back to waldorf class . .

after the nutcracker weekend it was back to a work-a-day monday. morgana began by making tags for her austrian family's gifts. (we finally got it to the post office on tuesday. thank goodness the post office worker was nice and helped us pick a method of sending the package that wouldn't break the bank.)

i had leftover minestrone soup from chanda's saturday lunch with her friends, so i took that over for the coop group. i found them making an electrical circuit from a kit.

(almost) total chaos! the helicopter gadget wouldn't fly off if the light was connected as it couldn't receive enough charge.

and then it was time for lunch.

fritata with minestrone soup and also butternut squash peanut soup . .

and since it was svetlana's birthday, her mother sent her over with a special chocolate custard cake. her mother is such an amazing cook and the cake was delicious. 

after lunch we all painted together (including svetlana's niece who was in town visiting).

painting subjects ranged from space and ocean vistas to lightning charges to trees and holiday windows.

it was a fun afternoon. i laughed so much listening to chanda and her friends while they painted. they were making up nonsense phrases in reference to something they had all seen on youtube. i had no idea what it was about but they were very funny.

schoolwork, chestnuts and nutcracker preparations

we've had several grey days so it was nice to see the sun shining this morning.

 chanda's lesson page on electric circuits that she finished today.

we had roasted chestnuts for lunch. i thought they were very good, though i could have cooked them a little longer. we just ran out of time.

 helping out with the dress rehearsal. in addition to dressing and undressing little christmas trees, gingerbread and party girls, my friend ro and i hemmed two dresses. i finished just in time to run to the pasta shop before they closed.

time for curls . . tomorrow is another dress and then a performance. 

a lesson page and preparing for the craft fair

 chanda's completed lesson page about lightning. she included a poem by a japanese writer:

september lightning . . 

white calligraphy

on high 

silhouettes the hill.

naito joso (1662 - 1704)

a diagram of different types of lightning and how the positive and negative charges react with the earth.

 morgana helped me prepare one of my crafts for tomorrow's fair . . here she is sorting acorn caps according to size: too large for the peg doll's head, too small for the peg doll's head and perfect for the peg doll's head. some of the smaller and bigger ones will get hair (roving) and elmer's glue to help  hold the cap in place.

capes for the dolls . . cut out just before going to bed.

magnetism and mushrooms and guests for dinner

 chanda worked on her magnetism lesson today by consolidating her notes from class into her lesson book,

and by writing about a compass experiment. she magnetized a needle with a refrigerator magnet . . 

 and then placed it on top of a cork in a bowl of water to show how it would point north.

 she then wrote up her observations.

 morgana helped me with thanksgiving preparations. tomorrow she, chanda and i will drive up to connecticut to spend the holiday with my sister and her family and my parents. greg and korrina will stay home as they both need to work the day after thanksgiving. in the picture above morgana is smoothing out the mashed sweet potatoes. 

 we made pumpkin pie, gingerbread and creamed celery (and did a lot of laundry!).

 we also had guests come for dinner so we made a kale salad, carrots, pasta and . . 

 we harvested the mushrooms we had been growing on the mushroom kit from 100th monkey mushroom farm (thanks for the link to this kit eva! it's been fun watching them grow.)

 these are elm oyster mushrooms.

 we sautéed them in butter and enjoyed eating them with the pasta.

morgana showed our friends the river park before walking them to the train.

thursday work & tech rehearsal

trying to finish up lesson book writing. monday will be the final class when they bind their books.

what to write . . . . ?

sunset color study . . 

and i started a new knitting project with sea silk yarn . . 

coffee from cafe grumpy at a last minute studio rehearsal . . 

trying to finalize a confusing middle section before tech rehearsal tonight . . 

7:30 pm  . . . . at the solo tech rehearsal . .

hopefully feeling pleased about this . .

(coming back to this post from the december 2015 family matters concert, i don't see where i posted about the painting chanda based her dance on - though i vaguely remember doing so, thus, i'm just going to put a link up to it now. it was an andrew wyeth painting titled full moon. we found it online here. i have no idea where the original resides.)

lucy's tech for her picasso painting . . (jeune fille endormie) . .

waiting for the lighting designer to be ready for a full run . . (the music is so beautiful . . it's by alberto rodriguez . . chanda's music is astor piazzolla's spring from his four seasons).

walking home to meet aunt kathy and uncle warren who had just arrived for the weekend.

korrina's sweater and chanda's prism

chanda took some pics of korrina in her compass sweater . . she was hoping it was warm enough for today but it feels so cold, she'll wear a sweatshirt too . . upper 50's which is really chilly after 85 degrees this past weekend.

the yarn is eidos by verdant gryphon, colorway . . black swallowtail maybe.

ready for work at yarnco . . 

and here is chanda's prism gift from her waldorf class teacher. i finally posted about a monday physics lesson here.

waldorf physics class

 i was early to the waldorf class this morning, and got to see them run through their morning exercises.

svetlana has them chanting with one partner and four sticks.

chanting with a group of four and eight sticks.

 physics lesson: refraction. there is a pinhole in the white paper through which you shine a flashlight which catches the wavelengths in the prism and reflects a rainbow onto the second piece of paper on the left.

 chanda took these pictures and captured the rainbow rather well considering how dark it was in the room (you needed a steady hand on the camera). we also observed an image from outside the apartment projected through a pinhole in a sheet of paper completely covering the window and onto a large white paper. the image was inverted, and the children all had fun taking turns dancing around outside next to a car while the others observed both them and the car upside down on the paper inside. 

 here they observed the rainbow through a prism aimed at paper on the floor. black and white papers reflected a different order of rainbow colors. 

the order of the colors for black on white are blue, violet, yellow, red; and for white on black are red, yellow, violet, blue . . 

 painting a colorwheel . .

they would let the paintings dry and then add more layers . . you can hear the hair dryer we used in the movie below . . it's a little loud . . ah well . . 

seeing how when you move the white pages into each other the colors blend into magenta. colors on the right side of the paper when looking through the prism are blue and violet, and the colors seen on the left side are yellow and red.

the colors are reversed when it is black on white and blend into green.