Natures games and natures ways....

We are told this is an El Niño year and that means most probably a very poor monsoon and a drought year for India. I pray that this changes and we get some rain or we are in a for hard year. We had some unseasonal showers in May and it seemed like the seasons were moving to clockwork and then the monsoon got lost and blown off course.

Despite the lack of rain swimming stopped as the temperatures dropped too especially in the evenings so the water gets cold. But we have filled our days wih a regular farm day at my friend Mona's organic farm. And a regular day at a friends traditional arts centre where we have taken to doing rock and wax art.     

Both have been a source of great interest and fun and incidental learning too of course!

Farm day has involved us harvesting the onion crop and tomatoes. Digging and turning the compost. 

Our last visit was magical. Mona's cow, Rukmai, gave birth to her calf in the early morning and when we arrived we were lucky enough to witness her taking her first milk and finding her feet. It was a very special morning. The girls were mesmerised too as they kept their distance and watched in amazement. They waited patiently too until they were allowed to approach the calf. Lucky we were to witness nature at it's beautiful best. 

Summer came upon us.....

Well where the days go I don't know. But summer crept upon us this year and now it's getting near the end of May and soon the monsoon will be upon us. 

Summer for us is the one time in the year where our hill station gets warm enough for us to swim swim swim! So the last two months have passed in the pool mostly! And it's seen big progress! Summer has learned to swim without her float or armbands and sky too has discovered that she loves to be underwater. We bought goggles for her and since then she only comes up for air! It's fascinating seeing how each of them have taken to the water in different ways. Sky is still weary of swimming without her float in the deep pool which summer is loving! And summer is nervous to be under water unlike her sister!...since I wrote this draft both the girls confidence in the water has developed at a crazy speed! It's been such fun watching them, as a water lover myself it's been magical. 

This summer has seen us learn to cycle too. We moved swiftly from balance bike to big girl cycles and haven't looked back. The balance was easy after years on their balance bikes and cycling is now such a joy. 

What made it more special is that ther grandparents who visit annually got to see both these firsts this summer, swimming and cycling, memories are made of these times.

We say goodbye to summer this week as we are told that the monsoon will arrive in the next few days. It's been a fabulous few months. We thank the world for what we have and all the happy times we enjoy, we are so very lucky.

Day of love......

It's that time of year again where we proclaim our love to our loved one! This year we decided to make small heart pillows for daddy which hold a little piece of our love and heart in them. 

It's been fun, we have been working on them for about 2 weeks and we finished them this morning! Our very first sewing projects!

Our 1st sewing basket.

The beginning.

Some beading in between!

Stuffing our pillows.....

And the final products!

Happy valentines to all ❤️

Valentines.....

Valentines is approaching so we have endeavoured upon our first sewing craft project a heart pillow for daddy!

As well as some beading and some music. It's been a lovely day. Trip to the market to buy our veggies and then some quiet craft time. Craft time is not always quiet here the girls get quite frustrated I think sometimes they aren't ready for it but we try little little on days we feel inspired to do so! 

Yesterday was bread making day and we enjoyed it with lovely homemade soup. 

Days fly by but we are lucky to be enjoying each day as it comes our way in this beautiful place. Blessed are we.

Learning unknowingly

I think one of the hardest things is to pin point what we learn as we journey through our homeschooling lives. I often get asked by various people from various walks of life what I do with them, my kids that is! What we fill our lives with and how I teach them. Being so young I say we don't do any formal learning as yet, but we do regular stuff and spend lots of time playing at home or out exploring. It is then that I begin to think about the definitions people use as a guide to what they do, homeschooling vs unschooling etc. I guess these definitions don't mean much but are useful at times. I think these days we land somewhere in the middle, as we take a kind of freewheeling path guided by waldorf principles.  So we do a mix of waldorf kindergarten and whatever else takes our fancy!

When I see how our kids learn it makes you realise so many things about how kids learn in general even without the formal schooling that has been given so much importance in the world today. For example, Sky loves to draw, colour and pretend to write. She has taught her self how to write her name without me 'teaching' her. It helps that her name is short! summer can sound her name and write the S but she is not too worried about learning the rest yet! But on the other hand she taught herself how to write her numbers up to 4. And this too was without me teaching her, without the join the dots. Summer is learning to colour by copying Sky. I have never told either of them to 'colour in the lines' but Sky did it naturally and Summer tries to copy that, she finds it tough as she prefers to scribble and doesn't have too muh patience for colouring but latey suddenly she has got it! Sky on the other hand gets brave watching her sister make everything into a gymnastic challenge! She is extremely co-ordinated and has a great sense of balance. Sky is much ore cautious. But watching and playing with each other they learn. At their own pace, and it's a wonderful process to be a part of. 

Broken bones and frivolous fun.

Well the last couple of months we have enjoyed lots of lovely days to remember and lots of family and friends over for visits and sleep overs! But I think this post should begin with our first broken bone which happened just as we removed our Christmas tree last year! It was around mid December, for us it was early, we just decided to put up the tree a little earlier so we could enjoy its beauty a little longer! The girls were excited and playing and the next thing we know Sky is on the floor and crying and I look at her arm, it was definitely a little bent. A green stick fracture the Dr told us, a cast for a month should put it right! Well Sky was a brave heart through the whole ordeal, she surprised us with her shining spirit and positive energy. Summer struggled seeing her sister in pain as she received a 'poke' for the intravenous drip, in the hospital drowsy after her anesthetic with an oxygen mask and then with her new cast. She stayed the whole day with her and us to make sure she was alright. They are such a loving pair sometimes their bond touches me beyond words. Sky was happy and laughing in a few hours as I read them both The BFG while we waited for the Dr to discharge us. Sky enjoyed a sugary cup of chai as her first meal after a long fast! throughout the month Sky really was a brave heart, hardly a complaint at the sometimes inconvenience of having her whole arm in a cast. She enjoyed all her friends writing on it and brightening it up!

Christmas came around quickly and we had a great day with close friends, Santa brought the girls their dream ballerina dresses and we danced ballet for the next few weeks!

 We entered the New Year with a bang, it was a lot of fun with friends in town from Bombay, lots of fun evenings, dancing, lunches chatting and generally four days with close loved ones doing frivolous stuff we don't get a chance to do much with friends we don't see so much with us living in the country and them in the big smoke! Here's to 2014 and it's already February!!!

A day to remember.............

The girls are now 4.5 and I think I have finally reached a place where I might be able to use this blog as a constructive tool to journal our homeschooling journey. A record for us, for others, that will give us something to look back on and cherish as the years pass by so quickly and time

 

runs away with us leaving our memories blurry and fuzzy... The last 4.5 years have been exhilarating. Challenging, frustrating, joyous and emotional. The inner journey continues as we grow with our girls and they show us as we try to show them the path ahead. I get time these days where I can not feel to guilty about spending time on the computer as the girls play. I have avoided computer time as much as possible over the years as we have embarked upon a Waldorf inspired approach in our home. But as they grow and as I have grown in these last few years I feel I am reaching (as temporary as it may be) a balance of understanding as to how much Waldorf can be apart of our home along side all the other aspects of our life. We are never going to be, and I am not sure I want to be, a pure example of a Waldorf home, but certainly aspects of it are very much a part of our life. But this has been an inner battle for me as I struggle to control the very strong need in me to do things by the book, whichever book that may be. I am slowly easing up and realising that all methods have things to offer and being able to incorporate what suits us and the girls is the key, not getting tied up with the should or should nots of one particular path. So you can say this is a small part of my journey over the past year or so especially. I hope that I can continue this blog as a journal of our life that will help us look back and see where we were and where we are travelling. I have been wanting to do this in my head for a while but somehow have not been able to focus. Today has been a day that has inspired me finally to get down to it! 'Stop thinking about it and start doing it' is a moto I definitely need to try to start living by.

As much as I try to incorporate Waldorf into our life there is a very free flowing energy in our home. We very often do things spontaneously and love to try to be out in the fresh air in the outdoors doing something or the other. As the girls are still small and we still have lots of time before anything like 'school' begins we really take each day as it comes. There is heaps of free play and of late I have let go a little bit of the daily activities. But I go in phases, when the energy renews and I feel the girls need a little more focused time we begin again with our daily activities of either, baking, painting, modelling or craft. In some ways we have quite an unschooled approach these days which is free. Lots of free play and as much time on our cycles taking trips as we can muster the energy.

So what was so special about today....... Well Amin has been talking about a cycling route he has been taking and yesterday he gave us a quick taster of it from the back of his Enfield motorbike. But today we decided to would take the cycles. So with both the tag-a-longs attached some bits for a picnic, our picnic blankets and water we set out at 11.30am. Later than we had hoped, but hey, getting out the house quickly and early has never been our strong point! We set off and after the first 20mins we stopped for a quick snack of lovely Poha and pomegranate.

Then we continued into the back lanes where one is mesmerized by the acres of fertile fields lined with Saris of different colours stitched together to make for wind and sun barricades. It really is a beautiful sight. We stopped to take shade near some strawberry fields and requested the farmer if we might pick a few.

He took us to his ripe strawberry fields and the girls loved picking the blood red ripe strawberries. We admired his maize fields littered with freshly growing french beans, Sky and Summers favourite vegetables! and wild tomato plants that littered the edges of the fields with beautiful green tomatoes ready to ripen. It was magical and we rested here a while.

Then we continued up and down the lanes, (the cycle was tough!) when we happened upon a flock of sheep and goats with their Shepard's. There were lambs and kids all tied to a rope to stop them running after their mothers as they fed in the long grasses and two adorable puppies that loved to play with the girls and also cuddle up to their sheep friends! It was a sight. We enjoyed understanding why the lambs and kids were tied up all bleating for their mothers milk. We must have spent an hour playing with them when we continued our course until we happened upon the base of the nomadic shepherds.

There were two women who were clearing the base ready to move to their next destination. there were four ponies and we watched as they loaded their belongings. When we spotted two tiny black kids (baby goats). They were just 5days old and were so cute. They even searched for their mummy's milk in between Sky and Summers legs. We also noticed a lot of cement type bags which were moving amongst the belongings only to realise that they too were baby goats. The babies are tied up in these bags with their heads poking out so they don't run away. It was quite a sight, something I have never seen before. It intrigued us all, and Sky even felt a little sad seeing them tied in this way until I explained to her that if they didn't do this when they travelled the little ones would get lost and wouldn't be able to find their mummy's again. It was a majestic and beautiful experience as we spent some time watching a talking with these women and got a small window into their life. So different from ours. We left before the sun went down stopped on the way home at the funfair for a few small rides that the girls have been wanting to do these past couple weeks until we reached home at 5.30pm. It was a fabulous day filled with unexpected encounters and beautiful experiences. A day to cherish.........and to inspire me to finally begin our journal. Hope I can keep it up ! Pictures to follow, until next time...