Urbanite? Old Tires? Planning Underway!

The lovely Jennifer came by this week to get a soil sample, and to pow-wow the design for our mandala garden and we are very excited. It's going to come together in about 4 phases.



1. define the circle and pathways
2. build the center/trellis stucture
3. mulch in pathways
4. plant!

We will begin next weekend, Sunday morning, October 4th, with phases 1 and 2. If any families can come out to volunteer, we will be most grateful! I will have hot coffee, drinks, and morning snacks available.

We are also trying to be creative with materials to reuse, and are on the lookout for "urbanite" (aka broken concrete), or an affordable border material. This way, we can focus our gardening budget toward good quality seeds and plants. If anybody frequents craigstlist or freecycle, we could use some eagle eyes. =)

Mandala Garden

There's been chatter about another amazing opportunity that we've been presented with, and here it is!

It is my honor and pleasure to welcome Jennifer to our community! Jennifer recently received her Permaculture Design Certification and is a mentor volunteer with the Sustainable Food Center of Austin. She has a passion for gardening and sharing her skills with children. She will be teaching a Junior Master Gardener class for the EcoSchool this fall, and before she moved back to Austin this summer, established a permaculture garden (via business donations) with the special needs children she taught at a local public school in Tuscon.

Jennifer will be helping design our Mandala garden (how amazing is that???) and will be coming to Terra Luz to work with our children! Feel free to visit her blog and hop on over to her flickr, to see more of her endeavors.

Please help me welcome her.

::

Volunteer Opportunity -- We are going to have fun with this, get a group of parents together, collaborate on a design, and make this a community project.

Any takers for this Sunday morning? :)

*We will, more than likely, have another opportunity for garden volunteering next weekend too. Will keep you posted.

I Want Your Scraps!

Welcome back from Spring Break! The weather was gorgeous and I hope you all got to take advantage of it with your little ones. I did some work around the house, spent time with my children, and enjoyed some extra time to read.

Ok, so what do I mean by scraps? Since we planted the spring garden, we need to fill up our compost again and need scraps to jump start it. As crazy as this sounds, I want your trash. If it's biodegradable, I want it!

Here is a LIST of items which can be composted.

Just think, it won't go into a landfill and you will help decrease your carbon footprint. Today, a mama brought in scraps in a couple plastic bags and a paper bag that she had accumulated over the weekend. So before you toss out that banana peel, cantaloupe skin, apple core, the coffee filter, etc., stick it in sealed bag, and bring it on over. =)

A couple changes in the house. Please remember to sign your kiddos in and out daily now. The sign in sheet will be on the small table in the foyer. I also have a bulletin board with postings, which will include a sheet titled, 'AREAS OF INTEREST'. It will have listed the things we are focusing on for that week.

We have many fun and exciting things coming up! Today we introduced the children to a new medium--Chalk Pastels and they got good and messy.

Welcome Back to Terra Luz!

Andrea and Kellyann

Happy Birthday and Spring Break

We'll be closed next week for Spring Break for restorative rest.
Wanted to leave you all with a few snippets though.

And Happy Birthday to Ms. Kellyann. We lit the birthday candle, sang her Happy Birthday and she now has a handmade apron, since we get good and messy here, ya know. (A big thank you to Tanya for driving to South Austin in the rain to retrieve it for me!)

Gardening, Seeds, and an Authentic Djembe

Gardening

Rows have been placed, and we're ready to plant. There's an area on the far right that I set aside for the children to have a Sunflower House and the hubby informed me that he would like to grow melons there. As I stood there speechless, and then finally choked up, "What about the Sunflower House for the children?", he said, "Oh, I'll till up a separate area in the yard for that!" I think the man is looking for an excuse to use his new heavy duty tiller. Ha!



With all the garden talk and Spring approaching, we have been focusing on Seeds since last week, and will continue through the next couple weeks.



In the photo above Kellyann was searching and digging out mystery seeds that one of the kiddies decided to plant on his own when we weren't looking. =)

What's on our shelf


Gwen placing her seed in her cup.



Some of the children did seed sorting.



And some enjoyed pouring seeds. :)



Corbin brought in cantaloupe seeds last week. Mia brought in apple seeds this week.
If you notice any seeds while you're eating, wash 'em up, and bring 'em in a small ziploc bag.



Other Snippets







Oh, and lookie what I got...



I have my very own djembe! The children have their class set (which were generously donated by Mama Tanya), so guess what we'll be doing more of!

That's right. Drumming!

I'm back to taking djembe classes on Saturdays and absolutely love it. Today, we listed to Sherry Gringas' CD and did some simple drumming to Fanga. So if you hear your child singing a West African melody, you'll know why. Unless you also watch the Lion King. :p

I've been in contact with a gentleman who facilitates childrens drumming circles and music classes and I'm hoping to be able to bring him out to do music classes with the children like we do weekly yoga with Krista. Will keep you updated on that progress, but am trying to do one thing at a time with the property search and upgrading my permit here at the house. Baby steps...

Our Expanded Garden

If you want the full story, you can hop over to my blog and read about it. The hubby is quite proud and we are planning out what we'll be planting. I am very excited about the journey we will take in my backyard, excited about taking the time to garden with your children, and celebrating the earth with them.

Seeds, Seeds, Seeds

Since our focus the next few weeks will be on seeds, please send in any seeds you find in your grub or just walking around. I just ate a grapefruit (fresh from my father in law's yard, he shipped them to us, yum, yum) and I saved those seeds so we can compare them to others. Since our new garden area is huge (ahem, approximately 850 sq feet), we have to plan out how we're going to plant. There will be an extra special section too, so stay tuned! Planting will probably begin next week after all.

Love,

Andrea

Mantras, Table Pose, and Dr. Seuss

Che discovered some broccoli today.
He informed me that he "loooooves broccoli!"



Yoga
Ms. Krista taught us some new poses today. I tried recording part of the yoga session today, but my battery went dead (it had been on the charger all morning??). I'm super video camera impaired. I need someone to come in and start filming snippets from our day for us.

Check out that table pose!




Ms. Krista finished off with reading this book (ack! I forgot the title...I had to take a wee one for a potty break in the middle of it).



We also read from Head to Toe by Eric Carle and Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.

Art
Here's a sample of work your children did with the black and white color exploration. I will be adding more soon.





This week, we're beginning a watercolor exploration.




We've been listening to Mantras for Children a lot lately. I first heard this CD when Ms. Krista played it while we made dreamboards during a workshop I attended. I love everything about these mantras. And they're perfect when we are working on our art explorations. You can hear a clip HERE

A snippet from Monday. Playsilks seemed to be the choice of the morning for play, along with dancing along to some flamenco music by Ottmar Liebert.


And some fun napkin art found in Damon's lunch box this week.



I found a great way to manage my documentation and anectodal notes, so in the next few weeks, I'll be sharing with you part of your child's portfolio!

Carousel, Little Folks, and Sprouts

Highlights of Our Day

Imaginative Play
What we spent a good amount of time doing yesterday. Are these little people adorable?







Art
Working on Bird Binoculars


Culinary
We made homemade pizza.
Today's toppings were zucchini, black olives, and hints of rocotta cheese.







Evidence of growth in our Fall Garden as seen by our young naturalist, Lulu.


Gross Motor
Playing chase with their puppies.



My favorite shot of the day below.
Damon loves his Bobee (sp?) as much as Sophia loves Puppy.



We also jammed to some Beatles music today, inspired by Damon's cool shirt.

Lulu Returns

Today, was 'Lulu's' first day back from summer vacation. She arrived with longer locks of beautiful curls, new freckles, and a boatload of new words! She wasn't sure about her Mama leaving to go to work, but after a few minutes of some cuddle time with me, she was off to explore the added materials!

HIGHLIGHTS FROM OUR DAY

Exploring a Material: Glue

The kiddies explored the properties of glue since they don't have much experiene with glue. I simply offered glue to the children on a covered space to allow for exploration. They experimented with paintbrushes, small spoons, and their fingers. They realized it was sticky, and when semi- dry, it can be rubbed off their skin. The kids later mixed in Red, Blue, and Yellow powder paint and turned their glue different colors.

Later in the day, Lulu discovered dried glue on her arm and noticed it could be peeled off with her fingers (she wan't too keen on this idea because she kept saying "owie, glue"). It was pulling on her little arm hairs. Sophia then began searching her own body for dried glue to peel off, and found some!

They were definitely engaged and had fun exploring how glue works. We're going to continue exploring glue over an extended period of time to deepen their understanding of this material and its properties in preparation of when we begin 'collage' work.

Gardening: Since we're still in the heat of the summer, the only thing we're harvesting in our garden are tomatoes, so we picked the ripe ones, and I'm trying to convince Sophia to leave the green ones attached!

Spanish: Austin brought a book to share, Diez Pequeñas Mariquitas and it was a HUGE hit! Sophia recently learned how to count to ten in Spanish (she often forgets the number 7 though) so she basically took over the counting portion. Thanks Austin (and Mama Allison), for bringing this fun book to share today!