change, change and more change...

So our house has been really full of change lately.  The girls decided they wanted to go back to school this year.  "We want to have friends and birthday parties and not travel."  This is how my life with my kids works.  My first child was a planned home birth that was born with a medical condition requiring surgery.  She was premie and I spent the first 3 weeks of her life leaning over a plastic bucket with her hooked up to wires. 

Not what I had planned.

I of course had many beautiful slings waiting to be used that waited and waited since she would lose her entire feeding if moved even slightly for 20 minutes following her feeding and her feeding schedule as a premie was every 20 minutes. 

Not what I planned.

I planned to unschool they choose Waldorf.  Then we would hit the road and they'd be out of school again.  The last few years they've been mostly out of school and decided this year that they wanted to go back and not travel.  I just think of the average public school kid that hates school choosing to go there rather than travel and not go to school!  But that's how my kids are.  It's like no matter how alternative, open-minded and cool I think my options are - they are still my options and not theirs.  So they are choosing otherwise.  Since they now spend so much time at school (yes, a Waldorf school) I decided I might as well too, so have taken up teaching Japanese to the high school students.  

It's a fun change and an adventure unto itself.  The last time I was teaching it was to the preschool lot so it's a fun change to be with kids that can use razor blades and don't bite or pull each others' hair.  

Today they each made their own hanko or 'name chop' out of an eraser.  It's a super easy method that produces nice results.  Here's  mine:  It's a hiragana 'a' - sounds like "ah)  for the first sound in my name.  kind of like an initial. 

Just draw whatever you're wanting on the stamp onto a piece of paper in ink or pencil and then quickly put the eraser onto it.  It will pick up a faint line and then carve it out with an exacto knife, or in this case the class all used straight razor blades because we didn't have exactos.  

Here's another student's:  This is a katakana "ke"

And if you're really inspired to do this you MUST first check out this tutorial at Wisdom of the Moon!!  She is such an insanely talented artist!  It is this same basic method but using a photo of her daughter that turned out amazing.  I'm sooo impressed and don't know if I dare to attempt a face so for now I'm sticking to letters.  I was thinking the supplies to make the more detailed one (it uses some sort of moldable carving medium) would make an excellent birthday gift for kids in the middle years and up.  Now that we're all back in school we're back into total birthday party mode.  It seems like every weekend we've got something...