September nature table/playscape

It's almost October and I realised I haven't posted our September nature table.  For this month I decided to do something different and make a needle felted playscape for the nature table.

So here it is. 

 All of the woodland creatures who live in the tree stump can move in and out of holes and up the little staircase.

 When I finally finished it and put it on the table L looked at it in awe and asked "can I play with it?"

It was a nice feeling to be able to say yes!

I'm contemplating selling some of my needle felting but I'm not sure if there would be a market for it?

Oh also if you like this sort of thing then check out this link to see some amazing nature tables and playscapes!

Singing the blues for blue week

I think L summed up our blue meal perfectly when I asked her how she liked it this is what she said

"Well, I had fun....but I didn't really have fun."

L got a raging cold half way through last week and then gave it to me.  We still went ahead with blue week even though we weren't feeling that great.

So has anyone else ever considered how many naturally blue foods there out there(keep in mind we still have indigo and violet still to go)?  There are seriously hardly any!!

I though I came up with a brilliant plan by finding a recipe for natural blue food dye!! I added it to some leek and potato soup and viola mildly blue soup.

Yup that's all we had.   L declared she didn't like it and just ate the pita bread.  In the end because she was sick we cut up an assortment of veggies for her which she enjoyed a lot more.

For dessert we had blueberry muffins which we'd made earlier.  After the meal I felt sick and had to lie down. 

All in all I'd say blue meal =FAIL

Hopefully next week will be more successful.  I have a few ideas in mind.

To end on a brighter note.  Here is a picture of the fruit bouquet we made for the family potluck at L's school.

It went down a treat!

The Four Seasons Vivaldi style

Lately we've been listening to Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.

I painted four of these bare trees for each of us.  I then put on one of the seasons and while we listened to it we talked about that season and painted our tree how it would look at that particular time of year. 

I hung the finished products up by our kitchen table so we can talk about them and see them whenever we eat.  We can also see the changing season out the windows as we talk.

The next activity we did was focusing on a specific season and that was Spring.  We listened to the first movement and focused on the form.  In this movement there are four particular themes that you can hear.  We have a different scarf for each theme.  The green scarf represents the trees, colorful red birds, blue river, black and gold thunderstorm and pink and yellow sunshine.

At first I called out each theme as it came and L picked up the corresponding scarf and waved it like a tree or bird etc.

The second time she was able to hear the themes herself and had a ball running back and forth picking up the scarves as the music changed.

The order is trees,birds,trees,river,trees,thunderstorm,trees,sun,trees,sun and trees.  They are quite easy to identify after listening to it a few times and as I said even L got them after the second try.

I got this fantastic idea from here.

While I was searching for a recording of The Four Seasons on Youtube I came across this these amazing videos of sand animation.  The whole family watched them totally amazed and L and I wanted to try it for ourselves.

So here we are in our tiny bathroom in the dark : )

I used a deep white plastic tray and rested it between two small stools.  We added some sand and put a reading lamp underneath the tray.  I had the laptop in there as well and we watched the videos as we drew.

Here are some of L's impressions. 

This was so fun and cool and I know we're going to be going into the bathroom quite often : )  It would also be a novel way to learn how to write letters.

Check out the artists and art button on the right to see what others have done this week.



How to Grow a Child's Brain

As I mentioned in a earlier post we went to a parents evening at L's Montessori preschool about How to Grow a Child's Brain.  My husband and I were totally impressed and I thought I'd share some of what we learned.
The presentation was by a wonderful Brain Based Learning Facilitator named Gary Anaka.  He entertained and enlightened us by using techniques such as Brain Gym exercises and audience participation with physical movements and repetition.  Even my skeptical husband was enthusiastically applauding and saying thank you at the end.
What I found most useful was the list of Brain Boosters he gave us to help grow a child's brain.  These are what I'm going to share with you.
What Gary said is our motive as parents is to grow your child a three pounder!  That's a brain we're talking about. Early childhood is the most critical time for brain development. Oh and for those of us over thirty he said our mission is to try and keep our three pounder : )

So here are the top ten brain boosters according to Garry Anaka

1.  Movement-the number one most important thing for a child's development.  Get your child moving and outside.  Walking, running, jumping anything to get them going.  This is why sitting at a computer or sitting watching TV are more brain killers than boosters.  Movement helps and is essential for learning.  It's amazing how Maria Montessori got it so right!

2.  Learning-a child needs to be constantly learning new things.  Repetition is the key so read those books over and over until your child can recite them back to you.  That is your child's brain growing!

3. Nourishment-It's essential that your child gets enough oxygen(fresh air), water and a proper diet.  Some brain boosting foods he suggested are walnuts, avocados, apples, blueberries,bananas, dark chocolate and dark leafy greens like kale.

4. Safety-a child needs to feel safe in his or her environment before their brain is able to start learning and developing.  If a child is constantly in the fight or flight part of their brain because they feel threatened they are not able to develop.  So the next time you are about to loose control and yell at your child or get into a yelling match with your husband take a deep breath and think of the negative consequences it's going to have on your child's brain.

5. Play for fun-I love this one.  Something that is so important is unstructured play, outside in nature.  This is where I love the Waldorf philosophy.  Gary says children should be allowed to play without parents always setting rules and structure to games.

6.  Reading-Reading to your children or having them read is so important.  Apparently it takes a child hearing 1000 stories before he or she is able to read. 

7.  Story Telling-This is also where I like the story telling elements of Waldorf so much.  He gave us a quote from Einstein "Imagination is more powerful than knowledge"

8.Experience-"rich experience grows a rich brain" Gary Anaka

9. Novelty-novelty grows the best brain so remember to spice up your routine and do something different every once in a while

10. Caring-I know that everyone who reads this blog does this already as they are taking an interest in their children.  Love, attention and affection.

So there they are.  Nothing we didn't know already but it's sure nice to have them all affirmed knowing we are on the right track and our child's brains are growing every time we do one of these things that comes so naturally to us.
Here are a few websites he suggests to check out:
www.mindworkspress.com if you go to the SPECT Atlas part you can see fascinating brain scans showing the effects of different things on the brain such as drugs and alcohol and abuse.
www.brainplace.com
http://www.brain.com/

Check this out!

Check out Sunbeams and Sanity's generous giveaway of Positive Discipline Cards but don't enter because I want to win ; )

Going Green

I've been looking forward to green week in our Rainbow Eating Adventure since the beginning.  We finally got to it and it was a great success.

We started off by making our famous "green" smoothies.  These are something we usually have in the morning but we made an exception for this occasion.

First a banana and some generous handfuls of yummy spinach.  L then puts in hemp protein powder and almond milk.  Usually we add a bunch of whatever fruit we have on hand(this is actually a picture of a different smoothie)but this time to keep the green color for our meal we didn't add any blueberries.  Add a little ice and you're good to go.  A great way to get leafy greens into your child's diet!

For our main course we had L's all time favorite pesto pasta.  I used spinach pasta for the first time and it went down a treat. 

Along with the pasta we had sugar snap pea pods, cucumber and green pepper.

We had kiwi and green grapes for dessert but I absent mindedly erased the pictures from my camera before I put them on the computer.  Oh well I'm sure you all know what a kiwi and grapes look like!
So that was green.  L ate so much that when she had her bath afterwards her round stomach looked like a little Buddha belly.

Polishing Silver

L was helping my mom clean out the cutlery drawer when they came upon her old spoon collection.  What a great opportunity to practice polishing some silver!

We used two types of polish.  Sensodyne toothpaste in one bowl and a baking soda and water paste in the other.

Here L is working hard scrubbing with the baking soda solution.

Rinse and dry with the tea towel.

I liked the toothpaste best and L liked the baking soda.  I think they were both equally effective.

A rare bloggy sighting of the spotted owl...I mean mommy!

Ahh polishing silver is so rewarding.  I love to see the spoons go from black and tarnished to shiny and sparkly!