For a peaceful home, for a peaceful world
Sewing beads onto material with thread. Frida loved doing this today. This was absolutely process art: there was no outcome in mind, just some exploration using two materials she knows well (sewing materials and threading beads) in a new way. After she had finished she wanted to display her finished piece next to some of…
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I mentioned recently that I feel like Frida has had a developmental shift lately. As part of this, she’s much more interested in art materials. Colouring, cutting, using playdough, sewing – these are all things she is choosing to work on regularly at the moment. For now, we are taking an unstructured approach to Frida’s…
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Welcome to the second instalment of the Frida Be Mighty gift guide! Here is a selection of art and crafts materials that I am sure children would be delighted to receive and will enjoy all year round. It’s not an exhaustive list but I hope it will give you some ideas. A note before we…
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I recently made some eggshell beeswax candles for our Easter lunch table. Making these sweet candles is so easy, and they make the perfect addition to a Spring nature table, or as a centrepiece for an Easter lunch. I should stress that this isn’t a craft for a young child; I made these with Frida around,…
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Happy Spring Equinox! I’ve been thinking recently about Easter; this year, Frida is old enough to really have a sense of the festivals we celebrate, and I know that many the seasonal rhythms we lay down now will stay with us for years to come as they are slowly woven into the fabric of our…
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I had been thinking that Frida’s work space needed refreshing for a while now, but I hadn’t had a clear idea of what I wanted from it. Frida wasn’t showing a huge interest in her Montessori-inspired materials and was using them pretty sporadically, which to me was a sign that change was needed. Often when…
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I recently wrote about how I discuss art with Frida, and about our habit of looking at one painting a day and talking about it. I don’t choose which painting we look at, I just pick the next one in the pack, and today it was “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande…
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Talking about art with young children is a wonderful thing to do. Not only does it encourage critical thinking, understanding of others and the world around us, observation, and expressing emotions and feelings, but it is simply joyful to spend time discussing something beautiful together. Time and again at the moment, I keep coming back…
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Frida has been working with threading and lacing materials for a while now. At 19 months she was threading beads onto a string, at 27 months she was using a lacing fox, and recently she has been using a lacing toy with beads. I have been thinking for a little while that she might be ready…
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I love making Waldorf stars. They look so beautiful when stuck to a window, and are especially magical when catching the pale winter light. They are deceptively easy to make, and are lovely decorations all year round. Below I have given step-by-step instructions to make a simple, eight-pointed Waldorf star, but there are many variations…
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