Waldorf Fundraising

This year, I will be attending Davis Waldorf School. I'm going into eighth grade, and as part of our class fundraising, all of the eighth grade students need to fundraise at least $300 on their own. This money will help pay for our trip to Boston in the Spring.

My current plan for fundraising is selling yarn in my mom's Etsy shop and taking custom orders for spinning yarn.

If you are interested in a custom order, please e-mail me at thetanfamily@msn.com. Let me know how many yards and what colors. Wool yarn of sport-DK weight is $0.25/yd. My goal is to fundraise the $300 by the end of September.

iD Tech

This summer I went to a computer camp called iD Tech at the Sacramento California State University. At iD camps you get to choose a course to take. Each course teaches you how to use different computer programs, all of which are editing tools used to create games, art, or creatures. I took the Unreal Ed course. In Unreal Ed you learn how to use the Unreal Editor 2.5, the tool used for manipulation the Unreal Engine for Unreal Tournament 3. We learned how create basic maps and the rudiments of triggering. By the end of the course, we had each successfully created playable maps.

Other than the course, we did much more. All of the overnighters got to stay up late (usually until around 11 p.m.) and play Call of Duty. We got to each breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the dining commons at Sac State. All the overnighters usually got up at around 7:30 a.m. to get ready, then at around 8 a.m. we all went to the dining commons for breakfast. Afterwards, we played a multitude of different games while we waited for the day campers to arrive. Once they were all present, we headed over to the computer lab to begin our courses. Lunch was at I think 1 p.m.. At 5 p.m. we saw the day campers off, then headed for dinner. After dinner, we spent an additional 4-6 hours playing games in the lab.

These are some things that our instructor, "Malarthi", put on our board.

Then here's me and my class. There were only 3 kids in the group.

Homeschooling

There's only another month until Summer Vacation!

Since there's only a month left of school and we completed all of the state standards awhile ago, we've been doing more Waldorf based education, in preparation for the following year. We've been taking eurythmy, wet-on-wet watercolor, and handwork at a place called P&H Grange.

We're covering things that we would have done this year if we were in Waldorf school. For me, that would be the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Funnel Cakes

Yesterday we celebrated my Dad's 43rd birthday. We gave him a couple presents, and I made him a card that made sure to remind him of his age.

For dinner, I made him a pizza and Joey made a salad. The funnel cakes were for dessert.

Last week we went to the World Market and found a funnel cake making kit. We prepared the batter an hour or two early, and let it sit in the fridge. Once it was time, I fried them in a pan of oil, and then we topped the cakes with blueberries, whipped cream, maple syrup, and powdered sugar. We were able to make about eight small, five inch funnel cakes.

Molasses Cookies Recipe

Today we stayed home all day, so I made some molasses cookies. I found the recipe here. When I made it I substitued the 1 cup of white sugar for brown sugar, and doubled the amount of spices to put in the cookies.

Memory Card Holder

For the past couple weeks, I've been passively working on a case to hold my Gamecube Memory Cards. We've all been some kind of handwork project for homeschooling.

I started with just single crocheting the back, and then doing the same for the four pockets. After each piece was made, I sewed it all together. Right now it is hanging on a nail and a modified paperclip on my desk, next to my TV and Gamecube.

East Bay Waldorf

This week on Monday we went to the East Bay Waldorf School to visit our respective classes that we would each be in this year. We had to get up at 5 o'clock that morning to get ready to leave. We left the house at about 6 o'clock, and it took almost an hour and a half to get there. Once we arrived we visited each of the teachers to see if it was fine if we stayed. We got to meet a lot of the teachers that currently work there and got permission to join the classes for awhile.

Wilson went to the kindergarten class, Joey to Class 5 (grade 5), and I went to Class 7 (grade 7). In my class we learned about Martin Luther and King Henry the 7th. The teacher wrote some main events of Martin Luther's life, and then we each split up into groups and acted out a part of it.

Once it was lunch time, around 12:30, we left the school and went on some errands. We got some lunch and headed home!

Composting

Our neighbor, Vickie, has some old composting bins in the backyard. This week, we created one big new composting pile on the back of our driveway made out of the contents of the old composting bins, and new straw, manure, rotting plants, and ash. My Mom went to a class about composting at Steiner College. There she learned about the different layers, what order they should be put in, what they all do, and how it affects the plants. Right now, the composting pile is about a foot to a foot and a half high and is about seven feet in length. We are waiting to get a giant thermometer that we can stick in the pile to see how hot it is getting.
Once it reaches 130 degrees Fahrenheit, then we know that the pile is working. Once the compost pile goes through different stages, it begins to cool down. Once that happens we have to turn the pile, which means to turn it inside out. We repeat that until the pile is complete decomposed. Once finished, we will use the soil for our garden.

I got to cut up pumpkins with a hoe.

We added all of the plants from our green cans and the old composting bins to the compost pile.

The first layer was made out of straw, and the second from manure.

This is me trying to get the old compost bins open.

These are the holes I made with the pickaxe trying to get the bolt out.