How to Clean Beeswax Crayons

Beeswax crayons are such a pleasure to use, they make such beautiful colors and beautiful drawings. They are easy to use, feel good in the hand, and respond to our warmth by giving us more of their color. They last a very long time too.

Over time they get broken, bitten and chipped, and with use they get scuffed up from rubbing against the colors of the other crayons.

What to do to bring them back to their majestic purity of color?

The answer is simple and can be meditative.

• First, I gather my beeswax crayons
• Then I take out an old bed sheet or towel from the ragbag
• Then I tear off a corner of the cloth to make a cleaning cloth about the size of a lunch napkin

I use oil for cleaning beeswax crayons; it dissolves the crayon markings the get rubbed into the other color crayons. I was taught to use Citrasolve and over the years have tried lavender essential oil and even olive oil. I imagine coconut oil works too. Any oil. Citrasolve probably works the fastest, yet is probably the harshest. 

Put some oil on the cloth and rub away. The crayons will come clean.

In the end, you have clean crayons to color with and beautiful colors on the cleaning rag.

This month we are contemplating the experience of color in our lives and doing some grown up coloring with beeswax crayons over on Celebrate the Rhythm of LIfe through the Year, my interactive curriculum program that supports parents, teachers and childcare providers to awaken to the rhythms in daily, weekly and seasonal life through beauty, imagination and wonder.

I've also been doing Homeschool Consulting and now officially offer that as a Service.

Happy Weekend friends, what's on your slate for this weekend?

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{this moment}

A Friday ritual. a photo capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

Joining Amanda over at SouleMama

Happy Weekending!

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Joining Amanda over at SouleMama

Happy Weekending!

{this moment}

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. a photo capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

along with Soulemama

Winter Play on Mother Nature's Playground

The world is a playground. Note the senses involved in this play:

• Touch 
• Life
• Self Movement 
• Balance
• Warmth
• Sight
• Smell
• Hearing

and the toys are free!

What does Mother Nature's playground look like where you live?

Leave a link to a picture/blog post on Mother Nature's Playground in the Comments below.

How We Talk to Our Children

Everyday we talk. We wake up and speak. We talk to the dog, the cat, our partners and our children all through the day. Yet how often do we sit back and really reflect on the language we use? Speaking is one of those things we do that takes on its own habits and practices.

How often do we hear the voice of our mother or father or even grandparent come out when we speak?

The use of language is one characteristic that distinguishes human beings from animals. Yet sometimes, too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing. Our culture places heavy emphasis on the printed word with a push towards early reading  and often we find ourselves bombarded with words via screens and speakers in waiting rooms, airports, airplanes, bars, banks, restaurants and shops. The screen is everywhere blasting news and information at us and our children when they are out and about in these places.

We can protect children from this onslaught of media by carefully deciding where and when we take them out. We can provide diversions from the screens in waiting rooms by bringing a book or being prepared with a little verse and a finger puppet in the pocket.

We can examine the language we use when we speak to children. What are we trying to convey and can we find simpler, more creative and perhaps more effective ways of expressing it?

Do you wonder how it is that Waldorf kindergarten and nursery teachers get children to come and go with so little talking?

This month in my Celebrate the Rhythm of Life in March E-Course Program, we'll take a look and listen to the way we speak to the children in our lives. What are the words we use? Do we want to keep using them? We'll wonder together and explore ways of communicating with children that are simple and effective and energizing for child and adult alike.

In addition to the focus topic aspect, Celebrate the Rhythm of Life in March includes support materials and conversation dedicated to supporting you in bringing harmony, rhythm and balance to daily life. Materials include a Daily Rhythm Guide, Weekly Rhythm Support, Material to support seasonal celebration though verse stories, recipes, song, crafts, handwork, puppetry and best of all a community of others who are journeying on this path.

$45

Sign Up Here 

{this moment}

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. a photo capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

Along with SouleMama

{this moment}

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. a photo capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

Joining in with Amanda over at SouleMama

Reflections from My Kitchen

Morning time is Mama Time in my kitchen. I love to savor a cup of coffee amidst the quiet and solitude of a house full of sleepers. The chocolate is not all for me, it's on its way to our boy's expedition group along with some healthier foods that are in the works in my new, well you'll see, my new food preparation device that I'll try to photograph for you. It's something I have considered for a long time. 

Are mornings your quiet time?

Morning Splendor

 I used to be such a night owl, a boiled-in-the-wool night bird. 

I was the kind of night bird who'd stay up late, devouring novels, writing, drawing and painting, working on collage and other creative projects in my solitude, happy as can be, occasionally going out to hear bands of friends, everyone was in a band back then it seemed, or to dinner or a movie.

Then I became a mother. And it all changed. It was during my pregnancy that the night bird flew away. I'd fall asleep after dinner on the sofa, wishing for cake and unable to make it through an episode of The Simpsons. (This was a long time ago, in 1994 to be precise.) Melrose Place followed Beverly Hills 90210 in those days.

With motherhood came a new appreciation for the morning. Mornings became my time, my moments of solitude. My babies slept well. They must have had some keen survival instinct in knowing that I was not happy when woken from my sleep. I somehow managed to nurse in the night without ever coming to a full state of awakening. You know that feeling? 

My children have grown and still sleep well through the night. They are sometimes reluctant to go to bed and will sleep into the morning when there is no need to rise.

I never returned to the life of the nightbird. I am ready for bed shortly after nightfall and prefer a good book to a movie. I continue to savor the solitude of my mornings. This morning's splendor was too glorious not to share with you. When I looked out the window the sky to the south and easy was painted with these vibrant colors. I made no adjustments to the camera or photo, this is just how they came out.

 and below....

How was your morning?

Meal Plan Monday

Weekly Rhythm :: The Meal Plan

One simple way to help make the week flow with ease is the meal plan. The meal plan makes it easy to shop, plan and prepare meals. It also makes a great fall back during busy and stressful times. 

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After a full holiday season of stepping out of our rhythm pretty regularly, a meal plan helps bring form to our days and weeks. If you'd like some help to get your rhythm back on track, join my program Celebrate the Rhythm of Life in February with the focus topic on Rhythm. You'll get help identifying and establishing the rhythm that is best for your family and receive a month of enthusiastic support.

Here's the description from last year's Rhythm Session that got great reviews and brought many members back for more. Included in the Program are Packets of support material, videos, articles and a discussion group as well as consultation with yours truly.

See all that it includes here.

Stepping Out of Time

Many moons ago, when I was a child, the week between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day was a stepping out of time: we visited family, had friends and family over to visit, played with cousins, sang Christmas songs and ate plenty of good food. We feasted and were festive. We made snowmen and went ice skating and toboganning. The routine of school and work stopped, and the focus was one of pulling in, of connection and companionship and community with family and friends. It was a time out of time, with a stillness to the air, and to the year, a threshold perhaps.

Now that I am the parent, I make sure that life continues to slow down here, even though the world remains busy outside our doors. We don't have so many aunts and uncles and cousins to visit as I did, as they are fewer in number and more spread out than we were. The buzz of the world does not seem so far away as it did when I was young, or perhaps it was not so loud. To hold that stillness is a challenge.

As I am in my own bubble of the Twelve Days of Christmas and the Holy Nights, I've been thinking about Epiphany and my relationship to this feast, the Feast of Epiphany, the awakening of the wise men from the east, awakening of the self, of consciousness.

Epiphany is said to have its origins in the Saturnalia of Rome. In the Church it is a liturgical season from Epiphany to Candlemas, a day also known as Brigid's Day, and for some associated with the churching of women.

For me, Christmas is a season that begins just after Thanksgiving with the first week of Advent and continues until Candelmas, or Brigid's Day. Over the years we have taken up activities that have become tradition, along with many of the traditions I grew up with.

It has not always been this way. As a child I read Marx and Engels' History of the Family and then rebelled against everything, church, tradition, rules. I was not an easy teenager, ahem - sorry mom and dad. As I grow older, I have such compassion for my mom and dad and what they put up with and I now find meaning in the traditions of my own childhood, not as habit or sentimentality but as something that makes meaning for me.

I now celebrate because I want to, it is important for me. I bring them to my children to take part in or not. I wonder if it is in the letting go of them, as I did when I was younger and rebellious, then the contemplation of them, and finally a conscious and hopefully living relationship to them and then inviting them as something meaningful that makes for transformation and a free relationship to celebration? Do you find that happens with you?

We are midway through the twelve days and holy nights of Christmas, the Child of Light and Love or the Sun of Light has triumphed over the darkness of the year and the three kings are following the star as we are moving towards Epiphany, the Festival of the Three Kings; the figures in our house move along with time. The mood of Epiphany carries us to Candelmas. Rudolf Steiner spoke of the mood of Christmas in The Christmas Festival in the Changing Course of Time here in case you are interested.

How do you find your way into festivals and celebrations?