Summer Stuff

Things we’ve done in the forest:

found a mushroom

pretended to be fairies

pretended to be pirates

climbed stumps and rocks

Things we’ve done in the brook:

spied some fingerling fish
practiced throwing rocks
sailed a paper boat downstream

Things we’ve done around town:

swam in the pond
played tee ball on the lawn
climbed trees
caught a toad
splashed in puddles

Things we’ve done at home:

built a lap loom

foraged for a shuttle in the block box

built a LEGO woodworking bench

sliced carrots
hung slices of grapefruit in a tree as a St. John’s decoration
lost a few teeth

Things we’re looking forward to:

a week at The Nature Place
August at Camp Enchantment
crabbing on the Hudson

My New Un-Waldorfy Secret

For a morning so quiet you could hear the proverbial dropping pin, even on a weekday when the kids usually get up early and sound like a ravening mob:

LEGOs.

The kids have been briefly exposed to LEGOs a few times, mostly at Nana’s house on vacation. We’ve resisted their siren call (and it required resistance, both from the Waldorf front and from our knowledge that they are so fun that they can take over playtime), but the boy has been really asking for them. Over and over.

So we thought about it, and decided, like The Not Quite Crunchy Parent has said so often, that if you observe creative play despite the toy’s undesirable qualities, maybe it’s OK to compromise.

Certainly they are: hard, plastic, aggressively rectilinear, unnaturally colored, structured, etc. etc.

But, they’ve already made about four thousand different things since I bought them two bags of random pieces and two green “grass” bases yesterday. There has been sharing, and collaboration. There was even a moment last night when all four of us were happily playing together.

And that’s not bad.