Since reading Sarah Mackenzie's The Read Aloud Family last summer, I have been striving to create a book club culture at home. The two easiest ways to do this are to eat foods that are mentioned in the book and to watch a movie that goes along with the book. 

Surviving the Applewhites is a great book for a bookclub night! Our copy of the book even had discussion questions in the back that we enjoyed talking about over our themed dinner. The girls enjoyed getting to tell Brian all about the book and who their favorite characters were. 

For our Surviving the Applewhites book club night, we ate Indian food that the girls prepared using their Taste of India themed Raddish Subscription box and we watched the Sound of Music. In Surviving the Applewhites, the characters eat a lot of spicy Indian food (don't forget the purple kool-aid!) and a big part of the storyline revolves around the characters putting on a play of the Sound of Music so we definitely had to watch that! 

Rich + Rooted Passover

This year to prepare our hearts for celebrating the Resurrection of Christ, we used Jennifer Naraki's Rich + Rooted Passover Curriculum. Circumstances lead to us only making it about halfway through, but what we did accomplish really was rich and meaningful. 

Ash Wednesday... 

I have never observed Ash Wednesday before but it was actually a really deep meaningful way to focus on mourning the sins we are struggling with, repent of them, and focus on the cleansing that only Christ's death and resurrection can provide us. 

Not quite sure why Kenley added Roy Robinson to the Fruits of the Spirit? 

Each day there was copy work for the girls to do and then add their own picture to the top of the copy work from the scripture portion that we had read. Both girls really enjoyed the copy work and their drawings were hilarious! 

We even had some friends join us one day as we discussed the 10 Commandments, which we just so happened to have memorized this year at CC... 

Due to the remodeling at our house, some days we took our lesson and copy work with us to coffee shops! 

I can't wait to go through it again next year and hopefully make it through the whole curriculum! 

Kenley's Knitting Projects

Part of our Waldorf first grade curriculum included learning how to knit. Before teaching Kenley to knit with needles, we spent a lot of time working on one finger knitting and four finger knitting. Once she had mastered four finger knitting, she made her own knitting needles with dowels and clay, and she started her life as a knitter! 

(These pictures are from early 2017!)

Butterfly:

Flower for Hadley and Pirate Hat for Liam:

A bunny:

Making her own knitting needles: 

Learning to knit with needles:

"In, around, through, off!"

She even made up a little song to help herself remember. 

"In through the rabbit hole, around the big tree, up through the rabbit hole, and out goes he." 

Kenley's first finished knit project! A washcloth! 

Kenley's next project was knitting a rainbow ball (2017)

Her next project was to knit a doll! This one took quite a while! 

We went a little overboard with the hair...

Next up Kenley made an orange kitty to remind herself of the orange kitten, Cheese Chip, that we fostered while we were living in California... 

But she couldn't have Cheese Chip without his brother Coal who we also fostered at the same time... 

Here she is with the real kitties in June of 2016...

After the kitties, she knit herself a little bunny... 

 Fingerknitting is still fun for car trips because all that you need is a ball of yarn! She has been helping teach Claire and she made a snake with her sample piece... 

Claire's first finger knit bracelet... 

And finger knit butterfly...