Summer and its Excellent Experiences!

What a gentle Summer we had, we had very few days that kept us inside and lots of comfortable days bringing us lots of adventures.  There were rumors that we did not do that much over the Summer...but looking back we seemed to have plenty of fantastic adventures together.  

Our Summer was full of our annual trips to Yorktown Beach, blueberry picking and Lake Rawlings--we sprinkled the occasional down time with some fun bubble tinkering and kept cool a couple of days with some trips to the bowling alley!  As our days grow shorter and damper, we miss the warm sun but welcome our more consistent days at the park and looking forward to Fall activities and harvests festivals.  

We wrapped up our Summer with a grand welcoming of Fall!  Including a Rose Ceremony and several weeks of preparing for Michaelmas.  (Michaelmas pics will be shared in the upcoming Fall blog entry)  

I, as the founder and facilitator of our beloved tribe, could not make it to our Rose Ceremony--but after seeing the pics and hearing  about the wonderful time everyone had I must say I was a little emotional.  Not because I missed it, but because it was able to happen without me.  When I started Apron Strings & Angel Wings over four years ago I watched as it ebbed and flowed through periods of drought where I carried the weight of the planning, teaching, and overall facilitating as well as pep talking.  It was my dream to find a group of like minded people that can come together and make things happen without being micromanaged (either because they needed to be or because I can't keep my paws out of the way) while they bring learning experiences to our families.  

Thank you to our members...we are there and I look forward to seeing our growth through your sharing of what you love.

As you scroll through our pics you will see I don't have enough to do...ha...as I spent some extra time exploring new layouts for our pics.  What are your thoughts...some styles I like and some not so much?

The Rose Ceremony:

a celebration of transition

Want to join in the fun?

To learn more click here or keep an eye on the calendar and send us an email or call us so we can give you a proper welcome!

melanie@alifeoflessons.com or 804-476-4158

Is it Spring? Summer? Fall? Our Indecisive Spring of 2014!

We were so relieved to see Spring and very sad to see it go. 

 Spring this year was sprinkled with days that burned like Summer and some that chilled us like late Fall. 

 Now we are working our way through our usual Summer maze trying to find ways to still get together and embrace the world around us while avoiding sunburn and stings.

We are also looking forward towards our Fall plans of adding more volunteering, more adventure and more project based learning!  Keep an eye on the calendar for planning meetings and circle topics.

Enough of that, let's get on to seeing what our 

families got into this Spring.

While taking a peak back at our calendar, I am surprised to see that our first day together in Spring did not happen--TOO COLD!

When our second week of Spring also gave us a super cold day--we went ahead and met at the library for some table crafts, board games and fort building.

Finally, April brought us some comfortable days--so we visited Meadow Farm Museum for 

"No Batteries Required" field day.  We had so much fun, we wished we could gather there every week! 

We celebrated Earth Day by cleaning up Cheswick Park and doing a few table crafts.

Look! Even we are not immune to the strength of Disney's Frozen movie!

    

of course we made some more plarn!

What else does Spring bring?  

WIND...

GAMES...

and the SNAKES.

Every year we attempt to have a May Faire of sorts--so far it has been hit and miss--many of us start to travel in May and organizing a big event can be challenging.  

So this year Playgarden incorporated a May celebration for the little ones and our Teen Group (Soon to be known as PACK) hosted an event for the older kids.  

Thank you all for the hard work!

Playgarden Maypole Dance

WholeTribe Maypole Dance

We traveled a little...

Colonial Williamsburg with Ms. Tiffeni from Froebel Today

We were exploring Froebel Gift One this year, if you would like to learn more about Froebel please contact Ms. Tiffeni in Williamsburg, VA

Ms. Tiffeni took us on a Froebel inspired scavenger hunt at Rosewell Plantation Ruins.

And just for fun we threw in a little mini-golf, Maymont, and Ripley's Museum.

.

We spent one day a week at Ms. Tiffeni's Froebel classroom--

...Always Pleasant

                        ...Always Fun

...Always Surprising

They made their own games!

Everyone with their game boxes

We had cold weather picnics in the classroom.

Ms. Tiffeni introduced cardboard box sledding to our group--memories that will be kept forever!

Our Enrichment Circle learned how to think like daVinci for a really long time!

We always start with an ice-breaker writing game--some love it, some don't!

da Vinci recommended physical activity--so we had a little limbo fun!

and some juggling--covers us for physical activity and ambidexterity.

Mindmapping!  Hard to get started but once we got the hang of it--we couldn't be stopped! 

We attempted to replicate some of da Vinci's gadgets--first try looked great, but not real functional.  We will have to try again with different materials and scale.

We explored painting with liquid other than paint

            

                                                 --some were a bit smelly!

Our Early Learning Circle worked there way through some more letters and started Form Drawing

All ages can have fun in Early Learning Circle!

Looking back we thought we had a pretty uneventful 

Spring...good thing we took pictures 

to prove it was actually eventful

            ...some learned some new life skills

...some chilling at the park

..and some goofing around in Carytown.

Want to join in the fun?

To learn more click here or keep an eye on the calendar and send us an email or call us so we can give you a proper welcome!

melanie@alifeoflessons.com or 804-476-4158