Happy Valentine's Day

 Happy Valentine's Day!  We received this adorable little peg doll in the mail we won from Mama West wind's Valentine Giveaway on her blog.    Please head over there today she is hosting another giveaway this time for Margaret Bloom's new book, "Making Peg Dolls", Two of my favorite bloggers and crafters working together!

 I have really enjoyed making peg dolls, they are fun and fairly easy to craft and they make such wonderful additions to stories and nature tables.  If you have not seen Mama Westwind's peg dolls on Etsy, I really encourage you to visit her shop, I am so in love with her Spring Bunnies, wouldn't they just be perfect for telling "The Carrot"? and a perfect addition to a Spring Basket?

We celebrated Valentine's Day today in Playgarden,  And keeping with the peg doll theme, I gifted each of the children with a Valentine Gnomes.  

I didn't really go all out for Valentine's Day this year, as we are preparing for Eoghan's 2nd Birthday on Sunday and his party on Saturday.  But I did cut out some hearts from the littles' watercolor painting and they glued tissue paper on them to make our kitchen feel a little festive.  I also strung some from fishing line to make a little mobile.

Today was bread making day and stone soup day in Playgarden so I created a little Valentine's Day story inspired by Stone Soup:

Two gnomes were wondering how to celebrate Valentine's Day, one gnome thought making soup with their friends would be a great way to celebrate.  The other gnome agreed and went into the Deep Deep Woods to invite all of his woodland friends to join their celebration. 

 First he went to Squirrel's tree to invite Squirrel to their Valentine's Day Feast.  Squirrel was very excited to be invited to the celebration and scurried off to gnome's house to add an acorn to the soup.  The acorn bubbled and boiled in the cooking pot, and it smelled delicious!

Then Gnome went to Rabbit's house to invite Rabbit to their Valentine's Day Feast.  Rabbit  was very happy to be invited to such a wonderful celebration, and decided he would bring one of  his carrots to add to the soup.  Rabbit scampered off to Gnomes' house to add his carrot to the cooking pot.  The carrot and the acorn bubbled and boiled in the cooking pot, and it smelled delicious!

Next Gnome then went to Deer's Meadow to invite Deer to their Valentine's Day Feast.  Deer too was excited to be invited to his dear friends' celebration.  Deer decided she would bring Kale to add to the soup and bounded off to Gnome's house to add her kale to the cooking pot.  The kale, the carrot, and the acorn bubbled and boiled in the cooking pot, and it smelled delicious!

Gnome went to Bear's cave last (as bear was often sleeping) to invite Bear to their Valentine's Day Feast.  Bear thought this special celebration was indeed worth waking up for.  Bear decided to bring honey to sweeten the soup.  Bear lumbered off to Gnomes' house to add the honey to the cooking pot.  The honey, the kale, the carrot and the acorn bubbled and boiled in the cooking pot, and now that all the friends had gathered, they enjoyed their soup, and it was delicious!

After we baked bread and enjoyed our soup there was free play outside, and some of the children told their own stories.  I didn't take any pictures of our craft or bread but you can see a roll under Eoghan's boot in the picture lol and Lisa is holding the felt wands we crafted today.  The thought was to make heart wands but most of the children asked to have diamonds instead.

Happy Birthday Bessie!

We celebrated our first birthday in Playgarden, Bessie is 5!  Lisa told the Rainbow bridge story, while Bessie's Mom filled in special memories from each year of Bessie's Life.  Lisa made Bessie her Birthday Crown and the sweet little angel doll she used in the Birthday Story Puppet Play.   Kiera got to play Bessie's angel in the story and most importantly she got to wear a yellow silkie!  

We had a lemon blueberry cake and a little circle of gnomes birthday ring during snack time.  Everyone sung Happy Birthday to Bessie, and she made a wish upon, her hastily dipped, beeswax candles I whipped up really quick when I realized I didn't have any on hand... (note to self to stock up on candles for future birthdays).

Then Bessie opened a few presents made by the Playgarden Mama's.  Isn't her new hat so sweet?  She was gifted with a crochet hat and a cute crochet flower ring, an angel baby, a birthday crown and a gnome peg doll.  Such a sweet day for a very sweet girl! 

Candlemas and Groundhog Day.

I had created a special Candlmas/Groundhog day themed circle and story for Playgarden on Monday, but sadly it was cancelled due to a severe ice storm.  The next day was 72 degrees and we are expecting snow tonight!  It has been such a strange week for weather I really have no idea what the groundhog will see on Saturday.

Me and the littles have been doing our special Candlemas and Groundhog Circle all week, I took ideas from our Earth Schooling curriculum and from some really great sources on the web such as, Seasons of Joy  and The Mystical Kingdom to come up with some fun content for our circle and I made up a little story  to tell.

Once, upon a time brother and sister woke up one morning and they could feel excitement in the air.  They knew it was a special day but they did not yet know why.  They went into the woods to ask their woodland friends.  First they came to Bee's hive, and Bee was busy at working buzzing around.  They asked,"Bee why so busy today?"  Bee replied,  "Today is Candlemas!  I must make sure that I have plenty of wax to share, so that everyone has candles this year."

  Oh okay the children thought, that explains why Bee is busy but what is going on with all of our other friends?  They spotted Gnome, and went to inquire, "Gnome, what is going on today?  Why is everyone so excited?"  Gnome said, "Oh well today is Groundhog day, we must go see Groundhog to see if Winter shall be done."  "Oh the children replied, "Can we come with you to see Groundhog too?'.

 Gnome and the Children continued into the woods, where they ran into their friend Bear, "Hello Bear.  What are you doing out of your cave today?"  Bear replied "I am off to see Groundhog so I shall know when to wake up from my long Winter's nap."  "We are going to see Groundhog too, you should follow us."  I sing "Follow, follow follow, follow me." while the bear, the gnome, and the children make their way to the clearing to find Groundhog. 

 Once everyone has arrived Groundhog pops out of his mound and says, 

"If Candlemas Day be fair and bright,

Winter will have another fight.

If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain,

Winter won't come again"

(taken from a verse found on The Mystical Kingdom's blog)

We have done a few different scenarios with the weather, the children's favorite is the snow, I give them a basket of wool roving to drop over our story as we sing, 

"Dance Like Snowflakes, Dance Like Snowflakes, 

Whirling Twirling Snowflakes, Whirling Twirling Snowflakes, 

Everywhere, Everywhere."

(our version of a song, in Little Acorn Learning's January 5 day guide)

A special Thank you to The Wool Food Mama for gifting us with this sweet little Groundhog as she was working out some prototypes and was not yet pleased with this little fellow.  We love him very much here and have been enjoying out stories with him.

We will do our Special Candlemas Circle with our Playgarden children on Monday and we are going to make little acorn cap candles for everyone to take home.  So it has been nice to have a week to practice the circle with my own children and to really let them "breath into the story".

We also have a Candlemas breakfast we will be attending with friends that I am really looking forward too,  the hostess is a Waldorf grades teacher and she has prepared a puppet play for us and we will be dipping beeswax candles and then that evening our homeschool group is doing a spiralwalk that we hope to attend but it is right at "Pumpkin Time" I will have to see if it is just too much festivity for the littles in one day.

Also don't forget to enter the Gnome Giveaway, tomorrow is the last day and our winner will be announced on Candlemas Day.  

Play Dough in the Playgarden

A  few photos from this weeks playgarden.  We made homemade aromatherapy play dough using this recipe.  The kids had fun mixing, kneading and coloring the dough and it really is a very nice texture.

And a few photos of our nature walk we take after snack time. The children were hunting for gnomes in the holes in the trees.  So cute!

We were also blessed with two extra set of hands, one of the mamas brought her teenage daughter and her friend visiting from Tennessee.  They are both unschooled, it is really neat to hear about all the amazing things they are up to!

Gnomes

I had a 50% off coupon for our local craft store, so I decided to try my hand at a word burning tool.  I have never been a great artist and I do not have a steady hand but the tool ended up costing $8.  I figured I would have a go at it.  

I found it a bit hard to work with, and my designs came out um....primitive shall we say?  But I had fun and I think the gnomes came out really cute. 

First, I burned the designs, then water colored their bodies, and then sealed them with beeswax before gluing on their acorn or felt hats.  I think these will make sweet little Valentine's Day gifts for the children in our Playgarden and will provide some good practice for me.  I also listed them in my Etsy shop almost at cost, to reflect that these are practice gnomes, but I think I made them affordable enough that someone could actually hand these out instead of paper Valentines.  If you are interested I am selling the acorn capped gnomes for .75 cents each to my Blog readers and Facebook friends, when you purchase 20 or more.  Just send me a message on Etsy.

I also made a set of weather gnomes, that I had planned on using with our weather verse.  When the little ones wake up we go to the front door to see what the weather is today, We say this little verse from Little Acorn Learning,

Good morning to the glad new day, Whatever the skies let fall, If storm or sunshine, it is sent, A loving gift to all. For Sunshine: Good morning to the sunshine fair, That lights this world of ours, Good morning to the singing birds, Good morning to the flowers! For Clouds or Rain: Good-morning to the friendly clouds That bring refreshing rain, Which patters out "Good-morning, dears!' Against the window pane. For Snow: Good-morning to the lovely snow, That lies so soft and deep Above the little tender seeds In mother earth asleep. And then I showed them the gnomes and told them about their symbols.  They were both able to pick out which one was rain.  Although I'm not sure if they really understood the symbols on the gnomes yet, we will have to see how it shows up in their play over the next few days.  I often don't realize how much they understand until I see them imitate it later. I don't know if they can make the connection with the sun in the sky and the little sunshine symbol on the gnome yet, and they have not seen snow since before they turned one, so I don't think that is a clear concept for them yet either, but rain, we know rain!   Kiera was not interested in putting our little rain gnome on the nature table after we determined today too was raining. We have had our fair share of rain this week!   She cleared off her little table and grabbed the wand we use for story time and went to creating a little story with our new little weather gnomes.

Our First Playgarden

After much anticipation and planning I hosted our inaugural Playgarden session yesterday. I was shocked and overjoyed at how many mothers were interested in joining us as of right now we have 8!  I think due to the small spaces in my home, we are going to break off into two groups one that meets on Mondays and one that meets on Thursdays and then we will all gather to celebrate festivals together.

  I feel that our first meeting went really well, and all the  kids had a wonderful time!  We have little ones ranging from one to 7 so it was really nice to see how well they played together and how much the older children were willing to help the younger children,  It was just like I have read about it so many books but it was really special to see it actually work.

 We meet outside for a little freeplay and to help the kids who traveled a bit to get back into their bodies, then we moved indoors for circle time.  We did a few verses, stories, and finger plays, then the children broke off for some indoor freeplay while the Mama's Crafted window stars.

These are my little ones washing dishes I actually did not take any pictures during Playgarden  this week.

 Then we gathered for snack time, I had made some porridge and the kids used the "apple peeler corer" to peel apples an add to a nice fruit salad.  We lit a candle and called the fire fairies, said a blessing then enjoyed our snack together.  Once we were done we snuffed the candle, said goodbye to the fairy and the kids washed their dishes.  Then we headed outside for a nature walk, a puppet story and our goodbye song.  I am really excited to see the Playgarden take off, and I have such a lovely group of Mamas to work with, a few former Waldorf Teachers, a few very experienced Waldorf Mamas and a few very new to Waldorf Mamas, its a great mixture!

Shared on Waldorf Wednesdays at Our Seasons of Joy Blog and on the Magic Onion's Friday Nature Table.