Gardening with Children

4/29/2024

Providing your child with the opportunity to grow food fosters a sense of responsibility and connection with nature.

There are numerous ways to approach this activity, each with unique benefits. You can choose the most suitable method depending on your location and gardening context. While we won’t delve into all the possibilities, we strongly advocate for providing your child with the opportunity to grow food to foster a sense of responsibility and connection with nature and promote healthy eating habits.

Here are some easy ideas to get you started:

May Festival

4/26/2024

Celebrate the halfway point between Spring and Summer with a May Festival.

We encourage families to recognize the passage of time and the seasonal rhythms through festival celebrations. Festivals provide an opportunity for your community to unite and share wonder, reverence and gratitude. May Festival celebrates the awakening of the earth, the lengthening of days, and the rebirth of nature around us. We celebrate this time of growth with joyous song and dance, playful games and a community picnic.

Traditionally May Festivals are celebrated on May 1st, but we have always found that using the early weeks of May to prepare and then holding the festival later in the month works too. And if you're homeschooling, you can be as flexible as you like.

10 Earth Day Actions to Inspire Your Child to Have a Positive Environmental Impact.

4/9/2024

Looking for ways to bring awareness about our responsibility to care for the Earth? The following environmental actions are important to do all year round, not just on Earth day. We encourage you to go through the list with your child and choose a few that inspire you. Commit to making them a part of your homeschooling routine. Together we can build a better world for the future.

1. Go for a walk and pick up litter

Easter & Spring Activities

4/1/2024

Spring is such a time of renewal and comes with a burst of energy. Seasonal celebrations give you a point of focus when choosing stories, crafts and activities to do as a family. Celebrations such as Easter offer a beautiful annual rhythm, something that your child looks forward to re-engaging with each year. It's a special experience to choose activities that become family traditions.

Winter Ice Crafts

1/13/2024

For the most part, the temperature where we live stays above freezing. But occasionally, it dips below. And when this happens, making ice crafts helps us gain an appreciation for cold weather.

Ice Ornaments

There's no right or wrong way to make these ice ornaments. We used a muffin tray, but you could use any size container. We've used large bowls, ice cream buckets and tin pie plates. Place flower petals, sliced fruits, cranberries, ferns, sprigs of pine - really anything you like, into your chosen container. Fill with water and lay some twine or yarn in to become the handle. Place them outside overnight, and in the morning, pop your ornaments out and hang them around your yard.

Ice Candle

Just like the ornaments, you can make these in whatever container you have. We used an oven-safe thick glass bowl and a glass vase. We placed the glass vase into the centre of the bowl (to make the space for the candle) and filled it with water to weigh it down. Then we placed sprigs of pine, a fern and cranberries in the bowl and filled the bowl with water. We placed it outside overnight. We had to run some warm water over everything the following day, and then the candle holder popped right out.

Ice Globes

For these, we filled balloons up with water and let them freeze overnight outside. In the morning, we cut the balloon off, drilled a hole in the bottom and added battery-operated lights. Honestly, these are the most beautiful things to light a path with, and they bring so much light and joy to the frozen world outside.

Flowers and blossoms are right around the corner, but ice ornaments, candle holders and globes are a lovely way to spruce up the bare trees and bring colour back to your yard until Spring arrives!

Dodecahedron Star Lanterns

11/8/2023

Create Your Own Star Lanterns

These geometric star lanterns are perfect for lantern walks and celebrating the Festival of Compassion. They are a little tricky, so may be better suited for older children, grade 4 and up.

Materials

11" x 14" watercoloured painting
Watercolour paints if your paper isn't already painted
This template
Glue Sticks
Candle
Patience

Step 1
Start by painting an 11″x14″ wet-on-wet watercolour painting with a basic colour wash or use a previously painted watercolour painting.

Fall Songs

10/15/2023

Fall Songs for Young Children

Seasonal songs serve as a musical reflection of the ever-shifting environment, celebrating the beauty and significance of each season and a deeper appreciation for the cyclical nature of life. This approach fosters a sense of connection to the natural world and helps children develop a heightened awareness of time's passage, instilling a sense of harmony and balance with the world around them.

The following are some fun fall songs to incorporate into your daily rhythm this season.

Step-by-Step Guided Daily Lessons

10/4/2023

Daily Wonder refers to step-by-step guided lesson plans, but what do we actually mean by this?

Our step-by-step morning lesson unfolds in a typical Waldorf-style main lesson format. Each step that makes up the morning lesson is vital to your child's learning, and together, they create a meaningful experience. We thought it was time to share the wisdom behind these steps because when you know WHY you bring something to your child, you don't have to explain it to them. Instead, trust that you impart your understanding to them through feeling.

Daily Wonder's step-by-step guidance flows like an artistic experience. In this way, your child is carried from step to step by your familiarity and deep understanding of each component.

Seasonal Nature Tables

4/17/2023

What are Nature Tables?

Creating a nature table is a marriage of science and art. On the science side, your children will experience hands-on curation of seasonal events. The artistic side allows your child to create an aesthetically pleasing display.

But, what is a Nature Table and why do you see them in most Waldorf classrooms and in the homes of families who value Waldorf education? What purpose do they serve and why should you create one?

Teaching History the Daily Wonder Way

3/31/2023

The most important way that history is shared is through story. Just think of the thousands and thousands of years of our history, where people shared stories around the fire, passed down from generation to generation.