The Hen has Pneumonia

And the two chicks have a wicked, wicked virus. It's no fun. We've been sick for a full week at this point, hence the lack of blog posts. Hopefully we'll be back soon with some fun to share!

Using Yoga in Our Playgroup

The chicks and I are blessed to be a part of a small, close-knit playgroup: three moms and six kids, all neighbors, together for over a year. When we started back up in January after a hiatus, we decided to incorporate yoga as a part of the weekly routine. It has been a huge success. All of our children have exposure to yoga already, and they all enjoy it, but its role in our playgroup has been multifaceted. In addition to providing opportunity for physical activity during the session and allowing them to engage in something they enjoy, it very quickly and very powerfully changes the tone of the group. Our rough schedule (going from about 9:30 to about noon), looks like this:

Free play
Yoga
Story
Snack/Special Planned Activity

We give them quite awhile for free play (maybe an hour?), and with six kids aged one to six years old, at the most energetic period of the day, they are quite crazy by the end of the hour. When we shift into yoga, it is amazing to feel the calm come over the group and the tone change so dramatically. Even if they are not all participating in the yoga, or not all at the same time (as is often the case), they still benefit from and take part in this change of atmosphere.

For this week's playgroup, we decided to go a step further and have a special yoga-themed day. In preparation for the session, Ninna and I sewed nine lap pillows and nine eye pillows (six of each for the kids, three of each for the moms), modeled after a great post about restorative yoga for children on the Shivaya Naturals blog. We (along with our neighbors) filled the lap pillows ahead of time with lentils and organic lavender I had grown and dried when we lived in California, and I sewed them closed. I left the eye pillows open with a hole so the kids could take part in the making of these.

After free play on the day of our session, the kids filled their eye pillows with flax seed and lavender, and they each helped me sew them closed on the machine. We then showed the kids a four and a half minute story from the Storytime Yoga blog. Afterward, we moved into our practice. We first completed all the poses from our book Little Yoga: A Toddler's First Book of Yoga. Then the oldest of the bunch shared some yoga he had learned in school last year, giving him an opportunity to take a leadership role. Finally, we tried some of the poses in the Shivaya Naturals post as a way to close out the activity.

Next time, we will start the restorative/relaxing poses earlier. Half of the kids engaged in that part, but the other half were done by that point given the length of time we had spent on yoga already. All in all, however, it went well, and I think it really helped cement the yoga as an important component of our group activity.

Bedtime Project: Ice Wreaths

Thanks to my good friend Google Reader, I learned this winter that there is such a thing as an ice wreath. I've seen lots of very cool ones on different blogs, and I decided that we should make them for bedtime project.

We actually made these weeks ago, but it turned out to be above freezing when we put them outside, and they took days to freeze. And then they sat on the back balcony for a week or two while I forgot about them. So several weeks later, here is our experience with the ice wreaths:

Based on a tutorial I saw somewhere and have since forgotten, we used round cake pans as the molds for the wreaths and weighted bowls in the center to create the holes. First, we placed glass beads and small pine branches leftover from our Christmas tree in the pan:
Then we poured water in them, put them outside, and waited. For days.


While these aren't nearly as fancy or seasonal as some of those I've seen online, I actually love the way the glass beads catch the sunlight. I'm hoping to find an old bundt pan at the Salvation Army to make our next batch more interesting.

Craft Foam Familiar Faces Valentine Memory Game

The grandmas have been feeding our serious craft addiction by sending holiday craft supplies. Last week we got two boxes of Valentine's Day goodies, and we were starting on projects within hours.

I decided that I would make something out of the heart-shaped doily craft foam. My first thought was to make a garland, but since I did the same with the fall-themed craft foam, I decided I should be a little more creative, and so the Valentine Memory Game came about.

This was very easy and has been a huge hit in our home. I printed out two copies of various photos of the chicks, glued one onto each piece of craft foam, and finished them with some heart stickers.

Despite her great interest in other activities, Ninna has not, so far, been very interested in following the rules of games. Of all the games in our cupboard, there is really only one that she has been willing to play, using the rules, through to the end of the game. I can now add this memory game to the short list because she absolutely loves it. It's so much more fun searching around for a heart with a photo of her and Bojey at the beach last summer than it is looking for some random, sometimes poorly drawn picture.


There were a total of eighteen red hearts, so I used nine pairs of photos. I might have made more, but given Ninna's beginner level with organized games, nine pairs is just about perfect. I chose to only print photos of the girls, making this a "sisters" edition of the game, but I intend to make another version with all of our extended family members down the road. The girls will love to play with photos of their grandparents, cousins, and other people they love but don't see often.

This post is a part of Steady Mom's 30 Minute Blog Challenge.

One Small Change: January Wrap-Up/February Change

Last month we started taking part in the One Small Change project. I committed, for the month of January, to start taking the compost out again. I would estimate that I took out about 70% of the compostable waste. That's a big improvement, but in grading terms it would be a C minus--barely passable. I got a bad cold a couple of weeks ago (from which I am still recovering), and I just didn't make the effort with the compost on a number of the really sick days.

If the goal of the project was not perfection, however, but to create (or in this case, bring back) a green habit, then the goal was met. I might not have taken down all the compost, but it has become a regular habit again. And now, on to February!

Deciding on a February change has been really tough. As I mentioned last month, we are already fairly green. Some of the greener things we could be doing are not options to me as a renter (setting up a greywater system, for example). Others are things I'm just not ready for ("family cloth," for example.)

What I have decided to do is stop using the clothes dryer. In the warm weather, I dry laundry on the clothesline, but in the winter, I use the dryer for every single load. That's a lot of electricity, and it really doesn't make a lot of sense given that it's warm and very dry inside our home. In addition, this change is something the chicks can help me with when they are awake. They can easily help me put the clothes on the drying rack and take them down when they're done, and the extra few minutes will give us an opportunity to talk about why we're doing this.

The only thing I will still machine dry is our diapers. In my experience, line dried diapers are very hard, stiff, and scratchy. I suppose if I really wanted to, I could lay them out to dry and then throw them in the dryer for ten minutes at the end, but I can tell you that's not happening right now--thankfully, this project calls for baby steps!

I'm off to take out a load from the dryer right now to begin our second small change.