Meeting a Local Wooden Toymaker

As part of setting up our homeschool co-op in Southern Illinois I've been making connections in the community.  I find it is always really inspiring and rejuvenating to plan a new school year!!!  I'm so pleased with what we are coming up with.  The kids will be spending every Wednesday at a biodynamic farm in Anna, we have a potential yoga teacher and a sign language teacher, and I've found a sewing teacher at Flyover Infoshop plus the creative writing classes at the public library...

One of the connections I've made is a local toymaker who specializes in creating natural open-ended handmade wooden toys.  She made her daughter's toys when she was little!  Anna is very inspired by Montessori (she was a Montessori homeschooling mom) as well as Waldorf.  She has even offered to come and lead workshops for parents who want to learn to make toys.  Wouldn't it be lovely to give your child wooden toys that you have made yourself?  And her workshop is JUST amazing.

Anna is the most beautifully organized person I've ever met.  You can instantly tell that she has a graphic design background.  Her home is so tidy that it just makes your mind relax at once.  And her creative space is tucked inside a large closet that spans the length of one room.  When you open the doors it's filled with neatly labeled supplies, palettes of color swatches, toys in the process of being made, and sketches for new ideas.  She has shelves and shelves full of completed toys as well.  If I had a workshop it would look like an explosion... but not her space!

She makes her own polish with local organic beeswax and refined coconut oil, which is safe for little ones to put in their mouths.  (She told me she will be posting a tutorial for how to make this soon; however, if you're curious right now, she gives the instructions in written form in one of her Facebook posts.) The toys are painted with an earth-friendly organic chalk paint, in beautiful pastel colors, with a few touches of gold for warmth.  She hand sands everything before and after painting to soften the edges.  She is passionate about using natural materials and researches all of her toy making supplies and suppliers extensively.

In addition to her wooden toys she has hand-crocheted teething rings (the broccoli one is really cute), stacking ring sets, and nesting bowls.    

As a Montessori mom, she's focused on beautiful organization and presentation.  Many of her toys come in fabric bags or hand-painted cedar boxes.  She even sells very nifty bags for when you are on the go, like when you're waiting for your food at a restaurant, and they contain a variety of toys and a mat to lay them all out on while you are playing.  VERY Montessori.  Her little peg people have eyes but not facial expressions.  So sweet and VERY Waldorf.

I wish I could describe how warm her space made me feel inside.  And it was great to meet her daughter and hear her talk about some of the toys her mom made when she was younger.  It is so different to go to a toymaker's workshop.  What an experience!  It is not at all like shopping from a catalogue or website.  You can really feel the person's heart and how much goes into their work.  Anna spends hours designing, hand-painting, hand-sanding, and finishing these toys with her all-natural homemade polish and they are just irresistible to the touch.  Zac about fell out of my arms trying to grab the teak bowls and painted wooden balls (which come apart in two halves and fasten again with a gentle click via magnets), the curving wooden rattles, and the peg people.  She even gave us a toy to take home with us.

I just loved the blocks which are stenciled with bird feathers.  Such a simple but beautiful idea!  She has lots of sets of wooden blocks and I know some of these will be a must-buy for us.  They are hand-cut, hand-sanded, hand-painted, and come with cotton drawstring storage bags.  She has some interesting and creative matching games as well, sets of hand-turned wooden cups with little wooden peg people.  She wood-burns different patterns of dots and/or paints designs which have to be matched up in pairs.  So simple and sweet.  I cannot wait to take a toy making workshop with this lovely woman!

Anna has lots of pictures of her work on Instagram (her pictures are better than mine -- you really want to see them) and you can get in touch with her too via her Facebook page.  Enjoy!

Vintage Children's Books

eBay limits how many items you can put on your Watchlist... to 200. Can you believe it???? I only discovered this when I recently found a homeschooling mom's shop called Karen's Living Books and I was happily flagging things to think about for later. Until I hit my limit!

"A homeschooler with 18 years of experience, I stock out-of-print and hard to find children's books as well as titles such as those used in Sonlight, Truthquest, Five in a Row, and other homeschool curricula."

This is an awesome store for browsing, especially if you adore vintage children's books. How can you not want a book called Wingfin and Topple or A Gift-Bear for the King or The Buttons at the Zoo or School for Sillies?

And it's the illustrations that I find so charming, as well as the sweet old-fashioned writing.

The best thing is to go through her store like a kid in a candy shop. She has almost a thousand vintage children's books. BUT her prices are somewhat arbitrary and can be high, so I would recommend ogling her delightful selection and then quickly checking Amazon to see if it's available for less. For example, she lists A Boat for Pepe by Leo Politi (1950) for $40.00. Amazon has it starting at $5.80. She lists The Hat by Tomi Ungerer (1970) for $15.00. Amazon has it starting at 49 cents. She lists Catch a Little Fox by Fortunata (1968) for $12.00. Amazon has it starting at 99 cents. However, her edition of Catch a Little Fox is listed as pristine and gift quality and that can account for the price difference. I got a vintage baby book from her which she had labeled as gift quality and Yep! It was as if it were brand new. Just lovely! So, when looking at a book, decide if you want a copy that looks exactly like it did when you were a child, or if you are happy with ex-library and just want to have any copy available so that your family can enjoy it.

Books that are damaged are still wonderful for found poetry. I saw this at an art show at Carbondale New School and it was fabulous. You take a page from a chapter book and then color over or otherwise obscure most of the words on the page, leaving just a few. These remaining words are carefully chosen so that they form a poem. You discover the poem in the existing words on the page. I love this! It's like Michelangelo carving marble by removing the excess to reveal a figure that was hidden inside the whole time.

Rudolf Steiner "The Story of My Life"

I am reading with great pleasure the autobiography of Rudolf Steiner.

In willing, freedom is practiced;
in feeling, it is experienced;
in thinking, it is known.

It is peppered throughout with fantastic quotes, as well as just being fascinating reading in how his philosophies developed slowly over time and with much careful thought. He was always quite taken with mathematics and philosophy, seeing these as two sides of the same coin, and persisted in reading and understanding every philosopher, scientist, artist, theologian, and mathematician he could find, and deeply absorbing what they had to say and deciding if he wanted to bring any of their ideas into his developing world view or if he wished to reject their approach. I had never had the idea of Steiner as being a rapacious consumer before. I thought he sat around and came up with his things through some kind of psychic intuition. But he actually lived in a dual reality, eagerly partaking of the OUTER WORLD and, particularly, the social and intellectual scene around him, as well as deeply living inside himself and the INNER WORLD of spirituality.

I admire Steiner even more now that I see him as a person who learned just for the love of learning. He would write that he worked hours and hours as a tutor, while simultaneously taking all the coursework necessary for pursuing his own education, but would -- just because he couldn't help himself, he had to -- squeeze in as much time as possible to devour Hegel, or some other writer, just to see what they had to say.

It took him forever to compile and edit Goethe's writings and add his introduction because he kept getting sidetracked into the development of his own spiritual world conception (which was quite stimulated by what Goethe wrote about the natural world), and then Steiner would return to Goethe and make sure he understood what he was saying and then go back and develop what he was thinking on his own and then check in to see if he had an accurate conception of Goethe's views and then go back and develop his own... and he wouldn't under any circumstances do anything less than this, no matter how long it took, simply because it was the right philosophical way to approach the work. The man had integrity.

I remember when I was in college and had the time to read Nietzsche just for fun! My undergraduate work at Smith College was in Philosophy. These reading assignments now, 20 years later, give me the feeling of being back in that happy time. I like reading something that I don't understand the first time through!

You can read Rudolf Steiner's autobiography as a free PDF or, if you prefer a bit of the books-on-tape approach, there is a YouTube video where someone spends 11 hours reading the autobiography to you.

This 38 chapter autobiography is part of my Waldorf teacher training. I've actually discovered that you can find quite a lot of what Steiner wrote -- for free -- in YouTube format where the books and lectures are read aloud.

First Free Product

So... I was all excited recently when I was mailed a free product to review.

This was my very first time ever being approached to review new curriculum! And I was so honored!! All the times that I saw on Amazon "I was given a free copy of this item in exchange for my unbiased review" I thought, why can't that be me?

This week it was.

Unfortunately I did not care for the product. AT ALL. But I wrote an honest review! A very honest review. And if you'd like to read it, here it is:

I the Guy Writer's Journal

Starting a Waldorf Preschool Co-op

I just found some long-ago notes on my website from when Becca (now 11) was two years old and I was planning a Baby Art Class so that I could specifically carve out some one-on-one time with her, the youngest of three children born in three years. It is so fun to look back at my suggestions.

Now I'm working on recording what Zac and I do each day in 1001 Ideas for Toddlers and Twos, as well as helping a client plan a Waldorf-Inspired Preschool Co-op. I have to admit it. I just love the preschool years!

For others who may be considering starting up a preschool co-op, we are looking at a 1 1/2 day program each week. Monday 9 am to 3 pm and Thursday 9 am to noon. Monday is Bread Day and Thursday is Soup Day. Baking yeasted bread from scratch... making a delicious and different-each-week stone soup... will provide a predictable comforting structure and rhythm to the week for these little children. And there will be a seasonal story which is repeated Monday as well as Thursday, and then the following Monday as well as Thursday. So four times. This is just two stories per month. And on Monday in the afternoons, after rest time and eating the fresh hot bread, there will be the option of a seasonal art/craft to accompany the story. Children who aren't interested in the art/craft can just enjoy their indoor and outdoor play time. It isn't mandatory.

I'll add the schedule for the preschool day to the website in a bit, but here are some more of our thoughts at this point.

Preschool Co-op Booklist

Children at Play: Using Waldorf Principles to Foster Child Development



The Singing Day (with CD)



Games Children Play: How Games and Sport Help Children Develop



The Breathing Circle: Learning through the Movement of the Natural Breath



Earthways: Simple Environmental Activities for Young Children



Tell Me a Story: Stories from the Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America



Around the World with Finger Puppet Animals
+ her book of Autumn Tales;
if you like them, she has written one for each season and they're available at her website, Juniper Tree School of Puppetry Arts

As part of creating the initial supply list and budget, we are thinking about Play Essentials. They are using a church space and are in a pack-it-in, pack-it-out situation. I came up with the idea of a quilted tabletop play mat to represent the play kitchen, consisting of just a rectangular piece of fabric and four simple burners appliquéd on. She will bring wooden foods and little pots and pans, plates, cups, etc. Other play essentials are wooden tree blocks (just take some fallen branches that you'd like to use, put them in your car trunk for two or three weeks in the hot sun to dry out thoroughly, cut into lengths with the bark on, sand the cut ends, and finish with beeswax salad bowl finish which is safe for children to put in their mouths), felt gnomes (Earthways pp.82-83), a few simple bunting dolls, luscious play silks (these are where the bulk of the money will be spent... but I have read the suggestion that you can dye your own lengths of cheesecloth if funds are tight, and that the cheesecloth has that same sheer light-filled quality), and baskets of natural items such as shells, pinecones, and stones.

Additions throughout the school year:
She would like to be learning to knit alongside her 3rd grade son and so I foresee some simple knitted animals will join the play space. We also considered sewing felt finger puppet animals (Suzanne Down's excellent book of patterns) to accompany each of the seasonal stories, so that a basket of finger puppets will be in the classroom all year with more animals added as we go along.

My client is most excited about a preschool day filled with rhythm, verses, songs, and STORIES.

They were saying on the radio just today that storytelling is one of the most fundamental of human experiences. In fact, there was a fascinating piece about whether computers could be taught to create narrative writing, in particular, the sonnet. Here is the link to the challenge Robert Siegel took: Human or Machine? Can You Tell Who Wrote These Poems? (if you want to play along at home). There are voting buttons beside each sonnet.

Mary Oliver

I love Mary Oliver's poetry and tonight, on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, he read Wild Geese. It could not have been more perfect timing for my lonely heart. I was driving all the way to Rend Lake to see the water. This was where my husband took me for my birthday last year...

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

And then I took Zac to play on the big slides of the playground. He had so much fun!! Yesterday we went to Cedar Lake to swim. And eat watermelon.

A Beautiful Waldorf Playroom - Wishlist

Zac is 13 months old now and so I am seeing the toddler side of him... cruising and crawling rapidly, hanging onto my skirts and hands to walk... almost walking independently... signing and gesturing, vocalizing... almost talking... and I am also remembering my three girls when they were little, and looking ahead to all the upcoming years of preschool imaginative play!

next up... a rocking horse!

I'm super-excited! So I thought I would take a minute and picture what I'd love to have in Zac's playspace as he grows.

My Pinterest page of Early Childhood & Waldorf Toys

Of course it (almost) goes without saying that there would be baskets of shells, stones, pinecones, and colorful wool roving. We want to encourage as much open ended play as possible! Oh, and LOTS and LOTS of picture books!

Building Blocks

Dolls & Animals

Play Silks

Kitchen & Foods

Art Supplies

Musical Instruments

Board Games

Cars & Trucks

Outdoor Play