LifeWays
Children love the jolly jack-o-lanterns, but at Spindlewood we like to keep our pumpkins alive all year round, beginning with hunting for them in the overgrown summer garden. Then we keep one to stand guard until the frost on the pumpkin finally renders it food for the sheep and chickens. We save some …
By Lisa Boisvert Mackensie “There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again.”- Elizabeth Lawrence The young child is still very much in a state of at-one-with-the-world, completely open to receiving sense impressions from the world. A garden provides …
Here at The Orchard, our in-home, LifeWays-inspired child care place, being outdoors, rain or shine, hot or cold, is a given. It is also a challenge because, although we value and promote unstructured free play outdoors, we look for opportunities to share nature together. Apart from unstructured, surprise encounters with nature, this happens in two …
Living on islands surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean in every direction, Hawaii’s children are connected to the rhythms of tides and the seasons through the powerful, pervasive element of water. For those living on the Big Island, fire and air are also ever present elemental realities, as Pele spews out molten lava at …
Paradise Farm is the home of the new garden for LifeWays Early Childhood Center in Milwaukee. Mary O’Connell, director of LifeWays, and her husband Jim have recently become owners of this historic farm about 45 minutes northwest of the city. It’s the perfect location to grow natural, pesticide-free produce for the children and caregivers at …
Outdoor play! Grass to roll down, gardens with mint and nibbles to eat as it is all edible, a pit to dig in, rain water to play in, room to run with little hills and slopes, boards and driftwood to balance on….no expensive outdoor play equipment needed! Dirt is not dirty, rain is for catching …
I didn’t mean to be a gardener. Somehow it just happened -or did it? My earliest memories of gardening were the ones of an annoyed teen being forced to help dig and build beds for a large succulent garden that would one day become the front yard for a LifeWays center in San Diego set in …