Here We Are Together

I’m afraid I’m going to have to rant for a minute here.
If you read my blog then chances are you agree with at least some of the things we do,the way we raise our children and educate them. We co-sleep and our boys are intact. We don’t hit (or smack ) our children , we don’t let anyone cry it out and we certainly don’t force anyone to do anything they don’t want to. We don’t have a TV, (we do watch DVDs sometimes though!) we have family meals and family story time, we begin our day with a morning circle or meeting in bed, and, what I think is really quite a big part of our life, we homeschool.

(Pictures are from a recent nature walk in our little forest. Because “the world is our classroom“)

For the past four years we have seen our children grow from tiny helpless newborns into independent smart people.
I can only repeat again and again “you are your child’s first teacher“. We read to our little ones, we answer their questions, we take time to do experiments, go to the library to read a book about how something works, we learn together.
Our children actually enjoy learning!

I understand that to some people it seems like a crazy idea, because it’s not how they grew up, it’s not what’s normal for them, but it really makes sense when you think about it.
No-one knows your children better than you do. You know exactly how to meet their needs, how to make something fun for them, how to make them feel better when they are upset.
Teachers have to learn how to be teachers because they have to teach 30 (or more) students at the same time.
At home, you can give your child your full attention, when they understand something or learn something new you can build on that, you can move on, progress.
In school your child would have to wait for everyone else to do that.
If your little one has questions, wants to know more, they won’t be embarrassed to ask, and you can take the time to explain it to them as many times as they want to.
You can do fun experiments, you can go on school trips ,hey, a school trip to Spain for a history project sounds great , doesn’t it? And even if it’s not Spain, a trip to the garden can certainly be far more educational then reading about your garden in a book. And reading the book in the garden? I’m sure you know what I’m trying to say.
Besides, how many three year olds that are not homeschooled can tell you which leg-bones belong to which animal?

Anyway, my point is, the way we choose to raise our children, the choices we make for our family, we do these things because we feel they are the right thing to do. We know our children better than anyone else, and homeschooling is not easy, we give up a lot to do this, if we both worked full-time jobs we would life a much more comfortable life, but our children are worth it, we do it for them,
so please, don’t accuse us of “ruining their future”, because I happen to find that pretty offensive.

Aehm.
I hope your day was better than ours.
Here’s to tomorrow.
♥

Getting it right, finally.
It took me long enough to figure this out.

This is..

..the knitting that didn’t get done;

..the corners that didn’t get tidied;

..the sofa that’s a mess of stained blankets & cushions that didn’t get cleaned;

..and the bookshelves that did not get dusted:
(they need painting, too..)

BUT this is…

…the pretend shopping that’s been done;

..the cable car that has been built;

..the sewing that’s been done;

…and a serious amount of photobooth fun:

Excuse the amount of pictures & the lack of quality, but I have come to realize something very important:

Good is so much better than perfect.

Here’s to honesty & always putting your family first.
Have a lovely day.
♥

As promised, i’ll show you all how to make applesauce.
I am sorry it took a little while, but i never actually wrote this down before,
my grandma taught me how to do it, & there never was a need for a “recipe”.
I am very pleased that i can now share this with you,
because homemade applesauce is just so much nicer,
& I really think our children should learn how to do these things, so they can teach their children & so on.
(besides, many years ago a boy in kindergarden told me that there are worms in store bought apple sauce,
& I never forgot that ..)

You will need:

apples, however many you have spare or want to keep for winter
some water
glass jars with lids

How to:

Wash, peel & core your apples, then cut them into large chunks,
place them in a saucepan with a bit of water, & leave that on a medium heat for about an hour.
Stir it occasional & see if your apples are soft yet.
After some time it will all turn into a sort of apple sauce, if it is too thick add some more water,
if it is not thick enough leave it for another half an hour.
Add sugar (& cinnamon, in this family..) to taste.

Now you are ready to can your applesauce!
You can use new or recycled glass jars for this,
to sterilise them you just have to leave them in boiling water for 10 minutes.
(Make sure that they are completely covered & filled with water!)

Pour your apple sauce into the jars, put the lids on tight,
& put the jars into a pot of boiling water.
They should stand up straight & be covered in water,
Boil them for about 20 minutes, then lift the jars out of the water & let them cool
upside down.
When they are cold you can turn them the right way up.
Test the vacuum seal on the lid by gently pressing down in the center , it should not pop up but stay down.

Label your applesauce & enjoy!

(in germany we used to have it with pancakes & potato cakes)

I thought I should share this sweet little activity with you,
it keeps my little ones quite busy & the results are pretty,too.

You will need:
Paintbrush
White glue,
salt,
spices that look interesting, for example curry or a spice blend
colourfull paper (we like black & blue)

How to:
Use a paintbrush & glue to draw a picture or random shapes onto your paper,

then sprinkle the spices over it!

Just let it try, the white glue will be invisible then & all you have left is a nice smelling picture with lovely colours & sparkly salt!

Enjoy!

♥

This morning Emily came to me & said
“Mama, I want to sew a costume!” (oh, yes!)
We decided to make a knights robe, as we all love fairy tales with brave knights & dragons.

This costume is completely kid made,
as you know Emi just turned three & she had absolutely no problem following the easy steps.
I did help to cut out some shapes, but if your little one can cut & paste then this will be great for you.

You will need:

fabric for the robe, ca. 170 x 60 cm , plus some scraps for decorating.
fabric for the crest on the front,
rope or yarn to use as the belt
fabric glue , scissors
(or,if you or an older child can sew, needle & thread.)

How to:

Fold your fabric in the middle ,
& let your little one cut a half circle into the top.
This is where the head will go through, so don’t make it too small, & don’t make it too big.

Cut out a crest out of the other fabric & let your little one decorate it by gluing fabric shapes onto it,
then glue the crest onto the front of your robe.

put it on & tie the rope or yarn around.
All done!

ps// It looks great with a crown made from colourful paper!

I hope you enjoy this!
♥

Today we had a lot of fun pretending to be mad scientists,
& we made these :

There has been a lot of wanting to be a doctor around here recently ,
so we read a bit about what doctors & scientists do and came up with
a little experiment using colours & paper towel shapes.
We learned quite a bit as well,

Where did the yellow go?
Oh! We made green!!

so we thought we would share it here with you.

Mad Scientist Art

You will need:
food colouring
paper towel shapes (we cut out “patients” & butterflies)
little jars

optional:
pipette
funnel
mad scientist safety goggles (we made ours from a cereal box)

How to:

Cut out shapes from paper towels,
mix a bit of food colouring with water.

Let your little scientist mix the colours,
pour them from one jar to another ,
discover how to make completely new colours..
(Please keep in mind that food colouring will stain the skin,
so if you have a doctors appointment or a grandparent visit soon
you might want to wear gloves or at least put some lotion on your little one’s hands.)

Then, when you made a colour you like
you can use your pipette to carefully drop colour onto your shapes,
our simply dip them in or pour the colour right over them.

When you are happy with the way they look just put them onto
some cardboard paper & let them dry.

We will definitely be making more & I think it’s a great activity for a birthday party,
especially in the summer when it can be done outside.

I hope you are having a good day,
we’ll probably spend it outside, it’s lovely & sunny!
What are your plans for the day?

Because so many of you wanted to know how to dye your own wool or fabric using natural materials, here’s a little tutorial for you. If you have any questions you can email me or leave a comment & I will try my best to reply!

You will need:

Two pots (one preferrably old, as the dye might stain)
Vinegar
Salt
Water
Natural materials (depending on the colour)

Colours:

Yellow Onion skins, Daffodils
Green Grass, pretty much any green leaf
Red Beetroot
( please keep in mind that the intensity of the colour depends on the time your wool or fabric soakes)

I am using basil & thyme today!

How to:

First you need to soak your fabric in some salt & vinegar.
(I usually just throw in two cups of each & it worked fine so far,
I am sure there is some science to it,though.)
To do this just mix salt, vinegar & water , bring it to boil, put your fabric in
& let it boil on very little heat for about an hour.
(for the yarn I skipped that part, as I did not want to boil 100% wool for one hour. I simply mixed the salt & vinegar into the dye & soaked the wool in that.)

While you are doing that you can start to prepare your natural dye, just add your plant material to some water, bring it to boil & let it simmer for 30 mins to an hour,depending on how much material you are using.

If you are using grass or leaves please remember to make sure that noone is living in there, after all it might be someone’s home you are about to throw into boiling water!

When your dye looks dark enough take your fabric out of the vinegar & salt water, wash it under some cold water & then put it into the dye.
You can take out the plant material before you do that, but when I use grass or onion skins I usually don’t bother.

Now you simply let your fabric soak in the dye for as long as you like,
I am very impatient,so I never leave it much longer than 4 or 5 hours, but for a very intense result you can even leave it in there a few days.
Now simply run it under cold water till the water runs clear & hang your fabric up to dry!

I don’t even want to wash this one, it smells delicious!

if you try this,let me know how it turns out!
♥

With most of our craft supplies already in boxes
it has been even slower than usual around here,
& no matter how much i love classic Paddington , after reading it roughly 400 times today I knew it was time to find something to do.
We have been loving playdough recently, but I wanted an activity that would have some result , so we looked through our kitchen (yes, we often find inspiration in the kitchen!!) , tried a few things & came up with a recipe for clay.

You will need:
4 cups of flour
1 cup of salt
1 1/2 cups of water

How to:
Mix the salt & the water & stir till most of the salt has dissolved,
then stir in the flour & work with the mix till it feels like clay.
That’s pretty much it.
Later just bake it for one hour at 170 °C (that’s 350 °F)

We used some driftwood, some wooden sticks & a bit of water to play around with different ideas , we spent around 2 hours making things, destroying them again & then finally deciding on what we want.

We made a log for our nature table, some mushrooms, some little people,
a mini indoor garden dish & a candle holder.
We then had a lot of fun painting it with watercolours & finishing it with some gloss gel.

Here is our mini garden dish (we will plant some cress in that,i think) & our candle holder.

What was the last thing you created?
Did your little one help?
♥

Today we were quite bored, it was a grey day & we had very little planned,
but as we all know , art that just happens is the best sort of art.
I was cutting some canvas while Emily was painting some things.
I thought she looked rather happy there, so I went to get George,who had woken up from his nap.
I came back to all of my lovely fabric covered in dots.
My first thought was
will this come out in the wash?
but my second , much better thought was
this looks lovely, how can we use it?
So we had a little think about it & decided that the best way to use it is to make it into
these neat little suncatchers.

How we did it:

We used:
some muslin fabric, but any fabric will work as long as the sun can shine through,
(you can recycle old white tshirts or even underwear for this!)
paint in nice colours

Put a mat or a wipeable tablecloth under your fabric, as the paint will probably go through.
Then simply let your child paint the fabric.
You can either colour the whole fabric, or seperate the fabric into embroidery hoops before you paint.
After you are done & everything is coloured in paint simply put it into an embroidery hook & hang it in the window.
nice!!

( for a neater result & less weight don’t use an embroidery hoop but use a simple blanket stitch to stitch around the outside of your circle . That way you can make lots of these & don’t even need an embroidery hoop.)

If your house is anything like hours you probably have a cupboard full of empty glass jars stored away for some crafting.
We love to make little candle holders out of them, it’s an easy,toddler friendly craft.
It can get a bit sticky,though.

You will need:
Clean, empty glass jars
tissue paper (cut into shapes if your child can not use scissors just yet)
white glue
some water
a paintbrush

How to:
start by brushing white glue onto the outside of the jar, or just pour some glue onto the table & let your child roll the jar around in it. (Emi loves that part!!)
Then you cut out shapes & let your child stick them all over the jar:

After the whole jar is covered in tissue paper you mix about 1/3 of white glue with 2/3 of warm water & brush it all over the tissue paper.
Now simply let it dry for about an hour & you are all done already!

I really hope you enjoy making these, we love to make them on a rainy day, because not only is it something fun to do, but it always looks so pretty as well, it really lights up those days!
♥