

We made this Spider out of two black pom poms and black pipe cleaners.



We had Soup for supper.


We made a black forest cake for daddy to celebrate his return from a business trip.

All in all a good day, except for some sad news about a close relative.


It makes you more determined to appreciate every precious moment we are given on this earth.


Precious treasure found : this giant oak leaf.... it takes pride of place hanging above our nature table.

yes, the picture is sideways..... I am too tired to figure out how to turn it... just turn your computer on its side....... ha ha ha.



Thank you for sharing this with us, and God Bless.

Letter S

We had such a lovely day today. I had so much planned, we couldn't get through it all.

After circle time, and our daily march to collect things for the nature table, we continued with our journey with the Wise Sophia, as the children walk down the zig zag path to the stream. A few weeks ago I created this box, and a few of the props, to help to tell the story day by day. It is similar to a puppet show, and Warrior really enjoys watching it change daily. I also draw a blackboard drawing of the story.

The children are little handmade gnomes, the trees we made ourselves, and for todays story, the stream was some lovely blue wool that looked like a shimmering stream, and the zig zag path were some of our wooden blocks.


After the story we practiced the form with tie died clay ( ha ha ha) yes, I made the three primary colours, and we managed to keep them seperate for 2 weeks, but they are now officially all blended together.

We had sandwiches cut in the the form of the day(zig zag), and then I told them the story of the 6 swans to introduce the letter S. The boys got really into the story, as did Blessing, who kept putting the props into her mouth. I laid out the show on the carpet, it took up the whole lounge, as we built the castle, the forest hide away, and the wiches hut, in between the wooden trees(forest). The gnomes were the 7 children, and then I got really creative, and cut 6 of Isabellas wet wipes(clean ones) in to little jackets to throw over the gnomes when the witch casts her spell on them turning them into swans.
The boys got really involved flying the "swans" around the forest.

Well, I remembered that we have a beautiful lake nearby, where I got married actually, that is surrounded by oak trees and , yes, swans.... so we took a bag of bread and set off to feed the swans.
The camera battery decided to die, so unfortunately there are no pictures, but we will be going back very soon, as we spent the afternoon gathering Treasures for the nauture table. Swan feathers, acorns and pebbles.

Tomorrow we will draw a few pictures, I didnt worry too much about it today, as the boys really enjoyed the outing, and I am just following there rhythm at the moment. It doesnt help to cram so much into the day, that they ending up missing the point of the story.
The most beautiful thing Warrior said to me at bed time was " Mommy, my form for last week(curves) is the same shape dolphins make when they jump out of the water". Well, at least we are doing something right... he is grasping the form drawing concept and feeling it flow.... I couldn't be happier.

Have a blessed evening!

We had fun today! It was GREEN day, but have decided not to colour our food every day........ food colouring is artificial..... not too healthy...

We dont do school on fridays, so we just had fun. At the gym, Warrior made it to the top of the climbing wall. When we got home they were still full of energy, so we put the jumping castle up in the lounge and filled it with balls. The boys had fun taking turns defending the castle from enemies.

Warrior made us veggie fingers for lunch in the shape of his form for the week, and then we just spent the day together like 4 best friends, doodling with crayons and play dough.

At some point I remember feeling that this is the happiest any one person can feel! There is no where in the world I would rather be, and I am truly blessed to be experiencing this journey. Yes, its tough at times, but the special moments are plenty and far outweigh the difficult ones.

A really special moment today was when Gift found this baby lizard. We called him Luna, and he stayed on miguels neck for easy 30 minutes, before his mommy called him home for dinner.

Supper was brontosorous pizza ala Gift........

Thank you for sharing our day!!!!

orange day

We are following Melisa Neilson's wonderful curriculum guide.
For those unfamilier with it, each day of the week has its own Planet, food, form and colour. Today was Orange!
We have taken to arranging our cupboards into colours of the rainbow, and it's also an opportunity for me to explore the art of tiedye... one of my personal loves, so keep posted.... you will soon see our first attempts.

But back to "Orange" day.

Our week is planned according to a circular guide, and every morning, the boys take turns to turn the dial to see what we will be having for breakfast and what colour we have to wear for the day.

Their t-shirts today were brown with orange stitching and orange shorts. You may notice that later on, Gift is wearing blue..... yes, he does go through quite a few clothes every day, with his love for water, sand and mud..... and baking... he will get a little of each of the ingredients on his shirt and in his hair.. lol.

But he had the best intentions when he suggested we colour our pancakes orange too.... a fun colour experiment with red and yellow food dye, and they tasted surprisingly delicious!

Gift is turning into a regular little chef, and I must say, I love his enthusiasm!!! It is contagious....

treasure discovery

Our letter for the week was "M", so we walked it, marched it, play dough'ed it, painted it and drew it. We made a treasure map last night, so I thought it relevant to show them the greatest treasure of all..... the library. The boys were amazed at the size and all the books. After 2 hours, these are our first ever library books....... all ours... for a full 2 weeks......

Warrior proudly shows off his library card.

first post

hello, and welcome to dragonflies and butterflies...

My blogs will be written sporadically in between homeschooling, breastfeeding, cooking, cleaning and playing dress up.

As we speak, I am typing one handed while breastfeeding Blessing(7 months old), supervising Gift(4yrs old) who is making us tortillas for supper, and watching Warrior(6 years old) spinning around the lounge with a cloak draped over his head. Yes, I am a very lucky mom indeed, to share my days with 3 of the most beautiful souls, who keep me entertained every second of the day, who have taught me about life and I continue to learn from them every day.

When I first considered homeschooling, a fellow homeschooler said to me, "when you spend every minute of every day with your children, you will start to see yourself in them. You might not like what you see."

She was right. But it has given me the determination to be a better person, and its something I work on every day.

I have learnt so much through the blogs of other homeschooling moms, that I wanted to give something back.

So this is our introduction. I am not perfect, but I have a dream life, sharing it with the most wonderful supportive man in the world, who is also the best daddy I could have asked for.

My first pictures are of our day today. Gift made these tortillas. Very easy. Even a 4 year old can do it...

tortillas:

3 cups flour

1/2 t spoon baking powder

pinch of salt

sift together.

cut in 1/2 cup of butter/marg

until the mixture resembles oats

3/4 cup of water.

knead for 5 minutes.

cover and stand for 30 min.

roll into balls (size depends on size of tortilla you want)

leave for 25 min.

roll out, and fry like a pancake.

fill with whatever you fancy. We made chicken strips, avo, lettuce and tomatoe, but last week we had them with mince.
Gift insisted on sitting on the washing basket. :}

Enjoy!