This Moment

{This moment} - This moment - an end of week ritual, no words, just a special photo to remember, savour, enjoy. 

Playful learning - sail boats and sand cakes

Although there is a lengthy ongoing list of projects and tasks to do on this little homestead, we always try to make room for play.  Today it was pirates, sand cakes (to celebrate the birthday of our garden worm friends), and sail boating in the pond.   We've also been caring for a caterpillar named Stripey, who came from the Fertile Ground Farm fennel patch - she (we decided it's a she) is going to turn into a Black Swallowtail Butterfly, and just last night she wove her chrysalis and started the metamorphosis - exciting!  Within a few weeks she should emerge as a butterfly.  Our new caterpillar pet encouraged learning about the needs of caterpillars and butterflies, including discovering this useful website called Butterfly School.

We just purchased the book Playful Learning, whose premise is that children are inherently interested in learning and we need only to provide enriching environments to encourage this joy of discovering the world.  This book is connected with a wonderful website chock full of activities to engage children of all ages in playful learning experiences. 

Maya's kitchen

We're so absolutely lucky to have someone in the house who has the skills (and loves) building beautiful projects out of wood - my partner, and Maya's dad - Greg!  We'd been admiring wooden play kitchens in various natural kids shops, but couldn't bring ourselves to purchase one. Yesterday's hot weather found him taking a "break" in the shade of our porch, building the most lovely play kitchen out of wood he'd been saving just for a project of this scale (left over tongue-and-groove boards from the ceiling in our strawbale house addition).  The kitchen includes a real bar-sized sink for washing dishes that can drain into a pail below.  Maya helped with passing tools, measuring boards, and checking the level...and by the end of the day, there it was, ready to fill with stacks of dishes, baskets to hold food, and her tea set.  Definitely going to be an heirloom piece we hold onto, and will get many hours of creative play.  Currently she is drying her own calendula in one basket, "curing" a few bars of soap on the top shelf, and keeping her dishes washed in the sink.   There's been a request for wool felt play food, so I'm working on that. 

Urban by nature - starting a local "forest kindergarten" (aka. nature play group)

Urban by nature - a recent documentary aired on CBC radio's The Current talked about how the exposure to nature affects our cognitive, physiological and psychological processes.  Spending time in a forest is optimum, but even walking time in a park or having a tree to view outside your window, can do wonders for brain development and general health and well-being.   The second part to this study shows that living in urban areas devoid of green spaces actually undermines our mental processes, health and so forth.

We've written on this blog before about the book Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv.  This book discusses how the current generation of children are growing up with fewer opportunities to interact with nature, be it in their own back yards, parks, camping, hiking, or other wild spaces.  One movement that is springing up to counteract this trend is the Forest Kindergarten.    The idea is to use nature are your "classroom", having young children explore and learn outdoors with as much exposure to wild spaces, imaginative play, and understanding of our place within nature.  There are various groups that have started around the globe (often aligned with Waldorf-inspired education), many in Europe but also at least one that we've come across here in Canada - near Ottawa the first Canadian forest preschool was launched in 2008 on a 190 acre property in the Ottawa Valley.  Read more about the exciting Carp Ridge Forest Preschool here.

Locally we've just begun our own group, not as formal or organized as a daily forest kindergarten, but meeting once a week with our youngsters to adventure/explore/play in nature together.  At this point we are exploring local green spaces, hiking trails and parks (as we would prefer not to drive to have to get out to our "nature walk"!), as well as gathering items on our rambles to build into fairy houses (like the one pictured below), nature crafting, etc.

Handmade Woolen Waldorf Animals Workshop!

Here are some quick photos of yesterday's Woolen Waldorf-inspired animals workshop. These animals are made of felted wool sweaters, and stuffed with 100% wool. It was a cozy house, filled to the brim with wonderful crafting women, busy with activity of artful sewing and animated conversation for 3 hours! It made me think of traditional sewing bees -perfect for a wintery day, and a popular way to kick off our 2010 workshop schedule. We even had more would-be participants on our waiting list, and hope to host another similar workshop again later in the fall. This session was led by Eve Geisler, of Eve's Little Earthlings. She has been making these kinds of natural toys for more than 10 years and had all kinds of tips and advice for making them look professional. Though they look small and simple, these animals take a surprising amount of skill and finesse to look just right!

Eve's Little Earthlings Etsy Store: http://www.etsy.com/shop/eveslittleearthlings
Eve's Little Earthlings Flickr Photo Stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36450136@N08/

Workshop - making Waldorf-inspired dolls

We had a lovely busy workshop here on Saturday - how better could a rainy cold Saturday be spent than sitting around a large dining room table with a fantastic group of crafty women, drinking cozy cups of tea, sharing tips on life and parenting...and being productive yet relaxed at the same time. So many skillful hands working at once, it felt like an old-fashioned quilting bee!

The session was on making Waldorf-inspired dolls. A huge range of Waldorf dolls are readily available online, but they are generally quite expensive (understandably so, as they are handmade using good quality natural materials, and are beatifully crafted). We decided, why not learn to make our own, and brought in Amaryah from Sew Oiseau to teach us!

Typically Waldorf dolls are lightweight, have an imaginative shape and are made with only natural materials. They are great to cuddle with and are the perfect size and shape for babies and young children to hold on to. Their heads are filled with pure sheep’s wool, which is known to absorb scents easily the dolls will absorb comforting scents of home, of its parents, things that are familiar for baby. Wool is inherently anti-bacterial, so theyare safe to chew on with no fluff to inhale. These dolls are popular in natural/eco-minded parenting circles as they are not only non-toxic, made with natural materials like wool, but the neutral faces are intended to inspire creativity and imagination in the child who plays with them. The dolls we made were a very basic design, not nearly as elaborate as some (see Bamboletta, for example), but were easily finished in about 2-3 hours, so a satisfying project to complete in short order.

Waldorf education is a whole well-established philosophy, and is based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. The Waldorf schools focus on bringing to life the following attributes in children:

• Creative thinking permeated with imagination, flexibility, and focus
• Emotional intelligence, empathy, and self-esteem
• Physical vitality, stamina, and perseverance
• Spiritual depth borne out of an abiding appreciation and responsibility for nature, for work, and for their fellow human beings

More info available at www.waldorf.ca