Notes on Picnic & Play

Zac and I are working through the slow process of tranisitioning back into being home. We went from the (lovely) surprise bonus extra week of vacation due to car trouble, to four days straight of driving 8 hours a day (I drove 1799 miles in four days), to the excitement of having all three teenage sisters home again, to the bustle of a week of Housebuilding Summer Camp.

Now we are tidying up the house, getting super-organized for the upcoming school year, and settling back into our daily Picnic & Play routine.

Zac did enjoy some of the Housebuilding activities and we read A Ride on Mother's Back: A Day of Baby Carrying Around the World and I got out the dolls and got him into some serious doll play (which he LOVES LOVES LOVES). We got out all of his sisters' old Waldorf dolls (I have the first doll ever made by Bamboletta, several beautiful dolls from Australia, the doll I made myself, plus all four of the seasonal Waldorf dolls from Magic Cabin).

We have a doll cradle and a buggy and he loves to make little meals with our felt play kitchen foods and rock the dolls in the cradle and push them all around in their wooden buggy. Doll play for boys is ultra-important! Sarah Baldwin wrote a great blog post about it. And Charlotte Zolotow wrote a wonderful picture book called William's Doll, which is gently helpful if you're getting resistance from a spouse or other family member.

We also read Building an Igloo together and we draped silks all around his playstand to pretend it was an igloo.

But I've mostly been focusing on Movement and Play with him. I added more movements to my Circle Time, so this past week it has looked like this:

#1 - "A Ram Sam Sam" song (track 17)
from the Seven Times the Sun CD

#2 - "Good Morning, Dear Earth" verse

#3 - "Good Morning Feet!" verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 65

#4 - "The Door's Shut Tight!" verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 73

#5 - "We Wrap, Wrap, Wrap Our Little Bundle..." verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 78

#6 - "The Elephant" verse
from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 17

#7 - "Two Little Blackbirds" verse
from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 20

Monday, August 13
We did all of the movement activities above plus I added another finger play, the "Rocks to Stones" verse from The Breathing Circle, page 84. We added some old carob powder from the back of the cupboard to his digging pit (chocolate mud, anyone?), made Coconut Pineapple Limbers in our little mini popsicle molds, and went to Castle Park.

Tuesday, August 14
We did a sink/float bin, went to play in the awesome playroom at our local toy store Bella Sofia Threads, went to the Co-op and got some fresh local produce, and enjoyed watermelon, cucumber, and golden cherry tomatoes with our lunch.

Wednesday, August 15
We were going to go to Dayempur Farm today but it was pouring down rain, so we puttered around a bit. We tidied up his bedroom, washed all the mortar off the Teifoc bricks which had been soaking, played with play dough, and then went out and jumped in puddles when the rain stopped.

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