Celebrating Losar

Presently *LOVING* Tenzin's Deer by Barbara Soros (Author), Danuta Mayer (Illustrator)

“May no harm come to us. May we love each other well. May we be kind to all the creatures of the earth.”

Who can resist a book with such a beautiful message!

Thursday was the Tibetan New Year (Losar) as well as the Chinese. These two important festivities rarely fall on the same day. Losar is the most important holiday in Tibet. We celebrated with some craft projects

creating sand mandalas




prayer flags






As you have probably read in this blog before we have a small library of kids books about Tibet, folk tales, fiction and non fiction. This week at night I have also been showing Zoe photos from this beautiful blog....especially the ones "women" "children"


Other than that we have been in awe of the winter beauty that has been surrounding us....spending time outside looking for animal tracks. building shelters, fires and taking photos and then coming inside and




snuggling on the couch and reading books and drinking hot cocoa,

Rainbow Crow by Nancy Van Laan
Animals in Winter by Henrietta Bancroft
Big Tracks Little Tracks by Millicent E. Sels

planning our trip and finishing hand made gifts for our family in Europe (more about that soon).

Zoe Travels the World: Join Us in Our Adventures

(this post has already been published over at Hilltown families)



Hi, my name is Zoe. Some of you may know me as I live here in the hilltowns. And while I love the hilltowns, one of my favorite things to do with MamaT is to travel. I LOVE to travel! I’ve taken an airplane to Europe when I was four months old, and I’ve journeyed by car from the hilltowns to Florida. I’ve traveled by bus and by train, and I even spent seven months in India (in utero!). I don’t remember much about that trip, but MamaT has stories to share!



This spring (March ‘08) we’re taking off again. I can hardly wait! We are flying to Amsterdam (Holland) and then caravaning through Eastern Europe to Greece to visit my Giagia (greek for grandmother). MamaT says that our trip this spring is just a warm up for the BIG ONE … a journey over land from England to Tibet! And all along the way we are planning our adventures with visits to many cities in seven different countries, including:

Berlin (Germany)
Prague (Czech Republic)
Vienna (Austria)
Budapest (Hungary)
Bucharest (Romania)
Sofia (Bulgaria)
and then into Northern Greece

You can follow our adventures right here on The Herbal Way or on Hilltown Families. You can read our posts, which will include photos, activities, maps and links to suggested readings. And when we return we’ll be sharing more stories and craft projects at the Children’s Art Museum in Shelburne Falls, MA.



POSTCARDS FROM THE ROAD

If you would like to receive a postcard from us during our travels, send us your name and mailing address, along with a donation of $1.50 to cover costs and we’ll send you a card during our trip. Drop it in the mail (please email me tlemos (at) noho (dot) com if you would like our mailing address) to arrive before March 7th, 2008. Our road trip will begin the next day!

A while it has been...

and to the North Pole and back we have been on the Polar Express!

This past weekend I participated in a local crafting event called "Crafted in the Village"





while I was safely indoors and peddling my crafts it was bitter cold and the wind howled so much that our pipes froze!

After some sleep I will announce the winner of the basket and talk more about the Advent of Solstice.

My other hat! (and a holiday give away!)

Being an herbalist and a mother are the two roles I am most comfortable with..........recently I have been wearing many hats. Some I am just trying on for size and others seem to be new roles I am falling into. When I meet new people in my community I am always surprized the role they might know me as is the person who runs the "Children's Art Museum" in town. A relatively new role.

The Children's Art Museum was started as a labor of love a little over a year ago. My original intention was a place of beauty where children of all ages could come and find their muses, experiment, create and try on new hats! Some of you may have seen the blog StudioCAM.

In the past year we have hosted some great sold out concerts The Nields, Lui Collins, and recently Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang ALL THE WAY FROM LA!! We have had a whimsicle Fairy Tea Party, a gruff pirate party!, Fun Art openings (Mischa Epstien Alvorado), a great puppet show Dr Marmalade, we have our own homeschool group that meets on Wednesdays, we are home to a Mucho Gusto Spanish and a Hilltown Music Together. Not to mention the fun art classes; making clay, papier mache, sewing 1-2-3 and more. And lastly and perhaps most importantly we have formed a great relationship with Hiltown Families and have been recently co-sponsoring and planning events. Not bad for a first year!

Those were the events that took off. The memory makers. It has been hard work, sometimes rewarding and sometimes not. There were probably as many events that flopped!

The hat that does not seem to fit so well is the hat of a business person! I can plan/coordinate a fun event, I can make flyers, create a space, refinish old furniture, find great books, take fun photographs, make good medicine!!..........but writing grants and collecting funds I tell you is not my forte! To help with the finances at CAM we are holding a raffle, the prize a Tote Bag filled to the top with quality Art and Craft Supplies and Projects and Creative play games ( including Stockmar beeswax crayons, Haba games, a Harrisburg Peg Loom and Usborne Art Book and much more…..hours and hours of creative fun!!) For more info check out the StudioCAM blog. If you feel so inclined please do enter.

and finally the holiday give away......heads up for tomorrow I will be postiing a holiday give away........A clue, A clue I hear you ask for a clue. You'll find a clue in the June 18th post

Have you guessed yet? Just check in tomorrow.

Dr Marmalaid
A puppet show that delights even the youngest child.


(thank you sienna for the pictures for more check out hilltown families)


Dr. Marmalade has traveled the world helping animals in distress. Her gentle, empowering methods leave everyone with a sense of well-being and adventure. She introduces the children to many puppet friends: a gorilla with a belly ache, a singing dinosaur, a snake that wants to be a kitty, a giraffe, crow, rabbit and many others. All the animals come to Marmalaid for help. The children become her assistants giving hugs, words of encouragement, and even translating for a lost puppy. A beautiful map is the backdrop for Dr. Marmalade's world.

Highly recommended!

What we are up to......
MAMA Reads:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto

Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century

Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey--The Sweet Liquid Gold that Seduced the World

The Fourfold Path to Healing: Working with the Laws of Nutrition, Therapeutics, Movement and Meditation in the Art of Medicine

NEXT in line.....Foodwise: Understanding What We Eat and How It Affects Us : The Story of Human Nutrition

Zoe reads:

We just finished
The Complete Tales of Blackberry Farm

What a treat! We saw these stories at a friends house recently. I instantly fell in love with the sweet characters and illustrations. When looking them up due to cost ended up ordering this collection. All the animals Ernest Owl, Joe Robin, Mr and Mrs Nibble and their young bunnies Rosey, Posey and Christopher, Walter Duck, Little Martha the lamb and more are so sweet. Another great thing about this book is that the characters come to life and visit and live at our play farm! so it had led to hours of creative play. The stories are simple, 25 of them! The language is English (as opposed to American!) this was a plus for us having grown up in England reminiscent of my childhood.

A little warning as one or two of them are "old fashioned" a little politically incorrect! (mainly the adventures of Walter Duck) We just skip or update!

The Empty Pot

The Life and Times of the Honeybee

Belinda Bee's Busy Year

The Best Beekeeper of Lalibela: A Tale from Africa

Do you see a theme? We are about to start a mini unit on bees.....we will do it with our homeschooling coop.

To Be . . . A Bee! A Bee Unit

Here is the Beehive
Here is the beehive. Where are the bees? 
(hold up fist)
Hidden away where nobody sees. 
(move other hand around fist)
Watch and you’ll see them come out of the hive
(bend head close to fist)
One, two, three, four, five. 
(hold fingers up one at a time)
Bzzzzzzzz… all fly away!
(wave fingers)

1.  There are thousands of different kinds of bees.  BEE FACT: A bee has five eyes: two large compound eyes on each side of its head and three smaller eyes on top of its head.

2.  They are found everywhere in the world except the North and South Poles.  

3.  Bees are the only insects that make food that humans eat, (honey).  Honey is a natural and healthy sweetener. How Much Honey? On a single flight, a honeybee can visit more than 1,000 flowers, drinking nectar with a tongue that resembles a drinking straw. When its "honey stomach" — which holds only one-eyedropper's worth of nectar — is full, the bee deposits the nectar into hive cells. Tell children that each bee produces about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.

(Engage in a honey tasting activity or an easy recipe calling for honey as a main ingredient)

4.  Beeswax is used in making candles, and other products. (Make a salve/dipped candle)

5.  Bees live in large groups called colonies.

Siblings by Scent: Explain to children that honeybees of the same colony recognize their siblings by scent. When an unrelated bee tries to enter the hive, guard bees detect its foreign scent and sting it to death.

(Game to help understand how bees recognize one another, divide them into groups for this activity. First, gathersome cotton swabs and three clear food flavorings, such as peppermint, coconut, and lemon. Divide the cotton swabs into three groups, dip each group into a different flavoring, and randomly arrange the swabs on waxed paper. Have kids pick a cotton swab and form colonies (groups) by finding other "bees" with matching scented swabs. After they have identified their "bee siblings," share their experiences.)

BEE FACT: A bee smells, tastes, and feels with its two antennae. It also senses things with the hairs on its body and legs.

6.  Their dwellings (homes) are called hives. BEE FACT: A beehive is built with wax produced in special glands in the workers' abdomens.

7.  The leader of each hive is the queen.  She directs the activities of the other bees, the workers and the drones.  The queen bee lays up to 2,000 eggs per day to populate the hive. BEE FACT: Worker bees are female. They build the beehive and perform all the jobs necessary for the survival of the hive. Many people raise bees for the production of honey and wax or just as a hobby.

8.  The honey bee is important for the farming industry and natural settings in the process of pollination for the production of crops and growth of wild plants. 

Pollination: A bee traps pollen on its hairy legs as it gathers nectar from a flower blossom. When it visits another flower, pollen falls off the bee's legs and pollinates - or fertilizes - that flower. This cross-pollination allows plants to reproduce.

( To show how bees transport pollen, kids will make their own bees and cut out large flower shapes from construction paper. Sprinkle a thin coat of powdered paint in the center of the flowers, using a different color for each. Each paint color represents flower pollen. Children will be invited to gently land their bees on one flower center and then fly them to another. What happens as their bees move from flower to flower? Explain that real bees transport pollen in a similar fashion in order to cross-pollinate flowers in nature.)

Circle Dancing Directions
When a bee discovers a field of nectar-producing flowers, it communicates its find by dancing on the hive. A circle dance means that the flowers are nearby. A waggle dance, in which the bee wags its abdomen, indicates the flowers are far away. To further direct the colony, the dancing bee waggles in a straight line, to the left, or to the right. Invite children to communicate in a bee's language. First, write the names of different classroom objects on note cards, making sure the objects are visible to students. To play, group children into "colonies." Then secretly show one "bee" in each group the note card. Instruct that bee to perform circle and waggle dances to give its colony clues to the location of the mystery object. When a colony guesses the object, invite the dancing bee to fly to the object to confirm its location.



Zoe listens:

Uncle Wiggly

Mandy & The Magic Butterfly

Otherwise the big project is my office re-do.........finally picked the colors. Hopefully I'll paint this week!!!

Crafting:

We have been busy creating "The Adventures of Red Noname" (see below) and his friend Charlotte (picture to come soon)





Charlotte is a spider like creature that was embroidered on the back of a shirt. Now we are creating a book of their adventures.

Here is a t-shirt zoe designed yesterday. I gave the owls wings and wrote the text on as she dictated it to me!

This is my friend gina when she was a little girl!




We have also been making a lot of wrapping paper. Inspired by Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine I have been looking at my buying habits and looking where money can be saved. ( i know coffee is a BIGGIE but i am not ready challenge that one yet!) anyway I pledged to stop buying wrapping paper and gift bags in 2007). So i made a stack.....so fun. I have also made a felt tunic for a freinds birthday as I was running so late, wrapped it in the car after the last stich was sewn! I did not get a chance to photograph it first!.

Winter Arrives!

Magic! There is something so magical about ice...so beautiful and yet so severe. The trees this morning were silver, shiny and glistening.......Icicles have always intriued me...so precise.......



But when you look closer...........oh no! the bud that had prematurely arrived encapsulated ..........




I have been busy over at the Children's Art Museum. I am using this down time at the Herbal School to get that project of the ground. This week is our GRAND OPENING. We are having a family concert at 3pm with Lui Collins as well as a bake sale (still looking for goodies). We will also have our first kids art opening the theme "Nature in Winter" (our monthly themes are listed over at StudioCAM)

This project The Children's Art Museum was a HUGE risk I took. So I hope it works out as I think it will be a gift to the children in our area.........we are accepting donations of all kinds and are especially looking for

fabric
buttons
sewing supplies
wool felt
wool roving
scrapbooking supplies
rubber stamps
and ideas!!

If you are cleaning your studio as part of a New Years Resolution please consider sending us some supplies you are no longer using. Donations can be mailed to CAM PO Box 6, Shelburne Falls, MA ) 01370.

And talking of New Year Resolutions I am still working on mine......This is a kind of addendum to my January 2nd post.

~ to 'waste' less time and make more of everday . I know the ways that I waste time (my time monsters). How do you waste time????
~ to go to more exhibitions, plays...
~ to have more patience (especially with Zoe)
~ to cook more and even bake
- to complete at least one craft project per month (especially from the WIP list)


The next herbal apprenticeship begins on tuesday April 17th, the first new moon in the Spring. Some special plans for this years program is to plant a dye garden, a three sisters garden, and a woodland garden and some herbal papermaking, as well as all the usual topics you'll find listed on the website. The program rums every tuesday for 10 months. Please email me for more information.