Winter Window Stars

It does not snow here, but I would like my children to feel a deep connection with the seasons. When Winter comes, we sing Winter songs, do Winter crafts, and decorate our home in the spirit of Winter. One thing we do to bring Winter into our home is make "snowflakes" that will last all winter. See this post for directions on making window stars. For Winter, we just use all-white kite paper, but you can make them out of regular old paper, in any color. How do you bring Winter into your home?

Nature Toto

It is a little tricky at times to keep up a mamatoto group now that most of the totos are in school and most of the mamas are working. The nap schedules of the second crop of totos usually conflicts, and it's hard to find a day and time that works for everyone. Our answer to this was to add more times to meet up. My favorite of the additions is "Friendly Fridays," otherwise known as "Nature Toto." We try to get out in the beautiful nature of Santa Barbara every Friday morning and have done things like: apple picking, blueberry picking, hikes (such as Coldsprings, pictured), the butterflies at Elwood, The Backyard at the NHM, miniature donkey-riding in Santa Ynez, the beach, and White Rock. I am much less concerned with getting my girls in organized-anything (sports, ballet, other classes) as I am with getting them in nature. While organized activities can lend an atmosphere of competition, our Nature Toto has fostered cooperation (building teepees together, searching for treasure, playing house in the roots of a tree...) while still giving the children plenty of opportunities to develop their gross motor skills. And all the while they are developing an attitude of love and respect for our Mother Earth!

Waldorf Playstands

The playstands have migrated into the den for now. This was an investment, but well worth it!

Autumn Princess

Becca from Cedar Ring Circle gave us the idea to fingerknit a crown and weave fall leaves through it. This was much easier than the sewn fall leaf crown we attempted last year. (We used a knitting tower for the crown.)

Autumn Nature Table

Autumn Nature Table

Spring Baskets and Egg Dying

For the basket: About 4-7 days before you want to use your basket, have your child spoon some soil, and then some wheat berries, and then some more soil into a small dish. Keep watering it a little each day. The wheat berries will shoot up grass. When it's tall enough, place the small dish into a basket.

For the eggs: Cut up a bunch of beets and put in a pot. Cover with water. Boil for an hour. Take the beets out and put raw eggs into the pot. Boil for 20 minutes. For blue, use blueberries (we added blueberry extract, because we wanted them to be really blue), and for yellow, use tumeric.

Easy Play-dough

In a large bowl, mix together 2 cups flour and 1 cup salt. Add 4 tbsp. cream of tartar and 2 tbsp. olive oil. Mix together, then pour 2 cups of hot water on top, and mix. Divide up into a few groups and drop a few drops of different food coloring on each mound. We used the natural food coloring from Whole Foods, so the colors are a little bit muted. I want to try it again using tumeric to make orange, and dye made from boiling beets in a pot for an hour to make the pink. We initially made lavender, pink, yellow, and blue. It became a lesson in color mixing when Isla mixed the yellow and blue and discovered it made green. We'll see how long it "keeps" in baby food glass jars with lids.

Planting the Early Spring Garden

Valentines!

This year we wanted to make something special to give to friends on Valentine's Day. The balls were felted, then strung on embroidery floss to make little necklaces. Then we "hid" the necklaces in hearts made from recycled paper bags, sewing them shut with more of the embroidery floss. Hints about the colors of the necklaces inside were conveyed by the floss stitching on the hearts.

Goddess of the Evening Sky

Garden Inspirations

Birthday Ring

We use our Grimms Birthday Ring as a table centerpiece for dinner every night.

A Waldorf-Style Bedroom

Make Your Own Waldorf Dolls

Perfect for the new-to doll-making, Weir Dolls makes simple kits with everything you need to make a Waldorf doll for your sweetie. I made this little babe-in-a-sling in just over an hour.

Winter Nature Table

Mini Pine Cone Christmas Trees

We have these mini pine cones in our neighborhood. My girls like collecting them and adding them to the nature table, or using them in their play cooking. Yesterday we thought of another idea to put these cute little pine cones to use: mini Christmas trees for our dinner table. We are incorporating a little of advent into our dinner routine. To be honest, I don't completely understand the whole thing, but I do know each week has to do with a specific kingdom. First mineral, then plant, then animal, and lastly man. Since we are now in the second week, it was perfect timing adding this tree.

We used cardboard from an instant (don't judge!;)) oatmeal box, and cut a little stretched-out "U" shape. Then we rolled it into a cone, and taped it down. Lastly, we covered it, section-by-section, with glue (I used a mini hot glue gun, which doesn't get the glue too hot, so Isla could actually *very carefully* help me place the pine cones.

The Closet

After painting the girls' room, I was stumped on what to do about the closet. I had rolled it white, and it was begging to be painted. Isla had the idea: rainbow with a gold star! So I did it, and we love it.

The silk banner on the wall is easy to make. We used some of the silk we had dyed, cut rectangles, outlined letters (I was shooting for an anthroposophy-type font), painted them gold, sewed the tops down by hand, and finally threaded a gold ribbon through them. We left the edges raw like prayer flags.

DIY Fabric Frames

I love this old picture that I had pinned up on the girls' wall, poster-style, but it didn't look quite right. It needed a frame, and I didn't have one that size on hand. I made this silk "frame" for it by cutting thin, long strips of silk and braiding it. Then I pinned it at the corners around the picture, and tied the loose ends together.

Giveaway

My favorite co-op Waldorf website - CedarRingCircle.com - is offering a giveaway right now. Check it out.

Roots and Wings School Takes Off!

Wow! What an epic afternoon! Everything came together this week for our "Roots and Wings" mama-toddler "school" we mamas started up. The theme this week was fire, and it was woven throughout our afternoon. The children prepared baked potatoes with oil and salt, poked holes in them with a fork, and wrapped them with foil, and we cooked them with fire in the oven. While the last kids were finishing up, we got to check out Cash's awesome fire gear and fireman books. Then we had circle time and learned firemen songs and then lit a candle for story time. Mama Amrita read a Native American book about how Coyote steals fire, and then teaches the other animals in the forest how to make fire. After that, we walked down to the beach and the children helped to build a fire pit! They dug out a pit, lined it with stones they found on the beach, and then found some sticks and driftwood. Thanks to Mama Heather we had a real fire! The children observed how the fire felt (hot!), smelled (smoky), and sounded (crackly), and then everyone ran down to the water for some play time. After that the children carried buckets of sea water to dump on the fire. (We made sure it was all the way out!) Lastly, we headed back to the house where we enjoyed our baked potatoes together after a blessing song led by Mama Emma.