Puppet shows can seem daunting, but enlivening a story with a few props or puppets can be very simple and informal. There is a richness and magic that comes with a more elaborate set-up, practice, and know-how, but a story truly comes alive in a child’s imagination. Bringing what you can still nourishes your child’s experience of the story and deepens their relationship with it. And it adds some whimsy to our adult lives!
Here are a few household items that you can easily gather to enliven your reading or telling of Grandma’s Hat. This collection includes a handmade wool mouse puppet that we have included pictorial instructions for making at home. We have also included a template of Grandma’s Hat made from paper. Thank you to Mama Christina for creating this for us!
Instructions for creating a wool mouse puppet:
Gather supplies
Take swath of wool about this length and thickness
Fold in half
Wrap around pointer finger
Tie ends in gentle “knot”
Thread needle, bringing it to middle of long thread so you have double threads.
Tie the ends in a double knot
Sew the “knot” on your wool in place
Tie a knot at the end of your tail string
Place it at the top of your puppet opening
Sew in place
Draw mouse ears about this size and cut out
Sew ears on with needle and thread inside the puppet
Double knot when both ears are sewn in place
Here is your sweet little mouse!
Template for Grandma’s Hat made of paper:
And, lastly, a sweet spring song to learn and share with your child at any time!
Spring is coming, spring is coming! Birdies build your nest. Weave together straw and feather, Each one doing their best.
Spring is coming, spring is coming! Flowers are all in bloom. Tulips, Lillies, daffodillies, All are coming through.
The song is called May Song, and it’s sung in many Waldorf early childhood classrooms, though I am uncertain of it’s origin.
Along with crafts, recipes, stories and songs, we will also share with you some content that we hope will anchor your days with encouragement and support on the adult front. Today Mama Christina writes about rhythm and routine. She offers a very rich, in-depth perspective of the importance of rhythm, but also some essential components to make your rhythm work well.
If you are needing some support on where to start in creating a healthy rhythm for your home, Lisa Boisvert Mackenzie has written a very practical article for LifeWays that you can read here. Also, Mothering Arts collaborates with LifeWays North America in a wonderful, very affordable online course on building Healthy Home Rhythms that is accessible all the time and moves at your own pace.
Dear Families,
Okay. I have my tea. This is a cozy topic so if you want to go and find the liquorice chai tea concoction and whip it up, take a moment…
As you begin or continue your teaching practice—for that is what you are doing—we realise the number of pieces to the teaching puzzle that makes up a LifeWays practice are many and varied. There is child development, philosophical and pedagogical components, social aspects, and so forth. They are all also integrated. So if we can share a few of the contributing underpinnings, this may help to build your practice in ways that you love and find meaningful. In this blog, we want to share some thoughts, beliefs and ideas about how Rhythm and Routine can be built into your teaching practice with your children.
In a culture and historical moment that priorities the New, the familiar is not necessarily views with equal enticement as is the “next best thing.” The built relationship with particular activities such as our relationship with traditions, with daily rituals and tasks, with language (prayers, verses, songs, stories, even conversation) can be lost in the sea of novelty. These relationships takes time and effort to create. Take for instance, language: words are first chosen deliberately (this verse, that blessing, this story), words are repeated and deepened over time, taken to heart and memorized, recited with reverence and with those we love. They are experienced with love for their textural cultural familiarity. The way the words resonate, the sense experience that lives over and over in our bodies and brains—create relationship that is nourishing. Like the relationship we build with different language experiences, a well-developed Rhythm and Routine take time, patience and perseverance. It is a worthy striving, for Rhythm and Routine are fundamental for calm, mindful and deliberate values-driven experience. They build safety, security, cultural competence, skill, inner resources, relationship, and love for own home traditions. They help alleviate stress, head off behaviour problems, and regulate mood. Rhythm and Routine are powerful tools as well as being cozy. What are they? How do we build them into the life school-at-home?
A routine is simply a regular, regulated way of doing things: structuring bath time, inventing dinner, tending the garden, transitioning in and out of play. We build routines by doing specific activities at regular times on these days with these tools, together and sometimes independently. This activity is typically preceded by that activity and this 3rd activity most often follows it. We schedule our activities with a breathing in/breathing out rhythm in order to both take in nourishment and expel energy. We give, and then we take in. We contribute, and then we rest. We sing or speak, and then we listen, and then we sing, and then we listen. This rhythm of taking in and expending matches our breath. It is a bit like a dance, moving in and out in choreographed and sometimes surprising steps. And missteps. Don’t worry when the rhythm goes awry; you will re-establish it, fine tune it, carve it into something that feels like your family rhythm. It takes a bit of intention and looking at the individual pieces of the day, giving them structure and beauty, sticking to them so they get established and changing them as needed.
For instance, let’s look at dinner. We have food prep with its minutia: gathering the herbs from the garden, chopping, washing veggies, stirring the soup, washing the cutting boards and sinks, turning the pot on low. Then there is setting the table: gathering the napkins, utensils, plates and glasses and placing them at the table, checking for neatness, gathering flowers on Mondays perhaps for the centre. Next we are putting away pre-dinner activities while the soup simmers, washing hands and combing hair. Once gathered, we are reviewing the day or sharing a verse or prayer, serving, eating and conversing. Lastly, we clean up together: each one going to their weekly after-dinner chore, with little ones being supported in their chore and, then, transitioning into the bedtime routine. The familiar rhythm of this routine daily event and the Mood with which it occurs, day after day, gives it a flavour that defines and deepens our family life and history. It builds our own relationship with food and gathering, with the garden and chores. It creates the biographies of our children around family life and themselves as participants, willing or no.
It is the mood with which we bring Rhythm and Routine that takes these elements from simply scheduled time to meaningful, nourishing family-owned ways of being in the world. A schedule becomes, with the intentional mood of the adults, the holding, secure rhythm of Our Family Life. So consider this as you both invent and live your routines and rhythms. The poet/writer Kathleen Norris, in her book Quotidian Mysteries* fleshes out the intent to make every household activity a meditation, from doing the laundry to sweeping the floor to tending the garden. It is that kind of intention that allows a routine to gain rooted meaning.
This is where your work in clarifying and living your values comes into play in actions as mundane (of the world) as setting the table, cleaning up the toys, dressing the doll, etc. Knowing the mood you want to permeate your family life allows you to invent both meaningful routines and to build a rhythm that makes them light and sweet. So begin with clarifying, and then bringing that mood to the routine you have decided is meaningful (and workable).
*Kathleen Norris’s Quotidian Mysteries was published by Paulist Press, 1998, Mahwaj, NJ
Dear Families, Here is a protection story for families from Suzanne Down’s website. (The protection story is just right, as Suzanne says, for this particular moment.) She generously shares her stories on her website. I hope you enjoy this for your storytelling. As a teachers at Rose Rock, I utilize a process to learn a story by heart and enliven it. As you are at home with the children at this time I understand you haven’t quite the same capacity. Typically our prep for a story might look like this: reading the story to myself several times to find its rhythms and just to master the story content, letting it rest in my mind, reading it again; telling it to myself and then telling it to the children, with great calm, with story props or hand gestures and without drama. The more times I tell it over a 3-week cycle, the more I develop a sense of its rhythm and nuance.
Even if you print out the story on some lovely paper and read it, you can still practice and strive for making the story your own by finding its pulse, allowing its images to fill your mind. Before reading the story, pick a time before bed or snack in which the mood can be set with warmth and calmness, and read or tell it at that same time every day. When reading it, speak with a calm voice, without drama, and then allow for some quiet time (without any other books) so that your child may digest and live into the story as well. After a couple weeks, whether you had set out to memorize the story or not, you may find that the story is living in you anyway and there it will be for anytime your child needs a moment to connect. Have fun!
This is a true tale, inspired by my own mother who lost her straw hat in the wind one day. The seasons came and went, and one day, on a walk with my dad on their land, they came upon the hat. As in this story, it was covered with growing plants, and they found a mouse nest inside. It was magical. My mom still wears straw hats – I wonder if more adventures in nature await her.
Grandma’s Hat
Once there was a grandmother who loved to garden. It was a lovely summer morning, and she went outside to work in her garden. The garden beds were already overflowing with fresh, colorful vegetables and flowers. Butterflies and ladybugs nestled on the leaves and blossoms, and bees happily buzzed as they sipped the sweet nectar. Grandmother knelt down to weed the rows of carrots and beets, and then started to pick enough lettuce for a salad for lunch. Already the sun was hot, and she took off her straw hat to cool off.
Suddenly, a gust of wind whirled and twirled over the garden, and picked up her hat and blew it here and there, high and low! Grandmother started to chase after her hat, she reached high, she reached low, but the wind blew it higher and higher, and finally away from sight.
‘Oh my old straw hat,’ laughed Grandmother, ‘ it was a good hat for many years, now it deserves a little adventure!” She kept on laughing as she picked up her basket of lettuce, and went inside to make her lunch. ‘What a fun little tale to tell my grandchildren!’
Meanwhile, the wind blew the hat far away from the garden, over a forest of aspen trees, and finally settled it down in a lovely peaceful meadow full of summer wildflowers. It was a happy place to land, and the hat was content to sit there and enjoy the blue sky, and sweet smells of the flowers.
Summer turned to Autumn, and the golden leaves of the aspen trees fluttered in the breezes and settled down all over the meadow, and covered the hat with a blanket of gold.
Autumn turned chilly and soon after the first frost, beautiful white snowflakes fell over the land, and the hat was covered with a blanket of white snow.
The snow fell all through the winter months, and the hat rested still, under many blankets of snow.
The spring sun began to warm the snow, and slowly, slowly, the snow began to melt, and the straw hat was able to peek out at the meadow in springtime. The rains of spring came, and the grass greened, and spring flowers started to grow all over the meadow. Some of the grasses and flowers started to grow in and out of the straw hat. The hat was pleased to become so lovely.
And when summer came again, with the sun high in the sky, and long hot days filled the meadow, the straw hat had become a beautiful garden. How happy the little hat was. Then one day a little mouse appeared in the meadow. When mouse saw the straw hat garden, he thought, ‘ this might make a fine house for me’. Mouse went closer and climbed all over the straw hat, and even nibbled a little hole in the hat, like a window, and looked inside. Oh my, what a big room and high ceiling there was. Yes indeed, mouse had found a wonderful house.
He went all through the meadow gathering soft feathers, and flower petals, he went into the forest to find some moss, and brought them all back to his new house, and went through the little window and made a soft nest to sleep in on the floor of the big room.
When his nest was finished, mouse looked out the window of his house. The sun was beginning to set, and the last warm golden rays of sunshine settled on the meadow, and on the straw hat house. Mouse looked out for a long time, until the night sky began to grow deep blue, and the stars twinkled over the meadow and the straw hat house. All was well, and mouse was happy in his new home. He had one last look out at the beautiful world and said, ‘Good Night Meadowland’. Then he settled down in his wee soft cozy nest, in the big room with the high ceiling of his new straw hat house. How peaceful it was.
Suzanne Down publishes a blog, a website, holds courses for parents and early childhood teachers and regularly shares some a story she has created with young children in mind. You can see her other resources on Juniper Tree Puppets.
In the coming weeks as some of you remain together at home, we will be extending our support to you in the format of these blog posts. Thank you to the work of Mama Christina, we will share pieces of the Rose Rock curriculum that you can implement in your homes. We will also include some adult content, so that you may learn more about the LifeWays foundation of “life as the curriculum”. Like little sprouts awakening in the Spring, this blogging endeavor will be a time for us to grow and stretch–toward the ideal and the beautiful.
It may not feel like a time to be joyful when you are caught in the storm of adult experiences– inundated with news updates and stalked by anxiety. However, at times like these, it is critical for us to protect and cultivate reverence, gratitude, love, calm, and joy–for the sake of our sanity and for the health and vitality of our children. With adaptability, inner strength, and equanimity, we can become the calm in the storm for our families. We all have the ability to find reason to genuinely rejoice each day, to slow down and give our children the best parts of ourselves.
With love and solidarity,
Acacia and Shanah
Today we would like to share with you a song that is both joyful and empowering for everyone! Allison Davies , neurologic music therapist and brain care specialist, shared it on her Facebook page and YouTube channel. If you can, we encourage you to listen to her Facebook post as it gives you a little bit of information about why the song is so darn helpful! You can learn more about Allison Davies at allisondavies.com.au
We would also like to share a recipe for a tasty caffiene-free, immune-boosting Licorice Chai tea latte. Thank you to Dr. Heidi Lescanec, naturopathic doctor and culinary nutritionist, for sharing it on her website. She explains the benefits for licorice root in her posting, and the benefit for you is that it is easy to make with children and mixed with a glass of cold milk, the latte is a crowd-pleaser!
