Crafty, Crafty...

In studying Waldorf I have really embraced the beauty that they bring to their spaces. I like the clean cut lines of Montessori, but the beauty... the art of Waldorf.... Wow... it speaks to my soul. And it IS my daughter. She is LOVING this new artsy bent to our schooling, and eating up the new concepts and stories. This is the way she learns.

The beauty of being crafty, is that it is usually thrifty... (all of these materials I found at the dollar store or in my garage craft stuff). Being thrifty is really important right now. When I first posted this picture below, I was completely stressed out. The gas and electric company had just issued us a collections notice for the gas bill that we have not been able to catch up on... that there was no way we could pay it. We are figuring it out... but it has been a very stressful week. Add in some PMS and a couple snowy mornings that are followed by pouring down rain and house bound children, and you can imagine our week around here. When the sun came out last Thursday, we BURST out the door to the zoo. We have a membership and brought our lunches, so it didn't even cost anything and we had a great time. And that started a new week.

The two crafts I am sharing here are both from the book I reviewed here. Creative Play for your Toddler.

The mobile is just for decoration, but the fish are a set for Logan's Easter basket that have magnets in them so he can 'fish' from the basket.

The book is a wonderful, bite-sized collection of crafts and just the basic principals of Waldorf Education. This isn't a new thing for me... just a re-exploration of the ideas that I have loved in the past. For a while, my children had no plastic anywhere in their lives. I enjoyed the idea of living toys and my kids had mostly wood and then baskets of things like rocks and pine cones we had collected on our walks to the grocery store. But I found it very hard after Alex was 8 years old to find any 'open ended' toys that he was really interested in. Just looking was hard... there were things like this and this online... but that was about it if you didn't really know where to look and didn't have liked minded people around you. (Now there are way more than there used to be. HearthSong Magic Cabin I can even find good toy stores around me for these types of toys in recent years.)

After we had started the flood gates of plastic, noisy things it was hard to stop. They may not help with learning at all, but you have to admit, some of those toys are just down right FUN.

In the end, for me, it is always about balance. Sometimes I go one direction and we watch lots of movies (esp when we are sick), play with plastic toys, and do no crafts at all... other times, we don't watch movies for weeks, and we have crafts going all over the house where wool, paper, wood, and seedlings abound. We are in one of those times right now. The times where my kids draw all day long and after they are in bed, I drink tea and do crafts like the ones pictured here. I like both times for different reasons at different stages in our lives. But the ones like these sure are prettier. ;)

SHARE: