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Pumpkins All Year Round!

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

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Gardening with Small Children: A World of Wonder and Rhythmic Impression

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

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Children In Nature

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

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Outdoor Play!

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

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How Does Your Garden Grow?

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

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Letting Children Say YES!

After experimenting with a natural, authentic home rhythm and routine to suit our values, needs, and interests over the yeras, it was a joy to see that healthy habits and a sense of responsibility have taken root.  I’ve been sick for over a week with a flu and fever.  Last Monday, on my third day

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Creating a YES Environment

Creating a YES! Environment By Simone DiMarzi     What does it mean to say YES when taking care of children birth to three?  The child’s first words are often “No.”  One of the best ways not to chime in with the children and always have to say “No” is to create a YES environment.  The

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