Waldorf Wednesday: Kinder Lyre Part 3: Learning to Tune Your Lyre,

Using the phrase "Learing to play the kinder lyre" is almost an oxymoron.  I felt compelled to buy song books when I first got it in the mail.  The thing that makes the kinder lyre so special is that you don't need to know how to read music, play music or have dreams of doing so.  You can strum or pluck any notes in any order and as long as the lyre is in tune,  they come out sounding amazing. 

I learned how to tune my kinder lyre from Sarah at Bella Luna toys.  She made a simple to understand You Tube video seen here:



The tuning instruction follows a brief introduction to the lyre and then she plays a couple of tunes at the end that help you hear the simplicity of the instrument. 

Waldorf Wednesday: Finger Plays

One of our favorite quiet moment things to do is finger plays.  Often Narina can listen to the same one five times before she starts to chime in and sing it on her own.  I often find the words to finger plays but don't see the actions so I thought I would share this one with you.  It is our current favorite.

These are my lady's knives and forks

This is my lady's table.

This is my lady's looking glass.

This is my baby's cradle.

Waldorf Wednesday: Learning from conversation

This past weekend I was showing at another Steiner school fair.  This time the focus for me, circumstantially, was centered around talking about the lifestyle that goes hand in hand with having children at a Waldorf school.  I talked to students, parents, grandparents and teachers.  I listened to a the class teacher, whose class I was in selling, explain the student's artwork on the walls to a group of people who had no knowledge of Steiner education at all.  It was a pretty powerful learning day for me.  In the past, these sales have brought in enough income to make them worth while.  This sale was different.  I was a bit hidden in a back room that didn't get much traffic.  The traffic it did get, though, made for a powerful day.  I am still quite tired from it, to be honest.  Even when it is positive conversations, the level at which we were all communicating was soul touching and that radiates for days.  Here are some photos:

The last of the root children

My little light running in and out of the pale colored rooms with such confidence.

A little one the same age as Narina who is being loved by a new cashmere baby bunting doll.

Waldorf Wednesday: Biodynamic Cooking; Planetary Grains

I had the greatest intention of writing out a bit of research I have been doing into biodynamic gardening and cooking.  I was given this book as a Christmas gift and have been slowly adding new recipes into our rotation. We spend a lot of time cooking each day. 20-30 minutes for breakfast, about the same for lunch and at least an hour for dinner. We eat well, and like to show love through food but even with such good intention we are getting repetitive. We are having a hard time finding the time to really think about new meals.  In one of the chapters of The Biodynamic Food and Cookbook, there is brief mention that there are 7 grains for 7 days and that this theory, based on planetary relationships of grains, can serve as a guide while cooking.  After some discussion about how to change our household shopping and cooking we have decided to add this chart to our wall so that when stuck, we can base meals around the grains that coincide with that day. 

Sunday: Sun: Wheat
Monday: Moon: Rice
Tuesday: Mars: Barley
Wednesday: Mercury: Millet
Thursday: Jupiter: Rye
Friday: Venus: Oats (sewing your oats?!)
Saturday: Saturn: Corn

We are slowly forming our weekly rhythm and I think this could be a nice addition in doing so.   I like the idea that I bake our bread every Sunday.  Right now it is whenever I have time.  Sometimes that is never and we buy our bread.  It doesn't feel right to do that on a regular basis because I love baking bread so much.  Perhaps that is one more thing I can do regularly and take refuge in its predictability. 

What are your family rhythms? 

Waldorf Wednesday: Nature Table March

Waldorf Wednesday: Nurturing Magic

Things are buzzing around here.  I feel the energy of creation around me as I plug away at my custom Waldorf doll sales.  I am just finishing off my last one for this week and am going to pop them in the mail.  This week our Waldorf Wednesday revolves around creating magic.  Laying the framework for traditions to come. Our neighbours recently moved out. Apparently the women who owned the house liked to do ceramics.  They left a pile of old gnomes, fairies and angels scattered around their yard.   They are really roughed up and somewhat on the tacky side, but where there is tacky, there can also be beauty.  While photographing some of my dolls, I came across a fairy.  In the right surroundings she looks beautiful.  I quickly brought it back to our house and placed it in the snowdrop flowers that were just starting to bloom.  I decided that I would move it around the garden during the year, depending on what was growing.  Every day when we go to the car, we pass the fairy, where I have made a point of saying hello or good bye.  Narina now does the same.  A few days ago when she was collecting rocks in a pot she stopped and ran to the front garden where the fairy lives.  She started to give each stone to the fairy, laying them in front of her ceremoniously.  It was quite special for me.  I can see how this will grow into more elaborate rituals as Narina gets older.  Perhaps this will be the fairy that puts little gifts for her in the giant mushroom for solstice... 

I am having so much fun being a mummy.

Waldorf Wednesday: Kinder Lyre Part 2, Creating Rhythm

As I posted last week, we have been slowly integrating the kinder lyre into our daily lives.  When we first received it, I thought we would be waking Narina up with the lyre singing our morning song.  I thought we would use it to summon the family to meals, and then again to put her to bed.  Well Narina wakes up five minutes before the alarm goes off so that didn’t work.  The family meals?  Yeah, we didn’t even try that one. Finally to go to sleep... I think this will work in the future but at the moment Narina is too excited about the lyre and wants to touch it herself.  So after bath time and before we go upstairs, Narina has a breastfeed.  The fire is lit, the lights are dim, and Dan plays they lyre for a few minutes while Narina feeds.  Our evenings have become so sacred and this aspect of them has only enhanced that. 

Waldorf Wednesday: Kinder Lyre/ Pentatonic Lyre Part 1

For Narina's first birthday we were given a Kinder Lyre.  I didn't know anything about lyres prior to having a child and now have only learned a smidgen through different websites and books we have bought.  I will spread the ways that we use our lyre over a few posts.  Some cool things about a kinder lyre, also known as a pentatonic lyre, is that you don't need to know how to play any music and you will still sound beautiful.  Not just sweet, but full on running over the English countryside in a white gown beautiful.  This is because the 7 strings are tuned to a 5 note scale.  It is very calming and even when Narina strums just one string over and over, it is peaceful.  Both Dan and I have learned a few songs and have our own songs that seem to be played over and over.  Two famous examples of  songs played in the pentatonic scale are "I'd like to teach the world to sing" and "Amazing Grace".  Dan busts out the first every now and then and I can't help but think of Coke commercials.

The pentatonic scale is used in a lot of traditional folk music from around the world.  Sometimes when you are playing it you can hear a glimpse of Celtic, Indian, or even Chinese traditional sounds.  It is an expensive gift and one that seems like it should have a special place in our home.  Instead it sits on the back of the couch within reach.  There is nothing better than having it in the background while breastfeeding or hearing Narina strum with vigor and smile with pride.

Reality Check: Waldorf Wednesday that couldn't wait

We had gone to a toddler group in the morning, nap time was a success (meaning she had one) and after a quick stroll around the farm, I had decided we would do our Waldorf Wednesday project for next week.  I had bought Stockmar paints late last year and have used them to do wet on wet painting  for star votives and price tags at the Steiner school fairs I have had tables at.  I thought it would be a great way to have a special moment and make my business card background for the next sale I am going to be at in a month.  I mix the paint as directed.  I don’t have a fancy wooden holder for my sweet little jars, I have baby food jars from a friend of ours.  They still have the glue stuck to the sides.  I put them on the table and go to get the bucket of water to soak the paper in.  Fill it, put Narina in her chair, bib on.  We have the brushes in the old yogurt tub of water.  We don’t have/ can’t afford/ haven’t made yet painting boards so I use plastic place mats.  We don’t have natural sponge to wipe off the surface then wipe off the paper, so I use a baby cloth.

I go to pick out a piece of paper for Narina and I see a white clump of what looks like soap floating in the water.  The last time I used this bucket was to give myself a pedicure.  It was during this pedicure that I noticed half my big toenail was coming off.  I panicked, raced to the internet to see possible causes, left the water to cool, realised I wasn’t going to be going back to that pedicure any time soon.  I dumped the water and raced onto the next thing.  Without. washing. it. out.  So in my peaceful tranquil moment with my daughter, with half the “right” equipment, it dawned on me that a callous was floating on the paper.  I took it off, ignored the rest of what was floating in the water, and we painted.

The moral of the story?

    1.    We are doing our Waldorf experience on a budget
    2.    Man am I on a learning curve
    3.    Don’t use pedicure basins for crafts with children until disinfected first.
    4.    Don’t read other amazing and beautiful waldorf blogs right after you fish callouses out of your water

           because it can make a really amazing and funny experience seem like its corners haven’t been rounded.  

I think she is looking at the callous

Waldorf Wednesday: Nature Table February

Waldorf Wednesday: Meal Time

There is something really satisfying about having home baked bread right out of the oven.  Top that with chutneys that are home made and soup made from veggies from your own garden and you have yourself my ideal meal.  You also have something I dreamed of for years.  The meals in our house are the biggest part of our day.  We spend a lot of time cooking or preparing.  It is where most of our money goes and where we show our love. Our goal this year is to bring intention into our food. We have done a good job with infusing our food with love but we are hoping to offset some of the cost with garden vegetables this year.  Last year's crops were so sparse. Fingers crossed.  Narina has already had her fingers in dough and in the soil.  Our family is creating our intention and that is awesome.   We are adding things slowly to the rhythm of our home. It is easy for me to get carried away with trying to over achieve an ideal, but then things phase out and we want these things to stick. 

Waldorf Wednesday

 

For Christmas my brother and sister in law gave Dan and I a beautiful bees wax candle.  We decided, with a bit of inspiration, to light our candle with each meal.  Narina, with her growing vocabulary, says  “fire” and points towards the candle before we have lit it.  In this way we have created something simple that we can maintain but that holds the space of ritual and beauty during meal times.