For a peaceful home, for a peaceful world
It is starting to feel like proper, Shirley Hughes-style spring here in London. Sunshine, clouds, rain, mud, wind. Sunny mornings and wet afternoons, new welly boots and garden dirt under our fingernails. Bulbs on the table, flowers brightening up surfaces, seedlings on the windowsill. After months of neglect we’ve started to venture out into the…
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A good knife makes a huge difference to a child’s experience in the kitchen. Frida is very nearly three and she currently uses the following knives, which we presented to her in this order: 1. Crinkle cutter (far left). She began using this when she was around a year old, and it has been our most used kitchen…
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“If teaching is to be effective with young children, it must assist them to advance on the way to independence. It must initiate them into those kinds of activities, which they can perform themselves. We must help them to learn how to walk without assistance, to run, to go up and down the stairs, to…
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Frida and I have had great fun making simple bird treats today. It’s a perfect practical life activity for a cold, dry winter day. Bird treats couldn’t be easier to make, and they are simple enough to do with young child (as well as being a great way to help our feathered friends keep well…
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Frida is really enjoying helping me in the kitchen at the moment, which is lovely. She has become very proficient at chopping, always using her trusty crinkle cutter (this is the one we use). This has been one of our best buys ever for Frida – it is so easy to use, even for very…
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As the summer starts edging towards autumn (and it really does feel like that here in London – sunny days are sandwiched between days of pouring rain, the blackberries in our garden are coming to an end, and the apples on our neighbour’s tree are ripening) my thoughts are inevitably turning to planning for the…
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“We spread an abundant and delicate feast… and each small guest assimilates what he can.” – Charlotte Mason Charlotte Mason was writing here about the need to provide our children with a rich, diverse, interesting, tempting, beautiful education. An education which invites them to consume diverse ideas and stories and concepts, tempting them in with…
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I’ve been wanting to do some simple flower arranging with Frida for a while now. Frida loves flowers, and flower arranging felt like a perfect summer practical-life activity. We often have fresh cut flowers in our home – a luxury, but one which I feel adds a valuable element of beauty into our environment. I…
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Frida is 21 months, and does very little in the way of working with traditional Montessori materials at the moment. She’s outgrown her infant materials, and is still too young for most materials geared towards the 3-6 plane of development. What she does do a lot of, though, is practical life, which I believe to…
Read MoreToday has been wet and cold. Usually we have outdoor playgroup on a Monday morning, but lots of the group currently have poorly children and Frida woke up a lot last night, so I opted instead for a slow day of pottering and playing and baking. I hadn’t made scones with Frida before, and they…
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