The first day of school

We have had a wonderful time so far! Fiona was excited and happy to finally begin schoolwork and loves finding 'cool stuff' to bring home on our morning walks. I made the nature table for autumn and Fiona has said how pretty the table is.

We started with some daily chores about the house, had a walk. Found lots of straight and curvy things (though Fiona wasn't interested in finding them at first, but by the end of the walk was pointing away). Anya has also joined in to the frey, picking up sticks etc., though she was more interested in her stuffed dog and talking to "the puppy" than anything else. I thought I'd keep my walks on the short side, for my backs' sake since Anya has decided the stroller sucks about 15 minutes into a walk and won't walk more than 5 min. I asked her to speed up a bit and she sat down, hmmm. Anyway once how we used our whole body moving and singing, warming and waking everything up and got to our main lesson. For the next 2 weeks it will be form drawing (see an earlier post for a brief description) and got out chalk on the driveway and drew lots of big forms. Fiona had some amount of fun, but mostly thought it was kind of silly. She did have fun with the game we played where I drew on her back and she drew the forms on the driveway in chalk.

Then we went inside and shaped some beeswax in the straight and curved forms and placed them on the nature table. Fiona really got into using the beeswax , although she was a bit frustrated that it wasn't soft at first and had to hold it to soften it. I told her a little story about an old woman who walked hunched over (like the curve ) and her three young tall daughters and their adventure in the wood. By the time the story was done, the wax was soft.

After we finished our main lesson we had a snack and made some bread with Anya. Then Fi and Anya played a bit. Anya took a nap and we started our next lesson. For the next 2 weeks she is learning to play the pentatonic recorder and Fiona's recorder lesson was a bit of a disaster. Fi thought she would be learning to play the piano, not that recorder(!) and why do we have to practice singing and playing clapping games anyway! Well, Anya woke up and I started to sing some songs with her, Fi joined in, reluctantly. She did like the rhythm/clapping/stomping game and we went on like this for @20 min. Fiona begged and begged to learn piano and saw the row row row your boat music at the piano (we had also sung it) so I did teach her a bit. I kept all my instruction to numbering my fingers (5) and flow me (imitation). Much screaming and tears later, she satisfied herself by being able to play the first half of the song. Uhg!

Thankfully I planned to go out to lunch with her best buddy Chloe (1/2 day of school) and also have a little celebration for Anya (she turned 2 today!) This was a very good idea, Fiona relaxed, had Chloe over after for a couple hours play time and was much more cooperative. I have noticed that Fiona (and most girls I know this sge) get very wound up about their birthday, anything exciting that is going to happen including the first day of school. I guess I thought that since this was at home there wouldn't be so much nervous energy, but there was! Oh boy.

Even with all this, we all had a great day. Fiona and I finished the day after dinner with some handiwork. She finished her recorder case and did a bit more on her latch hook pillow she's making for Anya. I hope we have more days like this!