We've had a fun two weeks with Sariah's kindergarten. The first week our focus was on bread, because it was going to be our first day baking bread together. The book Baking Bread with Children by Warren Lee Cohen has been a wonderful resource! It not only has tons of recipes and practical advice, but it also has a section of bread stories and bread poems. We introduced the week with a story called The Hedgehog and his Bride from Lithuania. It's a story about a man who finds a hedgehog while working in the forest. He takes the hedgehog home to his wife, and they raise him as their son. When the hedgehog grows up, he wants to marry the king's daughter. Of course the king laughs when he sees the "Prickly" is a hedgehog. But, he promises that Prickly can have his daugter's hand if he completes the task of planting a field full of wheat, caring for it and harvesting it, threshing the grain, grinding it into flour, and making enough bread to fill everyone in the palace. Of course Prickly does this easily. (Because it's a fairy tale, right?) So he marries the king's daughter, who is none too thrilled with this idea, but has to obey her father. On their wedding night, Prickly sheds his hedgehog skin and turns into a handsome young man, and they live happily ever after.
We also started our official "circle time" with verses relating to the harvest. We made simple pinwheels one day to go with this verse:
"Blow, wind, blow.
Go, mill, go.
That the miller may grind the grain.
That the baker may take it and into bread make it,
and bring us a loaf in the morn."
This is our harvest nature table. Our nature table this year will be small and simple. In past years the nature table has become more of a stressor as I try to figure out crafts and things with which to decorate it. This year I decided we needed to tone it down for the sake of my sanity. I did splurge to buy these dolls on Etsy, one for each season. They are $15 apiece, and I will buy them one at a time. This is the summer doll. The autumn one is on her way, just in time for fall. And a year or so ago I bought the seasonal cards and the little card holder. We may do occasional crafts IF they fit our rhythm for the week, but I'm not going to stress about it. Otherwise we'll just gather what we can find outside to decorate our table. The Indian corn is actually from our very own garden, and we just picked a bunch more today that didn't make it into the picture.
Last Sunday was the Harvest Moon, so this week our story was called Harvest Moon Magic from Suzanne Downs' Autumn Tales. It was the sweetest little story every about an old man who is too bent over to get all his crops in when it starts to snow in September. When he falls asleep in his chair without finishing the work, his animal friends go out to try to help him by the light of the harvest moon. When they, too, fall asleep, the autumn fairies flit around in the moonlight and bring in the rest of the harvest. This is one of the first stories that I've felt really resonated with me to the point of becoming a part of me.
This was my table puppet play about Harvest Moon Magic. We made the corn, beans, apples, and pumpkins out of beeswax. Because they were so tiny, and that made the wax easy to handle, even Sariah was able to do this.
Wednesday is soup-making day. Here, Sariah chops veggies for minestrone. We have made minestrone and vegetable soup, both recipes from The Waldorf Soup Book. I am so impressed with this book--both recipes we have tried have been SO delicious! The kids wouldn't eat the minestrone, but they both liked the vegetable soup, which had grated up zucchini and cabbage, and they didn't even bat an eye. They both ate it. We also made pizza dough this week for our bread-making adventure. It was the best homemade pizza I've ever made!
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I read a book once called the Continuum Concept that has kind of informed how I deal with things like this. The author spent some time living with a primitive tribe in the rain forest in Brazil and watched how they parent their children. She noted that the tribal parents were not nearly as overprotective as we Western parents are. Children in the tribe were around dangerous situations and objects all the time... but they learned quickly how to be safe. The author feels that children will regulate themselves in most situations. They will not purposely get themselves in danger. Of course they still need supervision! And in our modern world, there are some kinds of dangers that it's impossible for kids to sense, like chemicals and things like that.
But by learning in a controlled environment with parents close by to use a sharp knife, a child will develop a sense for how to be careful with the knife.
Now I wouldn't give Adalyn a sharp knife, lol! And Sariah knows she is never to use it without a grownup around.