home learning plan, grades 5 and 2

This year marks the beginning of my third full year as a homeschool parent-teacher. Because of our transition into homeschooling, however, this is the first year I have a bit of repetition of grades and I can now say I have taught kindy through fourth already. My children are incredibly different, however, and we came into homeschooling already part way through second with Lala bug, so there are, as always, new things to learn and expect.

While it feels like time is passing very quickly, and the sensitive, sentimental, melancholic parts of me cannot believe how things have changed, it is clear, even to me, the person who sees them everyday, how much my kids have grown in the past year. It feels funny, though, to be nearing middle school and another step away from kindy, with each of them.

We take a nature based approach to learning and I read and consider the child development stages and materials brought forth in Waldorf education (Rudolf Steiner) when planning and teaching. I love the thoughtful, holistic, gentle approach. Here are our plans for this school year.

This year, for both kids, I will be using a blend of materials, depending on the subject and block we are covering. My primary resources are some block specific resources from Christopherus (although I don’t have their full curricula this year), Waldorf Inspirations (primarily for 5th), Marsha Johnson/waldorfhomeeducators Yahoo! group (free) files, and Waldorf Essentials, Journey Through Waldorf Homeschooling for grades 2 and 5, as well as the Waldorf Essentials Thinking Feeling Willing program (for me). I keep a thorough list of resources, so I will draw favorites from there for fun game and craft ideas, for read-alouds, or as assigned reading (for Lala bug), but the four resources above are my core. I am not an open-a-book-and-go kind of teacher-mamma. If I were, my planning would be simpler!

I plan using Evernote (free version). I make a grid for the year, add in all the important dates, at the overall block I plan to cover for each child, and that is my overall outline. I move on to a grid for each child, listing specifically what I plan to cover in each subject, regardless of the block we are in. This helps me with reporting to the charter we school through. From there, I create yet another chart, which has my children side by side, and lists, in detail, what I plan to cover, the resources I plan to use, and the activities I plan to do. All that takes a chunk of time and I usually start at the end of the prior school year.

This year, Lala bug will be learning about North American geography, botany, decimals, basic geometry, and the ancient civilizations of India, Egypt, and Greece. She’ll participate in several 4-H projects, most of which have yet to be announced and decided. (I will be back to edit!) This autumn, she will be taking soccer and ballet classes, a book making class, and a class about Russian and Alaskan history and influence in California.

This year, Little Brown Mouse will be learning about animals, some basic science concepts, and writing from fables and legends, he’ll learn carrying and borrowing, practice more of the four processes, and place value, and he’ll do some nature studies.  He’ll participate in several 4-H projects, most of which have yet to be announced and decided. (I will be back to edit!) This autumn, he will be taking soccer, a class about flight, and a class that will combine imagination, stories, and logic.

Whew! It is a lot and the key for me is to get us into a comfortable rhythm and, for the first time last year, practice saying no to doing too much. All three of us need and enjoy time at home!

Whether you are going to school, sending a child off to school, or starting your own homeschool year, good luck and enjoy!

camping with friends

We spent the weekend camping with friends. You can see where we were. The view and the company were lovely. We spent a lot of time on the beach, sifting through rocks, finding sea glass, just relaxing. It followed a full week of camp for my two and preceded our first week back to homeschooling. A lovely way to wrap up the summer.
(The jewelry at the end was made by the kids. Little Brown Mouse had some help from mamma.)

A Northern California Year

A Northern California Year

by Nicola

In January we hope for rain

to fill our reservoirs again.

Red February of love and hugs,

blooming camellia and clustering Ladybugs.

March brings our ‘coastal snow,’

as flowers bloom and white petals blow.

April brings the flaming weeds,

as gold bursts from California Poppy seeds.

May brings sun and sandy beach swims,

Before the summer fog rolls in.

In June we pick the sweet, ripe berries,

Strawberries, plums, and juicy cherries.

We spend July in mountains high.

Canoe, hike, and swim; The days fly by.

In August, stone fruits are so sweet.

Peach pie makes a special treat.

Sunny September, with clear blue skies,

For sweet ripe pears and apple pies.

October harvest; corn and pumpkin.

Birds and Monarchs fly south again.

November colors blaze the trees,

Red native Oak and yellow Ginko leaves.

December days, merry and bright,

We celebrate the dwindling (or returning) light.
(Or December days, merry and bright,
We celebrate the darkest night.)

(Please use this if you like, but please link back to credit me. Thank you.)

re-post: a gift from the sea

This entire post was first posted on my original blog, Which Name?, on July 22, 2010

Summer brought a change in pace, activities, time, and energy this year. I've felt a bit pulled in multiple directions, feeling always "on" with my children, craving a vacation. Craving time alone.

I have always felt guilty with this need. After all, I am incredibly fortunate to be home with my children. There are days I send a very reluctant M off to work and I am reminded, again, what a gift he is giving me. Although they can be trying (I've given up attempting to keep my house clean this summer. I have been too busy on damage control), our children are also very sweet, are the best of friends, and I am blessed to have the time with them to truly know them.


But it can be tiring, giving of oneself to others without enough personal rejuvenation.

I have carved out time for creating, often with the kids, but I have had little time alone, to just sit and be. What time I have stolen (because truly, it feels as though I am taking time from someone else (my husband?) or something else (sleep, perhaps?) to make it so), I have been reading.

I have just finished A Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.


I have always considered myself a mountain and forest girl first, despite growing up by the ocean, but in recent months, it has been the sea and sand I have been craving for rejuvenation.

I cannot express how perfect this book was for me to read at this time. Set by the ocean, with the ocean as the theme, Lindbergh discusses being a woman. Perhaps what amazed me most is that this book was written in 1955, yet still managed to touch so many pieces of my own life today. How poignantly history is woven into the now. It will probably always be this way in some way.

I want to share with you with some quotes from the book.


"…Today, more of us in America than anywhere else in the world have the luxury of choice between simplicity and complication of life. And for the most part, we, who could choose simplicity, choose complication.”

“Every person, especially every woman, should be alone sometime during the year, some part of each week, and each day. How revolutionary that sounds and how impossible of attainment. To many women, such a program seems quite out of reach.”

“Moon shell…You will remind me that I need to be alone for part of each year, even a week or a few days; and for part of each day, even for an hour or a few minutes in order to keep my core, my center, my island-quality. You will remind me that unless I keep the island-quality intact somewhere within me, I will have little to give my husband, my children, my friends or the world at large.”

“Nothing feeds the center more than creative work, even humble kinds like cooking and sewing. Baking bread, weaving cloth, putting up preserves, teaching and singing to children, must have been far more nourishing than being family chauffeur or shopping at super markets…”

“Evening is the time for conversation. Morning is for mental work…Afternoon is for physical tasks, the out-of-door jobs. But evening is the time for sharing, for communication.”

“What release to write so that one forgets oneself, forgets one’s companion, forgets where one is or what one is going to do next…”

“We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror at its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life, as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom…”

“…each cycle of the tide is valid; each cycle of the wave is valid; each cycle of a relationship is valid.”

“My life…lacks this quality of significance because there is so little empty space. The space is scribbled on; the time has been filled. There are so few empty pages in my engagement pad, or empty hours in the day, or empty rooms in my life in which to stand alone and find myself….it is not merely the trivial that clutters our lives, but the important as well.”

With those words of wisdom, written 55 years ago and still so poignant for me today, I am stepping offline to spend some time at my "island." Each year since I was an infant, my family has spent part of the summer up in the mountains at a lakeside cabin, accessible by boat or foot only, with no power or hot water.

This summer, our lake time begins tomorrow. My mind, body, and soul cannot wait. While not alone, in the lack of space of the small cabin, there is somehow much more space being set in nature, and I am craving that now.

Have a wonderful week. I have some posts scheduled to appear in this space, but I won't be back with you all for a week and a half or so. Be well...

to Barbie or Not to Barbie

This post originally appeared on my first blog, Which Name?, on January 21, 2010. My Grandma, "Nonna A," mentioned in the post below has since passed away. In addition, I believe some of the clothes pictured below that I once thought were hand-made, are not, but many of them were. I am re-posting this on August 26, 2017, to link to a new post.

to barbie or not to barbie?

recently, my mom handed over a bag full of doll clothes. these aren't just any doll clothes. each item in this full sack is a handmade family heirloom.

the clothes are amazing. dresses, petticoats, coats, sweaters, skirts, pajamas, pants...
each and every item was made to fit a barbie-sized doll.


so here i am, torn. we have avoided all things barbie, princess, disney (except the kids' loveys, eeyore and tigger, which were a.a. milne before commercialization, and which i think lala still doesn't know belong to a bigger material world.) i am not keen on what barbie stands for.

but i want these clothes to be used again and i don't think a barbie will turn lala into a self-conscious growing girl. i think she will see barbie's big breasts and want to find a baby to nurse on them.

so i turn to all of you. does anyone knows of a less-barbie like doll that might be similarly slender enough to fit these gorgeous clothes, but not have all the "issues" that poor barbie has?

if not, i might re-name and let her have one of my old barbies. (yes, i had them and i didn't turn out twisted as a result.) she has already played with them at friends' houses and loved dressing and undressing the dolls and doing their hair. i am okay with this. perhaps it is all the plastic accessory "stuff" that comes along after the barbie that i have more of a problem with?

i am curious and eager to hear what others have to say about the bodacious barbie.

(if you know us and this post has you thinking you should go out and buy her a barbie, please don't.)

these two sweet dresses were crocheted by my great grandmother on my mom's side.


and each of the items below (as well as everything in the bag in the first photo) was hand knit or sewn by nonna A, my paternal grandma. (she reads my blog. hi grandma!)