Aurora's been rockin' the block area lately. It's by far her favorite place to play. And, as you can see in the picture below, it makes her very happy. Here, behind her, she's built a house for Nee Nee, complete with furnishings including games, a ball, and a bowl. Please ignore the rest of the clutter and randomly placed pajamas ;)
Ever since we got back from Disneyland in March, we see Micky popping up everywhere. These are Aurora's block renditions of Mickey and Minnie. As you can see, they both have the requisite ears, the block between the ears is a hat, the narrow rectangle on the wider one is a mouth, and at the bottom of course are legs.
A 'people' complete with eyes, nose, mouth, arms and legs. In looking at young children's art, drawing a large head with protruding limbs is a clear developmental step. Aurora is far from this in her drawings, but I thought it interesting to find the same pattern emerge in her block play.
Aurora very proud of her fancy block 'shoes'. To the left is another Mickey, who's wearing fancy block shoes as well.
Thought this was a pretty cool little structure.... Now, I know I'm biased being her mama and all that, but I think, architectually, she's channeling a little I.M. Pei here a la
Johnson Museum @ Cornell.
I look at the above picture and marvel at the mathmatical and spacial learning taking place there. Which then saddens me as I hear that block areas are more and more frequently being replaced by desks, worksheets and computers in kindergarten classrooms. Sigh.
Now, having spent a number of years working in early childhood education, I know that if you look into the block area of just about any preschool classroom, you will generally find mostly boys there. This is a divide that occurs naturally by the children themselves, and you will find dedicated teachers working to creatively draw the girls into the block/cars/manipulatives, and the boys over to the dress up/housekeeping/art. I have full faith that Aurora's teachers will be doing this this coming Fall. But, as we all know, despite much progress in many areas, there is still A LOT of gender stereotyping that takes place in our culture. And there's a part of me that's a little afraid, that despite all our encouragement, Aurora will walk into her classroom in September, see that the girls are all playing with dolls and only the boys are playing with the blocks and somehow feel that it's not okay for her to join them. And, man, do I hope I'm wrong. I just don't want to see her passion squelched, ya know?
Ah, well, steppin' down off the soapbox now ;)
BTW, Aurora's off happily building to her heart's content in our block area now :)
She says she's knitting a scarf for her Nee Nee. This yarn has some sweet memories for me. It is the organic cotton I used to teach my self to knit two summers ago. I made a garter stitch scarf for Rory. I think she's picking it up quicker than I did, though :0
These bundles are destined to be quilts for Aurora and Liam... with Aurora designing her own. I plan to give her the precut squares and let her decide their placement... we are both excited for this new adventure into sewing. For Liam's I'll be using the cool colors bundle and, because there's quite a bit of floral motifs, probably be sticking to a fairly modern and simple quilt design... some sort of strip quilt, I think... so it's not too, too feminine. 
And, here, she's making sure to keep it warm with her blanket. Fabric must be kept warm, you know...
The fat quarters spent the rest of the day popping up in various play scenarios.... going to the fabric store, doing laundry, repurposed as blankets and slings for her animals, and worn as (in Aurora's words) a kerchief.
We are loving all the artwork!! But, ummm, grandparents.... you can expect some in the mail soon, as we are quickly being overrun by all these beautiful paintings.
I look at the above picture and marvel at the mathmatical and spacial learning taking place there. Which then saddens me as I hear that block areas are more and more frequently being replaced by desks, worksheets and computers in kindergarten classrooms. Sigh.
and, yes, we bake bread on the kitchen floor. The mat easy super easy to clean up, and for things like kneading, Aurora's just not tall enough, even with the stool, to do well at the counter. (okay, grammar freaks out there, yes, I do know that last bit was a run on sentence with too many commas. But, I really like commas, so there!)
It was such a great experience... Much better than our last try at temperas on the easel, in which she was easily frustrated and resulted in a huge mess. In the Waldorf way, you introduce one color at a time to the young child. I think this was key for her... she wasn't overwhelmed with choices and could really concentrate on the way the paint moved on the paper. It was just so...calm.
So, now the recipe:
By the way, the bread pictured is Tassajara yeasted bread from the Tassajara bread book. Our first attempt. It wasn't bad, but I think I'll add a bit more salt and a tad bit more sweetner next time around. It does taste good toasted with nutella though ;) 100% whole wheat bread makes nutella a healthy snack, right?
I've been pretty amazed at the level of concentration she employs when doing her tasks. She worked hard at the lentil transfer activity- and got each and every one- she figured out to tip the bowl as it started to empty, and if she spilt a couple she put them back on her spoon and continued. Everything we've read has talked about this- the deep and extended concentration, respect for the materials and activity at hand when it's presented as work, the confidence (which you can clearly see in her eyes in the first picture) that builds as they complete a 'job'- but I've been surprised to see so much of it in my two year old.
