egg cups

As I mentioned before, we burn a lot of candles in our home and like to change them up for the seasons and holidays.  Today we were pouring beeswax to make these easy egg candles and I remembered that my mum had, in the past, always had the cutest egg cups.  (Those Europeans have some kind of soft boiled egg thing that we Americans seem to never have embraced.)  I called her up and she brought over this super sweet, whimsical collection of cups.  These hand painted treasures were made by the German company, Casablanca.  When she bought them eight or nine years ago they were all the rage.  I think she was pleased to take them off of a dusty shelf and bring such delight to one new egg-cup loving little girl.

munchy delicious

 

As we were finishing up today's bird feeder project Naiya said, "I think when the squirrels see these they will say, 'Oooooo, munchy delicious...'   Those squirrels might even have a wedding!"

flowers of spring

One of our favorite series of children's books are the Flower Fairies of the Spring, Flower Fairies of the Summer, Flower Fairies of the Autumn and Flower Fairies of the Winter by Cicely Mary Barker.  We like them for their sweet and sometimes informative poems as well as the fanciful and beautiful watercolor pictures of fairies that they contain.  Mostly though we appreciate Ms. Barker's naturalist's eye and her ability to so accurately render the flowers alongside those fairies for each season.  I'm not sure if I should be embarrassed to admit that they've been a greater aid for our flower identification skills than any other book we own.

 The Song of the Celandine Fairy


Before the hawthorn leaves unfold, 
Or buttercups put forth their gold, 
By every sunny footpath shine
The stars of Lesser Celandine.
                                             -Cicely Mary Barker


                                    

puppet shows and simple stories

Last week I was fortunate to have made it to a workshop with Suzanne Down from Juniper Tree School of Story and Puppetry Arts.  It was a very brief introduction to Waldorf style storytelling and a short session of needle felting three doll puppets with which to tell the Spring story of Little Brown Bulb.

What always strikes me about storytelling for very young children is the simplicity of it.  Like many people, I feel intimidated at the thought of making up or even re-telling stories I already know to any kind of audience, four-year-old or otherwise.  But, as Suzanne talked about that morning, the element of storytelling that young children most respond to is wonder.  They don't need elaborate plot lines or even interesting characters.  The effortless process of the world unfolding and revealing itself through one single simple event is story enough.  It's the attention, voice and presence of the teller that touches the child's heart.

The Brown Bulb story is one told holding the doll "puppets" with gentle hands on a stage of silk scarves on one's lap.  It begins with the Bulb sleeping deep within the cold earth of winter.  As the warm rays of Spring reach Bulb, and her friend Ladybug encourages her, Little Brown Bulb awakens and finds her way to a cave (in the folds of the silk) where Mother Earth dresses her in a lovely new gown.  She emerges from the silk transformed into a beautiful Spring flower and she and ladybug celebrate their love of the season together.

For many an adult, this seems hardly a story worth telling at all, but it's amazing how entranced Naiya is with the gentle movements, the tone of the special story-telling voice and the metamorphosis of the plain bulb into the rich and softly colorful flower. 

Often after I have told a new tale, my sweet girl gifts it back to me in her own way.  She'll introduce new characters and even add songs.  Sadly, although I get to hear the stories, I rarely get to see them as they usually take place entirely under a canopy of silk where she is the only witness.  I listen with rapt attention nonetheless and am as transfixed by her story as she was with mine.

 



Sometimes we move stories with more elaborate scenery out of our laps and down onto the floor.  When she re-tells these I have the pleasure of seeing the characters move about and, more often than not, the play goes on long after the puppet show has ended.

in the blink of an eye - IV

quiet time

As a part of our daily rhythm, every day after lunch Naiya has "quiet time".  It's a break as short as fifteen minutes or as long as an hour that we spend each gathering ourselves up apart from one another.  Most often, Naiya determines the length herself.  We instituted this break in our day when we realized (quite early on) that naps were never going to return to our home.  At first I think we hoped that she would use this time to, say, rest... even if there would be no actual sleep taking place.  Of course, that never happened.  Although I occasionally use the opportunity to get some rest myself, Naiya always spends her alone time playing, playing, playing.

Over the years, the aftermath of her playing in a room by herself has become more and more complex.  At first there would be a few dolls, perhaps some clothes and dishes set up for a tea party or various piles of random stones and pine cones set about to represent people or houses or roads.   Recently, however, the scenes are quite a bit more elaborate. 

It may look like chaos or a pile of junk but each item on the trunk was placed there very intentionally by delicate hands and a heart full of wonder.  The animals are wearing clothes of hairbands and are safe within their clothespin or silk houses.  Naiya tells me lunch has been served but the mail has yet to be delivered.

felted nesting egg heads

I've been wet felting some eggs in preparation for Easter.  (For those not familiar with this basic felting method, I'll post a quick how-to in a couple of days).  At the same time I've been trying to come up with small, non-sweets with which to fill our pastel packets as well as one or two larger items that the Easter Bunny might place in Naiya's basket.

In past years we've put a variety of objects into real, hollowed eggs including painted stones, crystals, little wooden animals, finger puppets, bead bracelets and dried fruit. The real eggs were cut open with a knife leaving a nickel sized hole on one end, emptied, washed, dyed, filled with a small something or other and then had their holes patched with white glue and a bit of grass green tissue.  These were fun for the children to crack open just like a real egg but really work better outside (where they can be crunched right on the ground).  Since our Easter Sunday's are unpredictably rainy and often indoors, I'm going for a mix of the soft felted eggs along with a clutch of the crackin' kind this time around.  (And I'm preparing in advance!)


As I sat last night with soapy hands felting away, I was mostly ruminating about larger items for the basket.  I remembered a beautiful wooden nesting doll that the Easter Bunny left a few years ago, and it suddenly occurred to me that eggs could be nested too!  Voilà, with a few needle felted embellishments, the Nesting Egg-Heads were born.