Your Stories - The Princess and the Pea

I'm often asked by parents how they can encourage their children to play more "imaginatively".  I have always found that providing children with simple open ended toys (such as coloured scarves, blocks and simple dolls) will allow them plenty of scope to create imaginary lands, if you have time to get down on the floor with them now and again and interact - even better!!  Extending a book you are reading, or an outdoor activity (such as a trip to the zoo) is another way to assist them children to "relive" the experience or story through play and allow it to work more deeply into their imagination.

Karen over at Earthly Joy Ride has kindly shared with us the wonderful and creative time her daughter Annalise had with her wooden bed and Evi doll princess from Honeybee.  I just love Karen's creativity, her blog is dedicated to children's reading and creative play!!! 

Here is Karen's and Annalise's story:

Last year for Christmas, I gave my three-year-old daughter Annalise three different versions of the story, "The Princess and the Pea". I bought her a small princess and wooden bed, and sewed ten mini quilts, and of course, made a tiny green felt pea.

Rachel Isadora's "The Princess and the Pea"  is the standard version and has beautiful illustrations of African princesses with African greetings.

“The Princess and the Packet of Frozen Peas” by Tony Wilson is about a prince called Henrik who wants to find a princess to marry. Prince Henrik’s test involves not a canopy bed with 20 mattresses and one pea, but a thin camping mattress, an old sleeping bag and a whole packet of frozen peas!

“The Princess and the Pea” by Lauren Child is an amazing piece of artwork. Lauren painted cornflake packets for the paneled rooms and set up the paper-dressed characters inside with tweezers, before Polly Borland, the photographer, took the photos. The language used is just as wonderful –

You see,” said the king, “a real princess is not only mesmerisingly beautiful and fascinatingly interesting but, most important of all –"

“She has manners,” said the queen.

“No one should ever travel without them,” said the king.

“No, never, never go anywhere without your manners,” agreed the queen, taking her elbows off the table.

Playing with the princess and her bed has really added another dimension for Annalise when reading these stories

Winter Winners!!

Oh dear, oh dear, where did Midwinter go? Our family has been having such a lovely time - starting with two school midwinter festivals and a midwinter play. Then there's been the school holidays: we've washed the dog, cleaned out the chook pen, read curled up together on the couch, redesigned the back garden, started a mosaic, baked cakes and learnt new recipes, revamped the dollhouses, sewed dolls clothes, and mostly just spent lots of lots of lovely time just being together. A big thanks to Emily who has taken care of the shop for us!

In the meantime I have so enjoyed reading your comments about your favourite schoolyard games. Thank you so much to everyone who contibuted here and on Facebook. Like a couple of you I too played Jacks. My Dad would save the knuckle bones from the lamb roast and then dye them with food colouring! And, I have to admit to playing kiss chasy too, although no kissing did ever occur at our school either :-).

These lucky three were drawn out of the hat, I know your little ones will all have alot of fun with your Kinderkram skipping ropes. Please email me your address details so we can pop them in the mail to you.

Carolyn from over at Seed

Jem from Mummy Jembelina

And the very creative Messy Fish

Winter Special Offer

Winter is the month to...learn how to skip!

As I know so many of you will bemoan, increasingly our children are becoming more and more passive in their daily activities with lots of time spent in the car driving to and from school, not to mention sitting in front of the TV, computer or Playstation. I am often asked how can I get my children/grandchildren off the computer (not just teenagers either, children as young as kinder age.)

Cast yourself back to your childhood days? What was your favourite outdoor game? Marbles? Hopscotch? Skipping? If we introduce our children to these games they will love them just as we did, childhood is timeless in that sense, it is just a matter of providing the right ingredients.

There is so much more to simple childhood games than meet the eye. Learning how to skip for instance is not only a great way to warm up on a cold winter’s morning, it is also great for fitness, learning how to count, and assists children to develop balance, spatial awareness and co-ordination. In Steiner schools the children skip as part of their morning routine – learning rhymes, maths and rhythm in the process.


Remember the old skipping rhymes? Here are a couple I hear around our house at the moment:

Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack
All dressed in black, black, black
With silver buttons, buttons, buttons
All down her back, back, back
She asked her mother, mother, mother
For fifty cents, cents, cents
To see the elephant, elephant, elephant
Jump the fence, fence fence
They jumped so high, high, high
They touched the sky, sky, sky
And didn't come back, back, back
Till the fourth of July, July, July

I'm a little Dutch girl, Dressed in blue.
Here are the things I like to do
Salute to the captain, Bow to the queen,
Turn by back
On the submarine.
I can do the tap dance,
I can do the split
I can do the holka polka
Just like this.

To celebrate the onset of winter we are giving a way three Kinderkram skipping ropes – one to each of three families. Handpainted in Germany they are a really good quality rope – the rope that is well weighted (a light weight plastic rope will not turn properly and make your child frustrated), and we think they are really gorgeous too!!! Sorry, you have to be in Australia to enter.

To enter just share with us (in comments) your favourite schoolyard game.

Winners will be announced on 20th June, just in time for Midwinter.

Slippery dips and rainbows of colour...

Look what Sarah and I built in the shop today!!! Putting together this new marble tower from Grimm's Spiel and Holz was just the thing to do on a cool Autumn day. We immersed ourselves in the colour and the smell of new wood - it was so meditative! It's a lovely thing that Grimm's have designed it so that it doesn't come ready made but has to be built - you can choose which way you put the colours together, and when you have finished pop the little bells into the cup at the top and they run down the slide with a joyful tinkling! It reminded me of the old style slippery dip I rode by the seaside in England (yes, I was 30 at the time!).

New horizons...

It's been very quiet here on the blog I know, but there's a reason for this...I have been busy preparing our Montmorency store for it's new owner. This change has been in the wind for about a year, as I have grappled with the juggling act of running two stores, as well as being a mother, and the many other various hats I wear.... So it is with great joy that I spent my last day at the Montmorency store yesterday. Robyn the new owner is a good friend of mine, and it feels wonderful to pass my baby into loving hands.

I am so looking forward to having more energy and being able to be more present in each moment of the day, and to ensuring I find time to nourish my children (who inspired this journey in the first place) and myself!

TV free time

"The TV has spent much more time raising us than you have" Lisa to Homer in The Simpsons. Ironic isn't it.

Christie from Childhood 101 made the interesting observation that this week is "turn off the TV week" in the USA. What a wonderful thing!!! I'm all for encouraging Australian famlies to do the same.

Research has found that too much exposure to the electronic media may risk developmental blocks in young children, not to mention:

• Difficulty switching off


• Blunted senses, visual strain, understimulation of the brain


• Social isolation and withdrawal


• Less creativity and imagination


• Commerical exploitation


• Inability to concentrate


• Attention deficit


• Desensitisation from information overload


• Exposure to violence

There's so much to be gained as a family from switching your TV off or even limiting the time to once a week. For instance in the evening you could try:

reading novels together;

taking up a craft like knitting or crotchet;

playing board games;

telling a story by candlelight;

putting on a puppet play or a concert.

Just eating dinner and talking around the table instead of having the TV blaring in the background has so much to offer - sharing each other's days, listening to your kids and knowing what is happening in their lives, relationship and communication skills.

I guarantee that once your children have more TV or computer free time you will stop hearing the words "I'm bored".

I know for some families it might pose a challenge at first, but the benefits are really worth it. For more information on research into children's development and eletronic media, and for ideas to support your family in turning your TV off, I can highly recommend Set Free Childhood a parents survival guide for coping with computers and TV.

Your stories - Immy and her Treeblocks

This morning I received the second of our new stories - families sharing their play - I know I am really going to enjoy this new series of posts - I love seeing children at play - they have such a innate sense of wonder and joy, that should be cherished, nourished and protected. Thank you to Immy's mum for sharing this with us. I love the look of concentration on Immy's face.

There is nothing nicer than opening a big orange bag and finding it filled with...
Tree Blocks!

Last night, Immy had a lovely time unpacking her brand new, big bag of blocks and stacking and re-stacking them. They were a gift from her lovely Aunty Beef. As well as building, she banged them together, drummed on them and tried using the big rounds as stepping stones!
This morning, the first thing she went to was that lovely, bright orange bag. With a very little assistance from me, she did a great job of building with them. They are so divine... they smell good and have great texture and I love their irregularities. What fun we will have!

Find Treeblocks at Honeybee here.