Grain a Day

This week in Preschool we are "studying" grains. My original plan was to use the homeschool money this week to buy the grain mill from Nova Natural and have the children grind flour. But we spent all the money on Barbara Dewey's homeschool conference (which is fine) plus I spent most of my time last week running around doing training for various part-time jobs, so this week we will do some of the Nuts activities plus try to eat a different grain each day. Nuts and grains are related since they are each the seeds of their respective plant parents, so I think that's OK.

According to The Waldorf Kindergarten Snack Book:

"In the Waldorf kindergarten we, as teachers, are conscious of and celebrate many types of cosmic rhythms: day and night, the seasons, the days of the week. As part of this recognition of cosmic rhythms, quite a few teachers told me that they cook grains according to the rhythm of the days of the week."
page 25

The suggested weekly rhythm is:

Sunday - Sun - Wheat
Monday - Moon - Rice
Tuesday - Mars - Barley
Wednesday - Mercury - Millet
Thursday - Jupiter - Rye
Friday - Venus - Oats
Saturday - Saturn - Corn


Steiner never said anything about quinoa; I don't know if people in his time didn't know about it or he just disregarded it since it didn't match with his plan of 7. I have no recollection of him ever mentioning studying the cultures of South America so perhaps he was dismissive of that part of the world (this is just my observation and I may be completely wrong...)