Picnic & Play: The Little Wooden Mixing Bowl

I've been working on writing end of year narratives for the students in my homeschool co-op, so I have fallen a bit behind on my P&P documentation. Today I am getting all caught up!

In the Tall, Tall Grass - June 5th

We read In the Tall, Tall Grass by Denise Fleming. Then we read the verse "In our springtime garden" from page 29 of Movement for the Young Child by Estelle Bryer. Then we went back and looked more closely at the illustrations in Denise Fleming's book. I had some older children over and so we talked about papermaking, and they helped to tear up white and colored construction paper and soak it for pulp overnight. They were going to use paper pulp in their artwork for Saint Werburgh, and I had a tutoring student who needed it for his G is for Goose artwork, and Zac was going to make paper flowers on Wednesday, and so we needed a LOT of colors. We ended up with 8 large bowls of paper pieces soaking: white, yellow, orange, red, green, blue, brown, and black.

Zac got tired of the paper tearing work and so we took hand lenses outside and looked closely in the grass in the yard for little living things.

Du Iz Tak? - June 6th

Wednesday was really fun because Zac's friend came over! He's still two, so we kept the activities short and had lots of outside messy play with the mud kitchen. But we did have a short Circle Time and read Du Iz Tak? by Carson Ellis, and we blended up our pulp in the blender (we used green and blue) and each boy spread it carefully into the flower cookie cutter and we then let the paper flowers stand overnight on a pile of thick towels.




The Snail's Spell - June 7th

We started on Thursday with a ton of sensory play. I added 5 lbs of yellow cornmeal and a collection of old buttons to Zac's outdoor play kitchen and he had a great time mixing up concoctions. Then the older children were blending pulp for their papermaking and so he got to play with that, plus turn on the hose for them when they needed to rinse out containers.

After a while he and I took a little break and started our Circle Time with a short review of yesterday by doing the "Tiny Seed Story" from my yoga book Fly Like a Butterfly: Yoga for Children (pages 75-78). He LOVED it!

Then I read him the middle poem from Spindrift page 68 ("Oh how slowly, oh how slowly") and then we read The Snail's Spell. Then I read him the bottom poem on page 68 ("We'll make a little journey") and then we went outside to walk the tape line spiral I put down in the driveway. As we walked it we held hands and did the top poem on page 68 ("Hand in hand, you see us well").




The Little Wooden Mixing Bowl - June 8th

This morning Zac asked me if we could please bake a cake!

Actually, this seemed like the perfect day, since I looked around for dandelions in my yard when I walked the dog this morning and didn't find any at all which were white, and didn't actually find very many in total, which made it seem like our planned story "Father Sun and the Dandelion" and dandelion play dough recipe weren't meant to be. I will need to remember for next year to do the dandelion stuff a little earlier in the year.

So instead we started the day by walking the labyrinth downtown, which is obviously more convoluted than the simple spiral I made with tape in the driveway yesterday. Zac lost interest in making it the whole way through, which is fine, and went to watch the koi fish in the pond.

When we got back home we had play time, and then Circle Time. I'm working on my good morning songs for the circle, and chose the following:

"A Ram Sam Sam" song (track 17) while coming together

"Song to the Sun" song (track 6)

Good Morning, Dear Earth verse and movements

"Good Morning to You" song (track 2)

These songs are all from the CD for Seven Times the Sun, which I got at WaldorfBooks.com. I appreciate hearing the songs on the CD, since I can't read music, and Shea Darian's voice is much easier for me to follow than a lot of the Waldorf CDs which are sung very high.

Our story was "The Little Wooden Mixing Bowl" from The Breathing Circle: Learning through the Movement of the Natural Breath by Nell Smyth. This is a wonderful book and we are about to do it as a book group in my community. I'm very excited about that!

Our recipe was Duck Egg Cake with Rosemary, which is a variation on a basic olive oil cake. Make sure you choose a high quality olive oil or you won't like the taste of your finished cake very much! Our blessing song was also from Shea Darian's CD, "For the Beauty of the Earth" (track 11).

bits of torn paper, ready to have water added

we actually got to the end of my spool of Glimakra linen warp!

turns out 550 yards is enough for three full sized tapestries

ready for our new tapestry:  a meadow

poured paper pulp in cookie cutter shapes... so easy

our cake batter!

the finished cake

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