Martinmas celebration

We celebrated Martinmas with our little festival community last evening in the chilly November evening air. After a warm meal of soup and bread, and many other delectables, we headed outdoors with our lanterns on a path through the woods. Our lantern walk, like last year, culminated in lighting a community fire with the light from each of our lanterns. As we warmed by the fire and the children played around us, we were grateful, as always, for the opportunity to share our light amongst these dear friends. At the end of our celebration, we sent up a green sky lantern to disperse our light throughout the larger community. What a simple but special way to honor St. Martin and his generosity of spirit!

{this moment} - musicians

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. See Soulemama to play along.

homeschooling and audiobooks

Finn's love for audiobooks reaches back to his discovery of Magic Tree House last spring. He'd been listening to audiobooks occasionally since he was three, but when he realized there was this world of "Jack and Annie" and that our local library had books 1-40 on CD for him to borrow, the love truly began. He plundered his siblings shelves for any MTH books he could find and he'd gather them, turn on a CD and flip through the book, finding the pictures of the story being narrated.

His love for audiobooks hasn't stopped there. In fact, he first fell in love with the world of Thomas the Train through books and CDs rather than the television. (Not that the marketing can be avoided whichever direction you learn them from. Oy.) He is also partial to Just So Stories, fairy tales, Dragon Tales, James Herriot, Frog and Toad and many other audio stories.


When we first bought his CD player this summer, it was with the hope that he would listen to some stories in the evening when his siblings are reading in bed. Not only did this work amazingly well, we have to go into his room and switch out his book cd for a music cd around 8:30 because, left to his own devices, he's been known to listen to audiobooks until 10 pm or after.


When we started homeschooling this fall, it never occurred to me that Finn would see this as an opportunity to listen to audiobooks every waking hour that his siblings aren't home to play. I do ask him to pause the stories for specific things that we do each time, like our reading, poetry, and other work, but through many-a craft, coloring and writing, he listens and works at the same time. And anytime I'm not working with him on something, he's playing while listening to books.


At first I wondered whether I should be making him turn the books off a little more frequently for us to do other work. Am I being a slack homeschooling mom because I let the audiobooks do so much of the work (or entertaining)? But when I hear him randomly spout off facts, like where Pompei is located or when the Titanic sank, I know he is learning. But although I've heard many times the benefits of audiobooks, I still thought of audiobooks as inferior to reading for some reason. Until Finn's obsession, that is.


Now when I see him playing with trains, if the CD player happens to be off, I hear him narrating his play, "I shall. I shall make it up the hill, murmured Percy as he chugged up the track." We are also regularly asked questions like "what does baffled mean?" or hear exclamations like, "there is something disturbing me in my sock but I can't discover what it is!" While riding his bike down a hill the other day, Finn steered over to me and proclaimed, "I'm gasping for breath because I gathered speed coming down that hill."

One of the benefits I've often heard touted for audiobooks is increased vocabulary, I don't think I really understood what that could mean, especially with a child who listens to audiobooks up to 4-5 hours almost every day. I could spend a month focused on increasing his vocabulary for 30 minutes a day during one-on-one time, and I'm convinced that he wouldn't have nearly the grasp on language that he currently does. Finn has always had a rather large vocabulary and an interest in words so it only makes sense that audiobooks would be so appealing to him.

Maybe he'll be a poet, writer, educator, (or someone who indefinitely studies literature so he can hang out in college reading forever) or maybe he'll just remember with fondness the year he spent listening to audiobooks continuously.

Yarn Along

For Yarn Along this week, I'm just starting Finn's Christmas sweater, although I picked out a pattern with bulky yarn (Cadena in cranberry) and size 10 needles so hopefully it will be a quick sweater project. I'm at the tedious back part of the sweater, but it's great mindless knitting for chatting with my mom now that she's in the country for several weeks.

I just started reading Inconceivable, after having it on my hold list at the library for a few months. I can't imagine being put into the position that this family found themselves, and I'm intrigued by their story.


In other knitting news, I finished the hat that I began last week. The Koolhaas pattern was such a fun knit, and I'm sure I'll be knitting it again soon. The hat is for a friend, and I hope it is well-enjoyed in it's funky color and pattern as I'm sure it will be.

What are you working on right now?

Any Room For Me?

Several years ago we bought this adorable winter book by the name of Any Room For Me? to add to our winter book basket. Around the same time, I found an etsy seller, which I featured here, who had an adorable handmade wooden animals and felted wool mitten set to accompany the story. The story and toy set have remained one of our favorite winter book basket treasures.

Fast forward to homeschooling Finn this year and my decision to order a couple of magazines for Finn and I to leaf through during our reading time each morning. One of the magazines that I decided to order for him, after great consideration because the magazine was on the expensive side, was Ladybug magazine. This magazine is truly a treasure for young children. With finger plays, folk songs (with links to the audio file online), poetry, beautiful gentle illustrations, and seasonal story goodness, this magazine is chock full of so much to enjoy that it generally takes us 2-3 days to wade through the entire issue and even then we frequently come back to the stories or songs for the rest of the month.

How delighted were we to discover that the Nov/Dec issue, which just arrived, contained the story and beautiful illustrations to our beloved Any Room For Me? But even more exciting, the sheet of paper animals, mitten, woodpile and a cottage to be cut and assembled and played with ALL. DAY. LONG. Needless to say, we didn't get any further in this issue. ;)


Finn did most of the cutting of the paper animals by himself, with a little bit of help on the cottage. He did have to tape a couple that tore in inconvenient places, but that's part of the scissor-learning process.


And he was able to match the mouse, frog, hare, fox, wild boar and huge bear to all of his wooden pieces from his mitten set. How exciting!


All day Finn alternately narrated the story with his paper animals,


and wooden animals. What a sweet kind of play to capture his imagination!


I'm sure we'll get more use out of both animal sets, the magazine, and the book over the coming months as we head into winter.

And I can't wait to see what other good bits are in this issue of Ladybug. I already saw a peek of knitting, sheep, mittens and hot cocoa on other pages. As Finn excitedly says, "more to come! There's more to come, Mama!"

5k

{Paulie and a friend, goofing off before the race}

Paulie ran his 9th 5k on Saturday morning in near freezing conditions, which I think were harder on the spectators than the runners. He didn't beat his best time of 21 minutes but came in at a respectable 24 minutes so he was happy. Congratulations, Paulie, on another well-run race!

{this moment} - the hours of his day

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. See Soulemama to play along.

Yarn Along

I'm finally on to something new for this Yarn Along. The socks and scarf are finally finished, and I'm so over looking at them that I didn't even take a photo of the finished products. I'm really feeling pressed to get to a few Christmas present projects so onward and upward. This yarn that I showed you last week is on the needles now. Pumpkin Pie Baby left me a link for the Koolhaas pattern, and I thought it was just perfect for this hand-dyed unusual green organic wool yarn that I acquired at our sheep farm's farm fest recently.

You can see that I'm just starting to get into the cables so maybe next week there will be more pattern to actually see. (Or if I'm lucky, maybe it will be finished!)

We're still doing quite a bit of seasonal reading right now, including a beautiful poem called November by Alice Cary from one of our favorite poetry books.

in the kitchen...

It's been about 2 months since I started experimenting with soaked grains and other kitchen "brews". Even if every single experiment hasn't been a resounding success (ahem, water kefir), I've learned so much from each trial and error and have developed quite a repertoire of recipes that the family enjoys.

One of our favorite breads lately is this soaked spelt pumpkin bread. It literally disappears the minute I cut it. It doesn't rise too much, but the bread really is not dense. One coincidental benefit I've noticed since I began soaking grains is that whole grains that are soaked don't really have the dense whole grain taste. They really are quite light if not visually fluffy.


Similarly, these blender pancakes (and the gingerbread counterpart, which we'll be trying this weekend) have become our go-to pancake recipe. Even though they look as flat as, well, a pancake, they are ever so slightly sour and quite delicious. I've even subbed 1/2 cup of the buttermilk with 3/4 cup of pumpkin (and added a few spices) to make blender pumpkin pancakes.


In other kitchen brewing news, after listening to the kids protest the "runny" yogurt for a week or so, I started straining the whey out of the yogurt which seemed to solve their problems. I strain the yogurt on muslin for 1/2 - 1 hour before mixing the yogurt with some vanilla syrup or jam. Much happier children!


The added benefit of this discovery: whey! Now I have a near constant supply of whey which we use for thinning oatmeal, adding to smoothies, or...


fermented ketchup! The kids are a little less-than-enthused about the ketchup, so I'm still mixing regular ketchup with this fermented ketchup on their plates. But hopefully they'll convert soon. I decided during this batch to add a bit more raw honey so we'll see if that helps the taste. I actually really enjoy the slightly tart taste and the raw acv, honey and whey are awesome additions. I also discovered that a half cup of this ketchup with 1/2 tsp of Bragg's liquid aminos, 1 tbsp molasses and a rounded 1/2 tbsp brown sugar makes a great barbecue sauce!


I'm starting to get just a bit better at meal planning too which meals that any grain or bean that can be sprouted is being soaked for a few days before consumption.

I usually remember to remove the soaking grains, etc from the oven before turning it on, although we've had a few close calls! Probably 5-6 days each week my oven now looks like this when you open the door:


That oven light is the perfect temperature regulator for soaking grains, culturing yogurt and sourdough. After losing a bit of momentum on my sourdough over the summer, what with travel and a generally hot kitchen, I'm back to making weekly sourdough and my sourdough starter has returned to good health. (I had some wonky, flat-ish loaves for a while that I'm now convinced were the result of the starter resting too long and needing to build up a good supply of beneficial bacteria.)

(I had some wonky, flat-ish loaves for a while that I'm now convinced were the result of the starter resting too long and needing several weeks of regular use to build up a good supply of beneficial bacteria again.)


The proof is in the bagels. The sourdough is back and better than ever! My goal, after some heavy hinting to the husband, is to somehow acquire this long stoneware loaf pan so I can make more of our sandwich bread.

It's all a process, and I'm learning more every day! Have you been working with soaking, fermenting or culturing lately? Please share!