Day 12, Tuesday, September 29, 2026, of homeschooling my four-year-old triplet nephews for our Waldorf-inspired kindergarten began with our beautiful new play structure from Head, Hands, and Heart Boutique. I made an extra-large fabric cover for it by cutting a large piece of fabric in half, sewing the pieces together with a French seam, and hemming both sides. It is large enough to drape over most of the structure, and the children absolutely love it.

We started the day with a few new projects. I found four acacia cutting boards for the children, and my 11-year-old nephew is going to personalize each one by wood burning their names into the corners. I have been trying to differentiate his projects from the four-year-olds while still allowing him to participate in the same general activities. His peg dolls are larger, his weaving projects are more complex, and he is able to take on things like wood burning independently.

The triplets have incredible memories when it comes to projects I have mentioned, and there were a few things I had promised that I had completely forgotten about. So we started by painting fall peg dolls together.

The children used Lyra opaque watercolors to paint the base coat of their peg dolls. They are becoming so comfortable with using their paintbrushes, washing them, drying them, and moving between colors independently. Once their base coats were finished, I added the finer details, including a little leaf on the front, and they chose the color of wool felt they wanted for their hats.

Then it was time to head into the kitchen.

Working with dough has become one of my easiest go-to kindergarten activities. Homemade dough is simple to make, and children love working with it. The recipe is linked in the description box below.

Each child shaped an individual pizza, added tomato sauce and cheese, and I marked each one before baking so they would receive the pizza they had made themselves. Eventually I would love for each child to have their own rolling pin as well, but for now, they simply shaped the dough with their hands.

While the pizzas were baking, my 11-year-old nephew worked independently on blueberry muffins, reading the ingredients and instructions and completing most of the recipe himself.

The younger children moved into imaginative play with my 15-year-old daughter. Since we have been allowing more time for free play, our kindergarten days have stretched from about two hours to closer to three, but I think that extra time has been worthwhile. The play structure is large enough that each child can create a little space of their own, and they even have a slide tucked inside.

After pizza and blueberries, we returned to our projects.

We had boiled some old walnuts because we needed the shells for walnut sailboats. My sister-in-law carefully cracked them, and the children chose pieces of 100% wool felt for their sails. We used small twigs for the masts, although next time I want the children to collect their own twigs during a nature walk.

These little sailboats only require a few materials, and they actually float. Once each child had one, I brought out a bowl of water so they could test them. There is a complete tutorial linked in the description box below if you would like to make them as well.

By then, the blueberry muffins were ready, so the children had another snack with warm muffins and cold milk.

We had skipped our normal opening activities because we jumped straight into our projects, so we used them to close the day instead. We checked on our little eggs, which still have not hatched, although they look very close. We checked the weather and season using our handmade peg dolls and finger puppets, and the children had time to explore some of the other peg dolls before story time.

We are almost finished with The Hedgehog Leaves Home, with only a few pages left.

We definitely went over our usual time, but it was worth it. After a full morning of painting, cooking, imaginative play, handwork, storytelling, and little boats floating across the water, it was finally time for the children to gather their treasures, put on their shoes and socks, and say goodbye for the day.