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nurturing young artists: art supplies part one

I’ve always been drawn to quality goods. Does anyone else inevitably pick out the most expensive item when shopping? At times that high price tag doesn’t actually equate to high quality, but our family has learned that investing in quality items is a good method of stewardship over the long haul. We can apply this to nurturing a love for art in our children through purchasing select, quality art supplies.

Why spend the extra money on art supplies for kids? Often as adults we are very product oriented. Our kids, however, are thankfully more process oriented, and working with quality materials allows them to enjoy that process more – it allows them a richer sensory experience, and it doesn’t hurt the product either. On the contrary, artwork will be more pleasing to the eye when created with nice materials, and your kids will notice the difference.

Below are a few of our tried and true art supplies. We keep them within reach so that the kids don’t have to request or schedule in art time, but can grab materials when they feel inspired.

Rock Crayons, by Clementine Art

These fun crayons, made of natural ingredients, are cheerful and inviting to children, and striking on paper. They’re also fairly affordable – a great birthday gift for a little (or big) friend.

Lyra Pencil Crayons

A staple in our home for years, Lyra makes the bees knees of pencil crayons! Ours are going on strong at about four years now. These pencil crayons are not only work horses that won’t break like regular pencil crayons, but go on the paper velvety smooth in such a delightful way. Kids love the feel of colouring with them, and the triangular shape makes them super easy for tiny hands to hold.

We keep ours in a pencil roll that I made a long time ago, which makes them easy to grab and go for outings and art sessions in the backyard or car. I dare say that these pencil crayons have been on more adventures than many people, including trips across and out of country!

Lyra also makes a wonderful set of skin tone pencil crayons. After years of cringing when the kids asked for a “skin-colour” pencil crayon, I was overjoyed to find this set in a lovely toy store in Berkeley. Now my kids are exploring a diversity of skin tones, as well as practicing shading on faces.

Wooden Marker Stand

For quite a while as a new parent, I fought against markers. I loved our natural art supplies and just didn’t think that Crayola markers fit. Maybe I thought that if the kids had access to these bright, cool, markers, they’d abandon the finer supplies we have, and not look back.

How wrong I was. We found this awesome wooden marker stand, filled it with these smaller crayola markers, and because of this nifty organizer, we’ve managed to only purchase new markers when they run out, rather than when they get lost. The kids are truly thoughtful and selective in their choice between marker, pencil crayon, paint or crayon, depending on the project at hand. I guess this is all to say, while I love providing high quality supplies, there is a place for mainstream materials like good old Crayola markers. Especially if you can find or make a handy marker stand.

Please note: All links leading to Amazon are through their affiliate program. I do receive a small amount of compensation for products purchased through my site, which I will gratefully use toward our homeschool supplies and expenses. I will only recommend products that we use in our own home and love, or hope to love in our home soon.

February 26, 2013
Games for Kids: Bug Balancing + Harvest Time

Growing up, our family didn’t play a lot of games. There were adult games of dice and cards that the kids would listen in on, and eventually, as a sort of rite of passage, be granted a seat at the table for the first round or two before bedtime.

I have now played more games in my six years as a parent than I did in the rest of my life! Winter’s cold can’t keep us indoors all day, but my, how it does limit our adventures. Most days I will find some combination of kids cozied up around a game. This will be the first in a short series of posts on some great family games – and though they can be family games, one thing I do love and appreciate about them is that all of the games I’ll feature here are games that the children can play on their own once they learn how.

Bug Balancing Game

The very first game we purchased for our children was the Plan Toys Bug Balancing Game, which has affectionately come to be known as The Ladybug Game in our home. Players take turns rolling the die and placing a ladybug from their pile on the corresponding colour on the tree. As more ladybugs make their way onto the tree, it’s harder to balance them all; smiles widen and little fists clench with excitement. When the branch goes off balance, the ladybugs tumble to the ground.

The rules say that if you cause the ladybugs to fall, you have to add the fallen bugs to your own pile. The goal is to be the first to successfully find a home in the tree for your pile of ladybugs. We prefer more cooperative games, and so we often play as a team, and our goal is to work together, providing advice and encouragement, to get all the ladybugs cozied up into the tree.

We bought this game at our favourite neighbourhood toy store, Toad Hall Toys, but it can be purchased through various online stores.

Harvest Time

A couple of years ago we ordered a cooperative game by Family Pastimes called Harvest Time. This game wins the hearts of all the children that play it. I can’t help smiling to myself when I hear our children and their friends yelling in excitement that they should probably harvest some more corn or they won’t have much corn over the winter!

Players plant their garden plots with corn, peas, tomatoes and carrots. The die has colours that correspond with the vegetables – yellow, green, red, and orange. If you roll green, you harvest a pea plant out of your garden and store it for winter. Get orange, and you harvest carrots. The die also has black which is a wild card allowing you to harvest whatever you feel your winter root cellar will need, and white which brings you closer to winter. There is a homestead in the centre of the board, and with each roll landing on white, the player places a winter puzzle piece on top of summer. The goal is to harvest, together, as much as you can for your community before winter comes.

We love the cooperative nature of this game. The kids love that they aren’t competing against each other, and if they have already harvested all of their peas, but roll green, they can harvest peas from another player’s garden to put in the community root cellar. It’s all going to be shared among friends anyway!

Happy bonus: as we harvest veggies from the gardens, we place them in rows in the box lid. What a great math lesson to have a bar graph growing as we play, so we can easily see which veggies are abundant in our cellar, and which we should focus on harvesting when we roll a black.

We’ve had children ages 2 through 12 enjoy this game. We ordered Harvest Time from our favourite waldorf toy source, Nova Natural, though you may find it at other local or online toy stores.

What are your family’s favourite games? Share them in the comments!

February 20, 2013
Espaliered Apples

If you’re like me and you love things to look beautiful, you desire to grow your own food, and you live in the city, you just might fall in love with the centuries-old practice of espalier, which is training trees flat against a supporting structure.

In the middle ages, espalier was used in castle courtyards where space was limited. Today, this practical benefit extends to city dwellers looking to keep an urban orchard. Now, as then, the effect of espalier is dramatic and romantic.

My husband and I tackled this project together, planting four dwarf apple trees along our fence. We also incorporated a permaculture technique called a swale that allows water to soak into the root system of the trees.

Keep reading for a step-by-step photo tutorial to get you started with your own urban orchard.

Please note that we are not experts, but average folks who squeezed this project into a busy season with four children, work, and homeschooling. We probably haven’t lived up to the standard of the courtyard gardeners of the middle ages!

SUPPLIES:

Dwarf apple trees.

We chose Dwarf Goodland apples based on what was available at the garden centre and guidance from the knowledgable owner about our specific project and location. We tried to find trees that had two strong branches that looked like they could be trained laterally.

Our fence is 16 feet long, and we planted four trees, giving each tree 4 feet of width. The branches will overlap, and that’s okay in this context. Normally, you want to prune off a branch if there are two crossing over each other.

Tools.

You’ll need to hit your local hardware store for 14 gauge galvanized steel wire, eye hooks (or eye bolts), and a turnbuckle. Who doesn’t want to do a project where you get to use a turnbuckle? The number of eye hooks you’ll need will depend on the height and length of your supporting wall or fence.

A tape measure, wire cutters, and though not shown, a pencil to mark ‘the spot’, a drill to make pilot holes for the eye bolts, and a screw driver to help turn them. Oh – and a shovel would be helpful, too!

Amendments.

We are very blessed to have great soil in our yard. Things grow like we’re in prehistoric times back in this little corner of our yard. So, we’re not very finicky about amendments, but we did toss in some compost, and the owner of our favourite garden centre, Sage Garden Herbs, sent us home with a container of bone meal. Look to your trusted source to decide on what amendments to use – it will very likely depend on the type of tree you espalier, your soil type and it’s condition, and the region you’re growing in.

STEPS:

Measure & Plan.

Measure the length of your supporting structure and then evenly space out your potted trees. You might want to do some more research online to decide on a pattern for your espalier project. Once you know your pattern, you can decide how many levels of wire you will need to sufficiently support the branches of your trees as they grow and eventually bear fruit.

We installed our espalier wire along our wooden fence. We already had our trees, so we knew how high we would need the wires, starting just above the lowest branches in the tree. From there, we installed three rows of wires running along the full width of a 16-foot fence.

Pencil in where you’ll place your eye hooks.

Set Up Your Scaffolding.

Drill pilot holes for the eye hooks and then twist them in place, using the screwdriver for extra leverage. We used three eye hooks on each post; one for each row of wire. Get them long and strong; ours weren’t, and started to bend quite a bit when we tightened the wire. The trees should be 3-4 inches away from the fence, so you need them longer than that to sink into the wood enough to hold well. Once your bolts are in place, grab your wire (and hopefully a co-conspirator) and get to it.

Feed the wire through all the bottom eye hooks, then up and across the next row, until it’s through them all. Twist the wire around itself at the first eye hook. Take your turnbuckle and twist it so that it’s extended all the way out. Put the hooked end of the turnbuckle onto the last eye hook, and pull the wire as tight as you can get it, then twist it onto the closed end. Tighten up the turnbuckle, and your wire is ready.

Prep, Plant & Prune

While setting up the scaffolding system, you may have compacted the soil that your trees will be planted in. Prep the area and plant your trees according to the instructions, adding whatever amendments you need.

Next, you can prune off any branches that are growing toward you or toward the fence or wall. Please check your favourite gardening book or website for information on proper pruning technique!

Using garden twine, strips of nylon or jersey fabric, tie the remaining branches to the wires, guiding them into the pattern you chose. Ours have two 45 degree branches on either side of one vertical. The side branches will criss cross with those of the neighbouring trees. You want to give the branches breathing room, so the twine doesn’t dig into them – this can leave the tree vulnerable to infection. If you use a material that won’t degrade quickly, remember that your branches are growing and you will have to loosen the ties over time.

Now that you have your orchard planted, coax some pollinators into your yard with plants like Bee-Balm (aka Monarda, Bergamot or Bee-Mint). You can plant a variety of herbs, bulbs, annuals and perennials around your trees, providing a living mulch and beneficial companionship. We mulched and planted dill, chives, strawberries, nasturtium, and a variety of native flowering perennials around the trees. Finally, we dug a swale, shown below. We fixed it up after this photo was taken, and also added mulch and let some ground cover creep over it.

Add some seating and you have a very practical and romantic little orchard!

*apple espalier on brick wall photo credit: steeljam

February 18, 2013
Valentine’s Day Freebie

I’m not a huge fan of Valentine’s Day and how consumeristic it all seems. Or pink. That said, I do love letting others know I love them and encouraging our kids to do the same.

A fun little project was designing the tags for the kids to use on gifts for grandparents and friends. I hope you’ll enjoy them for any occasion where you’re gifting to someone you love! This would make a great project for a childcare centre, school group, or learning co-op to work on together.

There are three items in this printable PDF:

// For My Honey: This is a tag that you can either hole punch and hang around a jar of honey (or other food), or cut out and place inside a canning jar lid.

// Spread the Love: This is a tag that you can either hole punch and hang around a jar of jam, flavoured butter, flavoured cream cheese (strawberry cream cheese would be so sweet for Valentine’s Day), or any spreadable food – or cut out and place inside a canning jar lid.

// You Warm My Heart: Cut this tiny tag out, fold it in half, and glue it over the paper tag on your sweetheart’s favourite tea. Perfect for breakfast in bed, or to spruce up a cup of cider or hot cocoa for the kids on Valentine’s Day.

To access these tags, just click the link and print on card stock (regular paper will do if you don’t have card stock). Cut them out and follow the instructions above! Check out this post for The Pinkest Valentine’s Tea to pair with these tags.

Have a sweet Valentine’s Day! Click here to download your Tiny Peasant Valentine Tags.

Don’t miss our Farm Fresh Valentine’s Cards – A set of three printable cards to print and paint or colour. Great for food & nature lovers of all ages.

February 13, 2013
Nourishing Hot Cocoa

You can feel good about serving this rich and nourishing cocoa to both little ones and adults. Unlike store-bought versions, this recipe is free of refined sugars, oils, and additives. If you’re used to packaged cocoa, you may have to increase the sweetener content and then slowly work your way down. The cinnamon will increase digestion and help to balance blood sugar. Our kids go bonkers over a cup of this cocoa after a good time playing out in the cool of autumn or cold of winter.

• 4 cups whole organic milk, coconut milk, almond milk, or whatever milk is preferred

• 4 tbsp organic, fair trade cocoa powder or cacao powder

• 2 tbsp extra virgin organic coconut oil or coconut butter, optional

• 2-3 tbsp maple syrup, honey, coconut sugar, sucanat or panela

• 1 tsp vanilla extract, optional (see our how-to post to make your own)

• 1 tsp cinnamon, optional

Combine ingredients over medium heat. Whisk until well combined and heated through. Top with homemade whipped cream and sprinkle with cinnamon.

Note that the type of milk used will affect the sweetness. If you use rice milk, for example, you may want to decrease the amount of sweetener since rice milk is fairly sweet on its own.

As your family makes this nourishing and tasty treat more often, you will find that you don’t really need the recipe, and you’ll add ingredients to taste as your group enjoys it.

What is your favourite warm and nourishing drink? Share below in the comments…

This post was shared as a part of Fat Tuesday and Fight Back Friday.

February 11, 2013
Timing is Everything

We had a blast out at our friends’ farm this weekend – playing outside, planting some wheat grass for the chickens, playing games, a daddy dance party, cooking and eating, and sharing in a snowshoe adventure. What were we reminded of through this adventure? Timing is everything. We let the morning get away from us, and didn’t head out with the snowshoe crew until lunchtime was almost upon us.

Two very eager boys made off like a shot toward the forested trail. One little one abandoned his snowshoes before the rest of us were even fastened into ours, and another didn’t want to leave the steps. One of the boys who was eager at first, ended up squeezing in behind little brother on the sled, and promises of a tasty lunch and homemade cocoa were the only things to keep them all going through the deep snow.

Despite the sore legs, tears, and complaints, each and every one of our crew made it back to the house in good spirits. Next time, the snowshoe adventure will happen right after breakfast, so we can maintain that all-important rhythm of the day that helps our children flourish. The rhythm that carries them through the day so that they can be fully present and enjoy each other and the farm as much as possible.

More posts on daily, weekly, and seasonal rhythms to come. Do you rely on a daily rhythm at home? Share it with us in the comments!

Check out our recipe for Nourishing Hot Cocoa here.

February 11, 2013
Sling Shots, Oh My

When my boys were just infants and even toddlers, I may have sworn that we’d never get a slingshot. Well, as those same boys have grown, I’ve grown alongside them and my ideas about these things have changed, even if ever so slightly.

As part of our homeschooling journey, we choose to let our kindergartener guide a lot of his own learning (and therefore our own). When asked where Cohen got the idea to own a slingshot, my husband replied, “Oh, I think the idea of primitive weapons just appeals to any boy.” Well, our boy for certain! Oh my.

We happened to have the materials on hand and decided to collaborate on a hand-crafted slingshot.

Part of this process was figuring out how to have a slingshot and use it safely. Cohen decided to make some felted balls for the slingshot, to keep things soft and fuzzy, and we came up with a set of guidelines together. We haven’t had any problems so far and he has so much pride in his hand-crafted toy and so much joy in his play.

February 7, 2013