Child's Play

One of the things I do like about the Waldorf style of teaching is the reverence of nature and things found in nature for art and storytelling. I have had the materials to do things like this tucked away for the last couple of years and decided that I am going to actually do what I intended from the beginning and take the best parts of every kind of way of learning and mold them into activities that fit into our life.

Traditionally, a nature table consists of different colors found in nature throughout the seasons. According to what season you are having where you live you can add different flowers and plants and things to it along with various little dolls and handwork you can think of. I made the wool figures of Logan, Savannah, and Hope this morning and then we took a long walk and collected our pine needles and twigs and branches and nutshells. We are going on our first camping trip as a family two weeks from today. So we talked about this scene and made lists of all of the fun things we hope to do while we are there.

I may make figures of myself and their dad to go with it if I can find some more white wool. I ran out. I am hoping that they will want to use their own imaginations to mold some wool into different things or maybe clay to add to the scene. Perhaps we will work on a story when we get back of all of the fun we had to go with it. At any rate, the children really have always liked having a nature table. I am glad we are doing it again. I am sure the more we make them the more they will think of to contribute.

Posted by gwendolyn on January 22, 2004 at 04:59 PM