Waldorf-inspired art with kids: working with clay!

I think this class was the highlight in our kids art series so far!  Who does not love getting their hands into cool damp clay?   We printed leaf patterns from leaves we had collected outdoors, and shaped the clay into pinch pots, beads and other shapes - the kids let their imaginations run wild.  We used air dry clay, which is a little bit more fragile when dried, but it is so easy to work with that it makes a quick satisfying project for little hands.  They could choose to paint it later at home.

The older group of our kids also worked with wooden stamps to print beautiful patterns for necklace pendants or ornaments.  They could have easily spent several hours working on their projects!  Seeing the enthusiasm from all the kids, we will include clay work in our next round of art classes for sure.

New classes start January 15, 2017 - and registration is available here.

Waldorf-inspired art with kids: Lanterns & paper stars

We are nearly done our 10 weeks of Waldorf-inspired art classes for kids!  It's been a fun series, filled with beautiful hands-on projects that were tactile, nature-based, and fun.  We've seen the children become familiar with each other, at home in our learning space, and new friendships are developing - which is so wonderful since we will continue to have these kids and their families interacting within our larger homeschool community in the coming years.  We feel so honoured to have had the chance to lead these art sessions here, and look forward to a new series of classes starting again in the new year (mid-January).  Registration will be open here shortly.

This past week was a flurry of tissue paper and glue as we made simple mason jar lanterns with the kids.  They glued the tissue paper on the outside of mason jars and tied on fresh cedar twigs.  When lit with a candle the cedar makes a beautiful wintery silhouette.  This could also be done by gluing dried leaves on the jar for a fall pattern.  The older group (the Green Saplings) also had time to make folded paper stars out of rainbow coloured Japanese silk paper.  Simple, elegant, festive - lighting up these dark days of November and December as we wait for the sun to come back and days to lengthen.

Waldorf-inspired art classes for kids: watercolour painting

This week our new series of Waldorf-inspired art classes for kids started.  We have our Young Acorns group (ages 3-6) and the Green Saplings (ages 7-12) coming for 10 weeks of hands-on art, practicing a different Waldorf-based art technique each week:  from wet-on-wet watercolour painting, to modelling clay, to sketching, to wool felting, to knitting, to sewing, to lantern making, and more! What a pleasure to host these kids here, setting the tone of peaceful mindful art-making using nature-based art supplies, where the process is more important than the end result.

This week started with very simple wet-on-wet watercolour painting in the classic Waldorf style, exploring individual colours.  The younger group spent time with yellow and red, and the older group also worked with blue, yellow and red (individually, and then together to see what would emerge).  We reminded them that Picasso had about three years where he simply worked with the colour blue in his paintings during Picasso's blue period.  Then we had a chance to look at these colours outside - the younger group spent time finding all the yellows and reds around the garden, while the older group helped to harvest flowers that we will dry to use for a natural dye project in the final week.

NEW Fall 2016 Workshops Posted!

Wow!  The new line-up of classes at Little City Farm for the Fall 2016 (and some Winter 2017) is now posted. Loads of new topics and intensive series of classes, to gain hands-on skills for more self-reliant living!  Check out our workshop page here.

We are excited by a whole series of great Herbal Medicine Making classes this fall, including Autumn Wellness Remedies (immune boosting tinctures & fire cider); Winter Health Remedies (cough syrups and more); DIY herbal shampoos; herbal gift-making near the holiday season (felted wool soap, herbal salves and balms, herbal bath bombs & soaks).

There are a number of Soap Making workshop dates (sign up soon to claim your spot, these workshops fill up quickly!), as well as Goats Milk Soap Making - all favourite workshops around here.

Also our usual popular classes on Wild Edibles Foraging and Lacto-Fermented Foods are back for the fall season, with a focus on autumn plants and harvest.

NEW! And new this fall, a series of Waldorf-inspired Art Classes for both children (10 Thursday afternoons from Sept-Dec), and adults (6 Wednesday evenings in Oct-Nov)!  To bring mindfulness, appreciation of nature, joy and calm into our homes through the creative use of natural art materials.  Read our facilitator bios here, and more details to register for these exciting art classes.

NEW! Finally, coming this January 2017 - a 6-Part Organic Gardening Intensive, led by our famous local organic farmer Angie Koch from Fertile Ground Farm.  We are really looking forward to this session, which is limited to 10 participants so that this small group can work through individual garden plans and take 6 weeks to gain intensive organic gardening knowledge.  Sign up here!

Come see us - at the Cranberry Market in Guelph, Nov 14

We'll be vending at the beautiful Cranberry Market held Fri, Nov 14 at the Trillium Waldorf School in Guelph.  Please drop by to see us, and tour this lovely school facility and support local artisans of natural and handmade goods.  We'll be there with our handmade soaps, herbal salves and other botanicals, plus new journals and eco notebooks we've been making. 

Homestead Herbals Shop back online!

Our Homestead Herbals online shop is back with a brand new look (thanks to our great friend and local designer Taarini Chopra).  We have many of the tried-and-true favourite items back, and we'll be adding many more new products throughout the next few weeks. 

In our shop you'll find handmade natural & organic herbal products such as salves, oils, and loose-leaf teas;  handmade soaps and eco home decor for your whole family.  Please visit us on our etsy store and check back often.  Everything is made in small batches, with care right here in our farm kitchen/work space.We're very excited to soon be offering more new items such as:

~ DIY herbal supplies/instructions for making salves, oils, syrups, tinctures at home;
~ herbal first aid kits;
~ men's beard & mustache oils, and natural shaving brushes;
~ children's handmade eco toys;
~ felted acorns for holiday decorating;
~ handmade rainbow notebooks for your little artists;
~ nature foraging bags;
~ many more soap varieties, and much more! 

For local orders just send us a message through the etsy page and we can arrange a local pick-up at Little City Farm in order to save you shipping costs.  You can also visit us in person at our Little Bird Told Me Handmade Holiday Sale, Sat Dec 7 at Little City Farm. 

Animal tracking with kids

We've recently been told that a fox has been seen in a nearby wooded area - and so we have been going on regular adventures to see if we can spot it's home.  With new snow on the ground it's much easier to track animals here in the city, and when we look closely we can find a surprising amound of tracks (the usual birds, rabbits, mice).  It's a good exercise in slowing down and honing skills of observation, even better when done with kids who get excited about discovering the smallest details.  We did find several nice hollows, logs and burrows, and at each place Maya left a small handful of dried blueberries as a gift (because you never know if the fox might be hungry). 

These fox searching walks led to us doing more research at the local library, and delving into other interesting links like this one for making your own fieldguide of your own backyard with kids or this one eco field guide for younger kids and then reading more about the very inspiring Forest Schools that are evolving all around the world, including this one that is organized by people we know who live near Thunder Bay. 

Even though we are an unschooling family that lives in the city (on a tiny farm, but still yes, it's in the city) we have a strong leaning toward outdoor nature-based education and hope to be able to tap into something like this with a group of other families locally in the future.

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. 

Wool bunnies head out to the garden

We try to surrounding our daughter with nature-inspired toys and crafts - be it actual twigs, acorns and bark to inspire the imagination, or Waldorf-inspired toys made of natural materials like wool, hemp, cotton, wood, beeswax, and non-toxic paints. Each year we also offer several "natural crafting" workshops here at Little City Farm.  In the past, these have included topics like knitting, recycled wool soakers for babies, wet-felting, spinning, natural dyes, Waldorf doll making, and woolen woodland animals, among others.  Since day one, our daughter has always sat in with us during these workshops, observing, or playing on the side, but now that she's getting old enough to participate in a more hands-on way, it's been fun to dream up new workshop ideas for this season and into next year.  We have started a nature table in our kitchen, actually a reserved shelf of the bookcase there which she can fill with her special finds from our daily ramblings in the yard and around town - so far, loads of pinecones, a twirl of birchbark, a few black walnut halves from our trees (that look like owls), a bowl full of acorn caps, and then amidst all these, her favourite wool bunnies and wool squirrel. 

Eve, of Eve's Little Earthlings in Guelph, taught a workshop here two years ago where we learned to make these bunnies our of reclaimed wool sweaters. Here are several patterns for making similar felted wool animals - wonderful (and safe) for young children to grasp in their hands, or use in imaginative play.  Today our two bunnies went out on a garden adventure for the first time...(luckily they were remembered just before the rain came, and safely brought back inside for night).

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.