Author: kris

This morning was one of those mornings. The kind where I somehow end up at 11am without having accomplished much of anything. At that point, I often feel like just throwing in the towel altogether. Sometimes I do just that. If it weren’t for the gelatin and lego mould sitting on the counter as a reminder of promised treats, I might have done just that today.

Instead, we went outside to harvest grapes, and set to work making these nutrition packed treats.

Tucked away nicely in the fridge, the treats firmed up as we packed up our snacks (we don’t need a full lunch every day, right? Sometimes we just do the best we can and thank goodness for grandma’s homemade buns), edible plant book and guide, chai tea, and jars for harvesting rose hips. On the way to the park, we listened to a tale about an apple pie contest – thank you Sparkle Stories. I don’t think I could have handled 15 minutes of bickering. I think there is a spell on our van.

The kids had a blast outside in their zebra face paint, climbing, crawling, and exploring. We managed to pick a few cups of rose hips for our winter vitamin C, and some other items for nature crafts. All in a day. Er, half day. The best part? Milo walked in the door and asked Mike to draw him a picture of Burdock to paint.

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Rachel Carson Tweet This

 

 

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Don’t miss our latest FREE resource: Pumpkin Mini Inspiration Pack PDF: A great way to get to know my work (investment free), and lots of fun activities, recipes, poems, and recommended books for pumpkin learning.

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Please note that we are a part of the Amazon associates program. If you visit Amazon.ca through a link on Tiny Peasant and make a purchase, our family will receive a small percentage of the sale. The products that I specifically recommend in blog posts are products that we love in our home – if they aren’t they are on my wish list and I will note that. Our bookshop (coming soon) has a mixture of tried and true, and wish list items. If you ever have any questions about a product we link to, please don’t hesitate to ask! Thank you for your support! 

As parents we can sure spend a lot of time worrying, right? And the world has no shortage of things for us to worry about in regards to our children.  One of the areas where I sometimes let worry creep in is my children’s learning. We learn at home, and at the core of my being I know that they are right where they need to be, and that their curiosity is the kindling that keeps them inspired to learn.

I know that. In theory. Yet, on this particular day, two thirds of my being is at work, while the other third is like a woodpecker, drilling at my brain and heart. It’s not enough. They need more. You’re messing it up. You should be teaching them something. You’re not enough. You can’t trust them to learn.

For a moment, the drilling stops. And my fingers stop clicking away at the keyboard. And I hear them.

Quick! The larva is going to hatch! 

Where’s the queen?

One of them runs upstairs. I’m looking for gloves and a hive tool. We already have a smoker… 

Later on, as I was tidying up in the basement, I noticed the kids had taken several of my thread spools down and to be honest I was a bit frustrated that they had done so. Until I realized that the spools made up a frame of honeycomb for the bees to live in.

Despite my imperfection as a parent and teacher, my insecurity and the insecurity of others in regards to kids learning at home, they learn. I really can’t stop them. They seized the thing they needed most at that time, and it was space. Such a simple thing that so many of us are strangers to in our fast paced lifestyles. In that space they were able to play, to process what they had learned on a field trip to an apiary, through stories, through talking together about life cycles. They brought it to life, internalized it, and made it their own.  When they are given space, either on purpose or when I’m busy with work and feeling guilty, they do more than I could ever imagine or plan for. I’m working on a new mantra for when I’m carving out some work time.

You can trust them to learn.  Just make space. Tweet This

Since I’ve been swamped with putting out a couple new resources in the shop, I have lagged in getting photos of the camera and phone, and writing posts to go along with them. Yesterday I was able to carve out some time to pull together some photos that are really from the last couple weeks, not just this last one. September has been a great month of learning and living – among other things, we have learned about bees and their life cycle, made beautiful perpetual calendars, celebrated Michalemas by making dragons with the knitting tower and wool felt, read dozens and dozens of stories, worked on form drawings, and enjoyed our fall leaves to the fullest. A lot of our days involved packing up the wagon with a large blanket, lunch, warm tea, and some work, and heading to our local green space. The kids love climbing the trees, hunting for leaves and acorns, and being able to stretch out under the sky as they learn. As the weather cools, our visits there will be more active in nature so we can keep warm!

Please excuse the poor photos – our camera has been finicky and I’ve been using my iPhone.

 

Watercolour painting a leaf colouring sheet from our latest learning package.

Michaelmas Dragons, from this tutorial.

Leaf rubbing & leaf tracing art.

Perpetual calendars.

 

 

Making applesauce with apples gifted by a neighbour, using this recipe.

Learning the parts of a bee using these free Montessori 3 part cards.

Herbal tea warm up.

Go cart wagon.

Collecting.

Burdock. We’ll be heading back this week to try to dig up some Burdock for use in our Herb Fairies recipes this week.

Rising to the ‘how high can you fill the bucket of potatoes’ challenge with one of our favourite local farmers over at the market. Physics in action.

We started hand-washing our breakfast and lunch dishes as often as possible. A lovely sensory activity, with warm soapy water, and a touch of lavender essential oil.

There’s just a bit of overlap around these parts between apple month and pumpkin month. We’re still hoping to harvest some more apples for sauce, and are eagerly watching our lone pumpkin, willing it to ripen. We’ll certainly pick up a few pumpkins from the farmers’ market, for pies, soups, and other recipes. Pumpkin is just so warm, homey, and inviting and the perfect fall and winter food.

What are your favourite ways to use pumpkin in the kitchen? Below is last year’s pumpkin recipe roundup. Please share your own ideas in the comments!

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Original Pumpkin Recipe Round Up Post, September 28, 2013

Now that the air is getting cool, it’s time to warm up with some pumpkin recipes. We’ve brought in a few pumpkins from the garden and have friends who have harvested literally dozens and are wondering what to do with them. I hope you can each find one new family favourite in this mix.  Please share your own favourite pumpkin recipes in the comments!

P.S. Don’t forget that you can roast and purée your pumpkins and keep them in the freezer for up to a year. The word on the street is that pumpkins cannot be safely canned. Food in Jars has a lot of posts on preserving pumpkin if that is what you’re up to…

Breakfasts + Snacks

1. Maple Sweetened Pumpkin Butter :: Simple Bites 

 

2. Whole Wheat Millet Pumpkin Bread :: Food In Jars 

 

3. Pumpkin Spice Pancakes :: Keeper of the Home 

 

4. Easy Pumpkin Spice Yogurt Cream Cheese 

 

 

Savory 

1. Winter Warmer Roasted Pumpkin Soup :: Nourish Within 

 

2. Pumpkin Gnocchi With Brown Butter Sage Sauce :: Love Life Eat 

 

3. Dandelion Pumpkin Seed Pesto :: The Kitchn 

 

Sweet

1. Gluten Free and Casein Free Pumpkin Pie :: Nourishing Journey 

 

2. Our Pumpkin Muffins :: Soule Mama 

 

3. Pumpkin Custard :: Nourished Kitchen 

 

Drinks

1. Pumpkin Spice Kombucha :: Cultures for Health

 

2. Pumpkin Spice Latte :: Mama Natural 

 

This post was shared as a part of Thank Goodness It’s Monday.

Transitioning from the carefree ways of summer, turning inward to the home from the garden and to warmth and coziness as the seasons change… getting back to old rhythms. Like our weekly Week in Photos posts. Join us here to catch a glimpse of our week, and please feel welcome to share your own adventures with us in the comments below.

         

Thanks to our favourite local bee keeper, our bee-learning this fall took on a hands-on dimension. The kids LOVE bees. They totally get it. They get that we eat from the garden (and the stores) thanks to the bees. They are fascinated by these creatures – we all are. And we all love their sweet, sticky goods, too. Even though Chris tells us it is basically bee vomit. Great imagery there. You’re welcome.

I was blown away by the bravery in these kiddos. Milo held back just a bit (also the only one without gloves on), and Cohen and Breann each held a male bee – we learned that males don’t sting – in their bare hands. They learned about the smoker, the hive tool, the hive, the types of bees, and how honey is extracted from the frames. They each had a turn scraping the wax off the comb before the frames were put in the extractor. Carefully holding the canning jar under the tap as it filled with fresh honey to take home may have been even a bit more exciting than the scraping. Just a bit.

Writing thank you letters to the beekeeper was a lot of fun, including research in our books for just the right thing to draw. Noteworthy: Milo’s bee is a Milo Bee. It has blue eyes, just like him. Today the letters were sent off in the mailbox on our way out for a nature walk. Milo is loving finger print bees and I have a feeling the other two will be all over them soon, too. So easy, and so cute.

“The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.” ― Henry David Thoreau Tweet This

Click here to download and print our free Tiny Writer package, with letter writing templates for multiple ages, and letter writing prompts.

             

Click here to download our free Tiny Writer package.

 

This post was shared as a part of Thank Goodness It’s Monday, Simply Natural Saturdays, and Our Days, and Montessori Monday.

As thousands of parents and children hit the local (and virtual) stores to stock up on school supplies, we have been hanging about the house and the yard, nesting away to create a cozy and rich learning environment for our new school year. I have to admit to having a homeschool wish list worth a couple thousand, yet when it comes down to it – and when my feet touch back down onto this early September earth – there are only a few things we truly need!

For us, new pencil crayons mean freshly sharpened and arranged pencil crayons set next to a freshly mixed set of watercolor paints, brushes, three year old beeswax block crayons, and other art supplies. For children it might be a curse that quality supplies last so long – for us parents, a blessing! The only thing we really need to buy new is paper, and some beeswax stick crayons.

Along with our trusty art supplies, we picked up four drawing books to use for our Waldorf form drawings. If there was ever a beautiful and ethereal approach to writing and math, this has got to be it. I have a beeswax candle crafted by a local artisan ready to light in the mornings while we set to the work of putting these forms to paper, as well as a set of coloured chalk for drawing the forms on the chalkboard.

I am so thrilled to have found this form drawing course, as well as a grade two curriculum to pull from as we see fit – both purchases totaling much less than $100 with the sale that was running. I am not connected with Waldorf Essentials, I am just eager to be using her materials. Other than these things mentioned, we have requested easily 50 books from the library about bees, flight, saints, fall, and more. We’re ready to hit our local natural areas, visit and learn with friends and family, and dig into the richness of our community and broader world. And we’ve invested time and elbow grease into editing our home down to the essentials so we have space to think, create, share, learn, and grow together. Everything else will work itself out as need be.

Recently, a friend invited me to participate in an interview series for her online course Lazy Lady Living. If you’d like to hear more about how we homeschool, listen in on this Tierra Soul Talk Radio episode where I chat with Krista Joy Arias about child-led learning, Waldorf and Montessori, project based homeschooling, working from home, and more.

While you’re there, don’t miss checking out Tierra Soul and Krista’s amazing course Lazy Lady Living. She and her husband, David, truly bring permaculture living out of the clouds and break it down into easily digestible vignettes for course participants. Living a simple and sustainable life doesn’t have to be complicated, and Krista and David will inspire you and connect you with ways to reconnect with  your food and farming, culture and community in meaningful and practical ways. Head over and check out what this course has to offer.

I am an affiliate for this program, and I have to say that I am an affiliate in just two programs – Amazon, since we love books, and Lazy Lady Living because I truly believe in what Krista and David are doing and feel it would be a huge benefit in the lives of my readers!

Please note, too, that our choice to homeschool is a personal choice and I don’t by any means think that all kids should learn at home! I respect the choices of each parent in making decisions that are best for their own family. 

 

This post was shared as a part of Thank Goodness It’s Monday and Hip Homeschool Hop.

If you ask almost anyone I know, they’ll tell you that math and I aren’t exactly the best of friends. That said, I have come to enjoy everyday math, and hope that my children will find joy in math from the beginning. So far, we’re on the right track, thanks to one of my favourite educational philosophies – Waldorf education.

Waldorf math is based on the concept of whole to parts. So, rather than say ‘two times three is six, one times six is six’, we say ‘here is 6. what are some different ways we can make 6?’ The Waldorf math approach incorporates the wonder and gentle approach that makes up the core of Waldorf education itself. Math is often presented using characters such as gnomes, squirrels, fairies, and the like and taught in part through stories of the temperaments of the four processes of math (plus, minus, multiply, divide) rather than rote questions and answers.

So, all of this to explain why on earth we would craft our own math set! I had read of the math gnomes and wanted to make a set for our home, and the PDF attached explains how we did it. We use it along with a wonderful math curriculum by Melisa Nielsen of  Waldorf Essentials.

By nature children analyze everything, they like to look at things from a whole perspective and then break them down. Melisa Nielsen, Waldorf Essentials  Tweet This

Click the image below, to download the printable Tiny Peasant Waldorf Math Set Tutorial. Includes a printable recipe card with recipe for homemade beeswax polish.

 

 

This post is part of a seasonal community sharing series, Grow Together Tuesday. You’ll find posts from myself, and award winning gardener Monika Thiessen, of Prairie Girl Pottery.  I love seeing what others are doing in their gardens, and since most of us aren’t neighbors, let’s peek over each other’s virtual fences, be inspired, and learn from one another!  Post a link to your weekly garden notes, updates, photos, and more in the comments – any time this week!

 

Balancing Act
Kris Antonius

The past couple weeks have been full – well, to be honest, the entire summer has been full. I’ve recently been feeling a bit torn between the goodness of work in the garden and the motivation to nest and prepare for a new school year – trying to find a balance between outdoor and indoor work.I got so motivated that this weekend I decided to offer a free e-course on managing the mountain of toys that grow as our kids do. The e-course, along with a brief but moderate head cold, have me so occupied I’ve had hardly any time in the garden.

I walked outside today to find the top-heavy corn had been beaten down by the recent harsh rains. Cabbage moths (I think?) are eating the young tat soi plants, and some kind of spider has set up camp in several plants around the yard, as well as window sills, and apparently somewhere in or close to an opening in our home (as I have seen two inside already).

Not all is so sad in the garden, though. I had an impulse to pull out the dill plants and when I examined the seed heads closely, I saw dozen upon dozen of ladybugs still remain, most likely happily noshing on the juicy aphids that set up camp on the dill a couple weeks ago. We’ll definitely leave the ladies to their business as long as need be.

Corn, zucchinis, beets, potatoes, carrots, beans, and tomatoes are all growing well. We’ve got beans spread all around – on the chain link fences, up the bean tipi, and climbing up stalks in two gardens of corn. The workhorse strawberries are still producing, though the raspberries are wrapping up for the season. What else? Well, the grapes are blushing, and we ate the two lovely apples produced by our front yard apple tree. I heard it was a bad year for apples. Anyone else experience this?

Mike brought in a tomato that was so large, the kids asked if it was a pumpkin – and an actual pumpkin is growing away in the back garden – perhaps there are others yet to be seen. Towering basil, bushy lemon balm, dancing lavender – the late summer garden is so abundant! We finally cashed in a gift card for a food processor to aid in dealing with the zucchini (the stripy one is Guatemalan Blue Banana) and making a few batches of pesto.

Our kitty took a liking to a special spot in the bean tipi and I was able to capture that moment for the kids. I’m sure they’ll be carrying her over there to keep them company later this week.

What’s going on in your garden? What recipes are you concocting? Share with us in the comments!

 

         

The beauty that is found in the garden is so abundant and brings us so much joy. The fact that the blooms and leaves of these amazing plants not only please the eye, but also provide nourishment and healing for our bodies and minds is awe-inspiring!

We had a blast hemming and hawing over which herbs and flowers to add to our freshly made lemonade. Borage, Lemon Balm + Mint, and Raspberries graced our juice and added beauty and a new depth of flavour to each jar.

An unexpected joy was watching the borage flowers turn from deep bluish purple to a vibrant fuscia. There must be some sort of chemical reaction with the lemon going on there…

We’ll definitely be offering up some of these flavors at our next lemonade stand! What are your favourites?

 

Lemon balm causes the heart and mind to become merry. – Serapio Tweet This