Nuts Reprise

Continuing with the "continuing with Fall" thing that we have going on here... Natalie is staying home sick and we're trying to get her as rested as possible so she can go back to school (tomorrow they are making ink from pokeberries and writing with feathers). I have a hard time keeping her quiet, like all 5 year olds who no longer believe they need to rest in the afternoon, so I opened up our Montessori order and looked for something I could give her to persuade her to stay in bed. The solution was the Olivewood Nutcracker. This design is very easy for small hands and contains the mess. She has been begging to crack and eat the chestnuts we gathered on a nature walk through the cypress swamp, so today I gave her the nuts and the nutcracker and told her to go to town. She stayed in bed, quiet, which was the goal and I just checked on her now and she is sleeping. Hooray! They are doing so much cool stuff in school now that I don't want her to miss it. I am excited about doing the wool and candle dipping lessons and I will post my notes here in a bit when I get them organized.