I Am Me
It’s so important as a parent to make time for your own self care. It doesn’t need to be something big or of lengthy duration, unless you want it to be. Often the most consistent ‘me time’ for me comes when I weave it into the rhythm of our day together. If Floss is being creative then I chose that time to get creative myself – one of my favourite self care activities. One of my favourite daily self care rituals is applying hand cream. We love hand cream time – a tiny little luxury moment that we share together Floss and me, applying moisturiser to each other’s hands. The feel of her tiny hands in mine. Magical! It’s all about taking the pleasure in the small things.
I love the book Conscious Creativity by Philippa Stanton – I dip in and out of it. It really gets you appreciating the world around us and taking gratitude and pleasure in what we sense around us.
Candlemas Crafts – Exploring Nature with Children
Floss’s nibbling (the most beautiful synonym for cousin) came over and helped us make candles. They loved rolling their own beeswax candles. It’s such a lovely craft for adults and children alike. Even quite small children can have a go at rolling the beeswax sheets around the wick. You can make some lovely intricate designs using a ruler and a knife. We also filled half lemon shells with beeswax, they smelt amazing when we lit them. If you want a stronger scent then you can always add essential oils.
Worm Week – Exploring Nature with Children
Coming up next for us in Exploring Nature with Children is Worm week. We’re going to have a go at making our own DIY wormy, however if you don’t fancy that you could buy a kit – I had a look at this one. Worm sock animals are going to be one of our creative projects as well as making playdough worms. It’s a perfect time to do a little maths learning on length too.
The books we’re looking at include:
- Yucky Worms
- Superworm
- Wiggling Worms at Work
- It’s a Good Thing there Are Earthworms
- Dairy of a Worm
- An Earthworm’s Life
If you’re looking at worm week in Exploring Nature with Children you might be interested in my set of four, three part Montessori style cards for the week after – Evergreen Trees. Here’s the download below.
Tinker Tray – Fairy Garden
Floss is very much into her tinker tray at the moment. This tinker tray above she set up herself, she went around her toys collecting up all the pieces she wanted in her tray. Then once she’d filled each of the spaces she got to constructing her ‘pink fairy garden’. Her plan before she filled her tinker tray was to make a pink garden. I love listening to her talk through what she is doing and watching her choose loose parts for very specific purposes. Open ended toy play is such a joy to watch.
Bookworms
This week we’ve read a plethora of books. Starbird is probably the favourite right now. We got it a couple of months ago from Yes Bebe as part of their book club. We love the monthly book club. They’ve just relaunched and you can now choose from several different ages and from fiction, non-fiction, activity books and Waldorf inspired. The price starts from £4 – here’s the link to the subscription site if you want to take a look. We’re also really enjoying the Nutcracker with the clips of classical music from the famous Tchaikovsky ballet.
Other books in the video include
Little Sister Rabbit Gets Lost – Ulf Nilsson and Eva Eriksson – beautifully illustrated
Cinderelephant – Emma Dodd
Katie and the Starry Night – James Mayhew
Oh I completely forgot to publish this post! I’ll end it here and the next instalment will be really soon. We’ve been focusing on developing a ‘yes’ creative space, more books and I’ve been busy planning for our Evergreen week in Exploring Nature with Children.