Making a Silk Tepee

Tepees are great fun for outdoor and indoor play!

As we've found out, they also can be an abode for curious pets....

If you are studying Native Americans this year, you can work on creating a more authentic tepee and and incorporate this into lessons.

Learning how to do knots and lashing to create a sturdy frame is wonderful, too!  Look at scouting manuals for help.

Maybe sleep in it overnight?

Play clips, yarn, twine and clothespins are helpful if you want to reuse the silks or fabric.

Rainbow Silks in our Etsy shop.

Wood play clips from this Etsy shop, and this one.

Crocheting

There's been a lot of crocheting going on this week!

Joey crocheted a "walker cozy" for her great-grandmother's walker. It can tie around any of the poles or handles to make it look pretty and unique.

Mommy finished up a custom order of fingerless gloves and a hat for a customer. The pattern (it's easy!) is available in our Etsy shop and our fiber arts webstore.

Mommy is teaching a Tunisian Crochet workshop at Babetta's Yarn Cafe in Fair Oaks, CA on 9/13/09 from 11-2. She loves teaching classes!

The boys are busy spinning and knitting....more to come on their knitting projects!

Block Crayons

We love our wax, block crayons! Following the book Coloring with Block Crayons (and a DVD of the author), we have been exploring how to use the different parts of the crayons, and how to blend the three primary colors to make other colors.

This week, we made a circle, starting with a cloud of yellow, blue and red, and then creating the other colors of the rainbow when the colors met and blended. Wilson kept his drawing in a circle. Joey decided to bring her colors inward and create a brown center. Ricky moved his colors inward and outward to form a rounded triangle.

We keep our crayons in a beautiful case that Joey and Mommy made from naturally dyed alpaca felt. We created an e-pattern with instructions and pictures so that others can make their own! Joey embroidered a pretty leaf on the front, and added silk ribbons that we dyed with blueberries and onion skins as ties. We are also selling them as custom orders to people who request one through our Etsy shop.

Here is a poem that Mommy read while we made our rainbow circles (from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, by Betty Jones):

Rainbow Fairies

Two little clouds one spring day,

Went flying through the sky;

They went so fast they bumped their heads,

And both began to cry.

Old Father Sun came out and said:

"Oh, never mind my dears,

I'll send my little fairy folk

To dry your falling tears."

One fairy came in violet, and one in indigo;

In blue, green, yellow; orange and red,

They made a pretty row.

They wiped the cloud tears all away

And then from out the sky,

Upon a line a sunbeam made,

They hung their gowns to dry.

Meal Verse

We prepare and eat at least one lunch that relates to each social studies block (pictures above feature: Jewish charoset from the Diaspora, Medieval peasant/servant meal served in a castle, Moorish feast, Medieval European monk's meal). We love to eat together as a family! During lunch, we start with a meal verse.

Ricky, Joey and Wilson have been entrenched in botany adventures this year, so they made up a poem about a seed becoming a tree, then growing fruit that we will eat. With all of the recent rain, we've been talking a lot about rainbows and colors...also included in the poem!

The poem became a song, and then we added gentle movements to it. At some point, we'll get a video clip of it here on our blog.

Syrendell Meal Verse - From the Earth

From the Earth a seed is born

Sun and rain, in the morn

Grows a tall and happy tree

Lots of shade for you and me

Rainbow-colored sweet fruits grow

Pick them when they're ripe and low

Smell and taste their sugar sweet

Thank you, Earth, for this treat