They came bearing gifts

After breakfast, we came together at the big table and Gem brought me an 'apple'.  So freaking cute.  Sag quickly followed suit.  Over the next three hours we left and returned to the table a few times (in breath/out breath) and Gem brought me a little something each time.

I opened with a poem about seasons from A Journey Through Time In Verse And Rhyme, a Waldorf book I've held onto.  I've been getting into poetry in recent years and hope to bring more of it into the kids' consciousnesses.

We moved into Morning Pages, which I was inspired to do after reading a brief mention of it on a knitting blog.  I vaguely remembered the blogger being into Julia Cameron and thought it might be one of her tools for creativity.  Turns out it is.  But, I had us do 15 minutes rather than her prescribed three pages (out of ignorance/jumping in with both feet...not sure whether to switch over to three pages or not).  Sag went way past 15 minutes, he was really into what he was writing.

Onto some Math.  My friend recently supplied me with some big, fat Math workbooks she didn't need (her dad is in public education and these were leftovers).  I'm giving them a test drive figuring they will give me some ideas of where the kids have gaps in their knowledge.  I talked to them about how they are missing some content specific vocabulary by not following a curriculum.  Vocabulary which can be useful to know.  Today, Gem tackled place value to thousands. 

We went out back and played catch for a bit.  Then the kids taught me how to play Pickle.  It was a lot of fun, I haven't thrown a ball around for ages.  I need a mitt, though.  Sag throws quite the hard fastball!

Back upstairs, the kids cracked open some yogurts and chillaxed for a bit.

They were pretty energized so we went into DEAR (drop everything and read).  I started book lists for each of us in the computer.  I thought it would be cool to see how many books we read over a particular period of time, and what those books are.

I opened up some discussion on jobs for money (yes), tracking spending (no), and the subjects/themes we'll be focusing on through December (including Japanese gearing up for our trip there in February).

We closed with a read aloud from The Middle Moffat.

After lunch I helped the kids get started on decluttering their room while I continued switching their clothes over from summer to fall.

Now they are catching up on some recorded episodes of Pokemon.  They are cozy and mellow in the red chair together.