First day at Countryside Playschool

Today was the first day at our new preschool, and it was SO much fun :0)  Honey Bunches & I are the teachers, and Tweeters is one of the students - along with 6 other children ages 2-8.  Here are a few pics from today:

Snack: organic oat groats cooked overnight in the crockpot with homemade yogurt, honey & blueberries!

Washing our dishes

Awesome bright chalk!

A bit of playdough

"Little Blue & Little Yellow" hugging to make green

We also talked about primary colors, so had to add in some red

HB helping Tweeters & a friend hang some new shelves in the housekeeping area

Wet felting acorns!

Gluing them in (yes they were still damp but I think it will be ok)

Service with a smile!

Today was bring your lunch day - next week we will make & serve lunch all together!  The main attraction will be homemade applesauce - yum

So, the church is planning to fix up or replace the playground equipment.  It is really fine, except for a few safety things ;0)  But get this - and you Waldorf readers know this already - these children played in the dirt til it was time to go home!  Give them a toy & they play with the box....give them dirt and sticks and acorns in the fall....and watch their imaginations!  Wow!

HB & Ezra made an acorn racetrack!  When some of the others saw them having such a great time, they ran over so they could join in the race, too!

Good ol' dirt

HB reliving her childhood ;0)

You can follow our Countryside Playschool blog as well - countrysideplayschool.blogspot.com
More updates coming soon! 

More handmade dollhouses

Another nifty tutorial showed us an easy peasy portable dollhouse - so we just whipped one right up ;0)  First I sketched it out on heavy cardboard, then cut it out.  Tweeters & Jam played w/ the cardboard version all day, then that evening Tweeters traced it onto some thin underlayment (for flooring) that we found Grandpa J's house.  She & Jam stood on it for Papa J while he cut it out, then we all took turns sanding the cuts to make them smooth.  The little dremel tool was handy for this & a bit faster, but I still like old fashioned sand paper!  It slides together & you're ready to play - slide it apart & take it with you in a little baggie for church or quiet times.  Here is a link to the tutorial:
http://knechtruprechtdolls.blogspot.com/2013/02/portable-imaginative-play-dollhouse.html

cardboard model

helping Papa J cut out the wooden version

wooden one in action

paper prototype for 6 room house

Lots of fun pretend play!

Gourd dollhouse

Dan Dan the Apple Man gave us a gourd last week - it's been sitting in a bin of other webby gourds for awhile now!  It caught my eye after seeing an awesome tutorial on how to turn them into houses.  So we tried it & it was super easy.  Jenga blocks work great for peg people beds, by the way ;0)
First we cut a door & windows (I just used a steak knife).  Then we scraped out all the old dried goo inside & saved the seeds to plant our own next year (the dogs ate the dried goo?  weird).  Then we cut windows, sanded them & the inside, painted the inside & voila!  A lovely little home.  Now I need to make another, because both Tweeters & Jam want it....see next post!  Here's the link to the tutorial I used: http://bitterbettyindustries.blogspot.com/2008/09/gourd-dollhouse-tutorial.html

Playdough & veggies

Help!  We're being overrun with produce!  That is a good thing though, just need a bit more freezer space.  I prefer things as raw as possible so I freeze green beans, apples, tomatoes - some to be cooked later, some used in smoothies as is.  SO!  I just dumped a 5 gallon bucket of beautiful green beans into the compost pile b/c it went bad before I could blanche them to freeze...I'm having a bit of guilt about it but I'll get over it. I couldn't give them away - apparently everyone's garden is doing well despite no rain since June.

This grew in our compost pile!

So far we have picked like 28 bushels!  It's a trade - you keep so may of what you pick - so I think we have 5 or 6 bushels of our own

yum! Fresh applesauce for lunch!

We also made playdough about 2 weeks ago - I've been busy with apples & other stuff since Flash left for Oregon so haven't posted much lately.

I like to use wilton icing colors - they are so bright!  I bought these like 15 years ago when I ran the other mother's day out & they are nearly gone!

Jam did stars

Tweeters did angels

We are busily preparing to open Countryside Playschool (countrysideplayschool.blogspot.com) so many preparations are buzzing around that as well.  I would love to lazure the walls before opening day but I don't see that getting done!  Honey Bunches has offered to study up on the topic & get us going - we can always do it after we open.  A work in progress :0)  But it is fun to see things taking shape & the plan coming into action....