Our Real Life Waldorf Homeschool Monday

This morning I woke up at 6:30 and did my usual morning thing. Pray, read scriptures, check e-mail and facebook. The kids were up soon. We had an easy meal of hot cocoa and toast, got dressed and did as much of my morning cleaning routine as possible. Take dad to work, come home, and put on my nice red apron. I finished my cleaning routine and encouraged the kids to finish theirs. I usually make sure they do, but they were playing so well today, I just didn't.

At 10 am, we started circle. Jane (6) whined. She wanted to keep playing. Max (4) loved it. Then we sat down and I told the story for the week. It's a short one that mentions fairyland. When I was done, the kids begged for me to keep going. It always feels good when that happens. When I'm not on my game, I have to read the story. And the kids don't listen at all. But storytelling, it just pulls them in. I am more and more convinced of the power of storytelling the longer I keep at this.

Then we moved on to painting. Now Waldorf painting on the internet always looks beautiful. But I'm going to get real with you. Today, the baby wanted to paint and I kept having to pull him away to paint with his water on the ground, which caused a lot of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Not as peaceful as I'd like.

Then Jane accidentally knocked the jar of red paint off the table. It shattered and red watercolor flew everywhere. Sadly, I didn't handle this the way I should have. I sighed and angrily asked, "What are you doing?" Thoughts of how expensive that Stockmar pain is, or how I don't have anymore baby food jars were running through my head, more than the heart of my child.

And I'm not proud of it.

I pulled the now-jubilant baby away from the red paint and cleaned it up as best I could, taking myself back to a calm place. Then I joined the kids for painting. As you'll see below, these are not your beautiful Waldorf paintings. Jane really wants more formed images. She'll be happy to move to a less watered down paint in first grade.

 Max should really just work with two colors at a time, but Jane needs all three primary colors. So poor Max always ends up with a greenish brown puddle. It hasn't hampered his enthusiasm yet, though.

And here's mine. That's supposed to be the spring wind blowing. You know...if you couldn't tell. ;)

Then it was time for soup making. Max was done with school. He announced he was going outside and went to jump on the trampoline. Jane cut the green beans, and I added cut onions, potatoes, mushrooms, celery, canned tomatoes, and left over pot roast to the crock pot. Add water and beef bullion and set on low.

We ate it for dinner and it was delicious. Later on I did some math with Jane (we have a Montessori curriculum that the math minor in me loves. Not Waldorf, but I allow myself this deviation.) Then the kids played and at some point we read two more chapters of Magic Treehouse and that was our day!

It wasn't idyllic, or perfect. We didn't create masterpieces. But it was fun and happy (for the most part.) I love this path we're on, even when it doesn't look like those beautiful blogs or books.