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