Spring Gnome Garden

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🌸 Spring Gnome Garden 🌸

So this week has felt like a bit of a cross through the seasons, and all of a sudden we are noticing life all around us. We decided to make a new home for our day of the week gnomes (which the beautiful Amelia @fairoakfell gifted the little one for Christmas).

Each day after morning prayers we sing our morning song 🎵

‘Good morning dear earth,

Good morning dear sun,

Good morning dear stones,

And flowers everyone.

Good morning dear animals,

And dear birds in the trees,

Good morning to you,

And good morning to me.’

Then our daily gnome hops in the little garden for the day, the great thing about this little garden is if you keep the moss watered everyday, flowers with bulbs will stay alive.

To make a gnome garden you will need:

A foil pie tray

Moss from outside

A small bulbed flower - I have Narcissus here and crocus as well as some grape hyacinth.

A spoon or pestle

A spray bottle filled with water.

🌸 Lay a large clump of moss on the tray, and pull it out like a birds nest. (Why not make a birds nest like this too?)

🌸 Wrap your bulbs in the moss and then use a pestle to flatten the middle for your gnome to sit in.

🌸 Spray with water daily to keep bulbs hydrated.

This is a lovely tradition we started in winter at @thevalleysteinerparentandchild which I love we are carrying on and the little one loved creating this special garden for her special gnomes.

The past few weeks have been really odd and I’ve found it so difficult to find the words or energy to contribute to this space! But The lighter mornings are filling me with energy and I am finally starting to feel some relief and some head space so to speak, so I look forward to this improving over the next couple of weeks, this months Waldorf Magic Nesting Birds is most definitely filling me with inspiration and I can’t wait to start exploring with the little one.

There is still no change in my daughters friends condition in hospital. But we hope everyday that she will start to get well. Thank you all for your well wishes and thoughts and prayers for her.

Wishing you all an amazing Wednesday today! Please like and share if you can. No doubt the algorithm is going to punish now lol

Parenting and the four Temperaments

Temperaments - Rudolf Steiner said about Temperaments

“It has frequently been emphasised that man's greatest riddle is himself. Both natural and spiritual science ultimately try to solve this riddle — the former by understanding the natural laws that govern our outer being, the latter by seeking the essence and purpose inherent in our existence. Now as correct as it may be that man's greatest riddle is himself, it must also be emphasized that each individual human being is a riddle, often even to himself. Every one of us experiences this in encounters with other people.”

Choleric, Sanguine, Phlegmatic and Melancholic - we are all generally a mixture of them and at some points in our parenting journey we will come across areas of conflict in personality, we may struggle to align ourselves with our children and this is where looking at temperaments can help. How can we better understand our child? How can we re-structure our communication to help them grow and evolve in their temperament? This is something I have been exploring in depth lately as my three year olds choleric behaviour I felt was really difficult to deal with. What I discovered when I sat down and actually looked at her from an outside perspective was that she is more Sanguine and melancholic with only a couple of fiery choleric tendencies. So why was I so convinced she was choleric? Well this all has a little to do with my own temperament. More melancholic I was honing in on her choleric traits as these were the most obvious to me and the area where we did clash. Understanding my own temperament in relation to my little one has enabled me to take a step back and figure out the riddle of our own relationship. Steiner goes on

“ In education, very close attention must be paid to the individual temperaments, for it is especially important to be able to guide and direct them as they develop in the child. But the temperaments are also important to our efforts to improve ourselves later in life. We do well to attend to what expresses itself through them if we wish to further our personal development.”

Steiner’s work as well as the work of Connie Rossini have really helped me in my work with the temperaments and going forward this valuable new insight will no Doubt bring harmony and understanding to the most beautiful riddle that is our family

You can find Connie Rossini’s books in my amazing storefront (link in bio) information on the temperaments by Rudolf Steiner can be found free on the Rudolf Steiner Archive (www.rsarchive.org)

Chinese New Year Guide

Chinese New Year Guide 🧧 🐉 ✨ 🐅

Chinese New Year or as it’s also know as the Lunar New Year is one if the most loved festivals in our home. Some of you may not know here but my older two children are half Chinese and so celebrating their culture and heritage is such an important part of our year. It is so important to me to keep their heritage alive and living in our home and sharing in this festival, with the story of the Great Nian, the Jade Emperor and his great race is such an important part of that.

Filling our home with vibrant red and and gold reminds us of the riches of the Earth to come in the coming months and certainly keep us in good spirits waiting for the spring.

I’ve wanted to make a guide for Chinese New Year for a while now, so I am so so thrilled that I have managed one this year!

The Chinese New Year Guide is filled with crafts, decorations songs, movement ideas and two stories, it includes makes for play and recipes and also includes what you see here, a beautiful felt dragon puppet, ingot light covers, a handmade hóngbāo, seasonal celebration art, animals to make your own bunting and tell the story of the great race and a window transparency which has been scaled to fit in the Atelier DeNoest Lamp.

The Chinese New Year is in my shop (links in bio) and once you have purchased this guide you will have lifetime access to it and any annual updates or additions for Free!