May we all take a moment to celebrate and thank the mothers and mother figures in our lives. Their love and support provides a foundation, springboard, and a protection that infuses and underlies our entire existence. Happy Mother’s Day!
“Love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark… [T]o have been loved so deeply…will give us some protection forever.”… Continue reading
Yesterday my boys decorated two dozen Spring Eggs so they would be ready for today’s scavenger hunt. (We use THIS simple recipe for Homemade Egg Dye).
Today I’ll hide the eggs, and the boys will follow their set of clues until they have found them all. We find this is a great way to keep things fun while also making it so the older one doesn’t wind up with most of the eggs.… Continue reading
Celebrating holidays from around the world is a fun and exciting way to learn about the various cultures, traditions, and special foods of the wide array people with whom we share our earth. It’s a painless way to introduce geography, and it makes multiculturalism pleasurable. Who doesn’t enjoy having another reason to celebrate? And if it involves delicious foods – and most celebrations do – that makes it even better.… Continue reading
My 6-year-old planned an entire St. Lucia Day Celebration for us (see HERE). The only thing I had to do was to come up with and help bake a recipe for St. Lucia buns. Coming up with a recipe we could actually eat ended up being more difficult than I thought it would be, as none of the recipes I found online were quite right for one reason or another – they either had grains or dairy or guar gum or other things we try to avoid.… Continue reading
The Winter holidays are upon us. In addition to the multitude of gifts that people exchange during this time of year, there is generally an enormous amount of gift wrap and trimmings to go along with them. Unfortunately, much of this gift wrap simply ends up in a landfill after the recipient opens the gift.
While everyone loves beautiful packages, here are some ways to make your gift-giving more environmentally friendly:
Natural, found objects can make amazing art supplies. Not only is it fun for children to explore outside and find these objects, but being able to turn them into a work of art brings another level of perspective to the task.
When kids are looking at items with an eye for using the materials in an art project, it helps to develop careful observation skills by encouraging them to look closely at things and to picture them in an entirely different context.… Continue reading
We love all things pumpkin, but our favorite pumpkin treat is definitely this Pumpkin Custard. It’s simple to make, and it tastes great. We’re already on our fourth batch of pumpkin custard this season, as we all love it. Fresh pumpkins are difficult to find during other parts of the year – so we enjoy them while we can find them.… Continue reading
While discussing the significance of the 4th of July in American history, my 6-year-old had the idea of making an edible flag entirely out of fruit to eat during our celebration. He loves fruit, so he was excited to be in charge of preparing a big tray of “yummy treats.”
His preparations for this undertaking gave us the opportunity to talk a bit about the American flag, what it looks like now, and how it has changed over the course of our country’s 239 year history.… Continue reading
With Easter on its way next weekend, we’ve been seeing eggs, bunnies, and chicks everywhere (not to mention a plethora of goods containing huge amounts of sugar, and even more insidiously lots of high-fructose corn syrup, artificial dyes, unhealthy oils, genetically modified soy, and chemical preservatives).
We avoid bringing unhealthy sweets into our celebrations, including our celebration of the rebirth of the natural world around us in the Spring.… Continue reading
Making Valentines is a great way to learn about symmetry.
The simplest type of symmetry is reflection symmetry. In this type of symmetry, one side of an object reflects the other side. This is the type of symmetry we see if we place a mirror in the middle of something, so we see the one half reflected to make a whole.… Continue reading