Buddies ~ beeswax candles

In September 2011, 6 families got together and started Buddies Home School. We meet together every week and follow a simple rhythm; music and movement, craft/ baking, snack time, free play and story time. Each part of the session is led by a different family. We are sharing this week's activities with you here: The children were in very high spirits this morning. Perhaps it is the wind blowing strongly outside, but they were full of shouts and leaps and springs and giggles. It was very hard to get any pictures of music and movement. Looking back through them they are just blurs of colour ;-) We practiced our Christmas songs again today, Jingle Bells was shouted out with much glee and the bells rang loudly. In the end there was so much energy swirling around the room that we had to find a funky music CD and vigorously dance the sillies out. This is another great advantage to the way Buddies is set up; we can read the mood and needs of the children and adjust our session accordingly.

After a pretty good work out we were ready to settle down to some work. We painted the salt dough decorations and candle holders that we had made last week at the main table:While this was going on I took a few children at a time over to another little table and we rolled some beeswax candles.

This was a lovely activity to do. It is so quick and so simple and yet the kids love it. The tactility of it, the smell and the fact that they have made something so beautiful all by themselves.

We made a lovely stack of candles, each child made at least one.

During snack time we lit the most squinty, squashed-by-Joa candle.

During free play the mummies sat and planned our Christmas party for next week and we also managed to plan our sessions into mid February. Oh we have such lovely things planned :-)

After we cleaned up Roisine read us the Nativity. The children helped her tell the story with a lovely little finger puppet set that she had brought with her.

It worked so well that we repeated it a second time. This time a quiet reverence (finally) settled over the children and as the story finished we very gently sang Away in a Manger.

We ended our last proper session of the year with our goodbye song, leaving just the final goodbyes, tidy up, and the littlest boys to do the washing up :-)