Little Herbalists and Healthy Families
Little Herbalists and Healthy Families
Combine a lot of cinnamon with some applesauce and what do you get? A delicious smelling dough for crafting! Add some ginger, cloves and orange essential oil and the dough becomes incredibly fragrant, almost enchanting in its olfactory expression. Oh my...
Read MoreAt the coffee shop one recent Fall morning I struck up a conversation with the spunky sweet woman behind the counter. We got to talking about the coconut caramel for sale near the register. I asked her if she thought I could use them to make caramel apples for my kids who are desperate for a gooey creamy apple. Our conversation drifted to how amazing apples are which is when I noticed the apples earrings she had doing a dangly dance from her ear lobes. Before I knew it this wonderful woman handed me a brown paper bag full of delicious red-green apples from her neighbor's tree. A kindly gift indeed....
The very next day, I was blessed to receive another gift. And this was huge for me, in fact the drama queen in me would say it changed my life, or at least my October. My daughter wanted to be "Trixie the Halloween Fairy" from the Rainbow Magic Books. I knew a little girl who had worn that very costume a few years before. I asked her mother if she still had it and could I buy it from her? Not only did she still have it but just she gave it to me. A full costume, complete with resplendent fairy wings. Now, I don't sew unless it is a simple repair job like re-attaching a button. And before I was gifted with this costume, I was looking at hours of potentially trying sewing or trying to figure out how to make the costume without sewing. It was a huge relief to know that I had nothing to do, the costume was done and I was free to focus on having fun with my kids. Another kindly gift...
How could I thank these lovely ladies and let them know how much their gestures meant to me? I pondered a bit before I remembered a favorite "thank you" that I love to give, an aromatherapy spritzer!
Most people love spritzers and delight in receiving them. Spritzers are so easy to make user friendly and bring a bit of plant magic into life. When I make a spritzer for someone who's preferences I don't know, I almost always use lavender essential oil. Most people love lavender and it is one of the safest essential oils. In fact only lavender and tea tree essential oils are okay to put straight on the skin with out dilution (this is called a neat application ~ neat right?).
Fill the bottle almost to the top with water but leave enough room for the sprayer tube to insert into the bottle. You may have to trim the tube a little bit to make it the right length. Then just add you essential oils. You will want to put a safe amount of oils into the bottle. Here is a good guideline for recommended dilutions:
So basically if you have a 4 ounce bottle for your spritzer you would use 20 to 24 drops of essential oil to make a 1% dilution or 40 to 48 drops for a 2% dilution. Information on proper dilutions taken from the oh so excellent Mindy Green & Kathy Keville's Aromatherapy, A Complete Guide to the Healing Art.
Then just give it a good shake. Add a ribbon and a label to make it pretty. That is it! So simple. What a great way to give thanks and tell someone you appreciate having them in your life.
The new school year is quickly approaching for us at our very sweet little preschool. Some of the kids will be coming to school for the very first time. In fact they may have never been away from their mama. Because needless to say, for some kids (and their parents too), the first day of school can be intimidating, scary and even a bit traumatic. I know I sat in my car and cried for a good twenty minutes after I dropped my oldest daughter off on her first day of preschool. Every year on this very special day we help the kids adjust to their new environment by offering a time-honored and much loved activity, playdough, made a bit friendlier with the addition of calming essential oils and herbs.
Playing with playdough on its own provides stress relief through tactile squeezing and massaging of the smooth squishy dough. With essential oils added the child instantly gets all the benefits of aromatherapy. Breathing deepens as the oils are inhaled calming the mind and body, bringing about a sense of peace. Read Herbal Playdough for more info on the benefits of playdough and to get some great ideas for making your own colorful fragrant completely chemical free playdough. It is fun to let each child custom make their own playdough to take home. They have something fun they made to share with their family at the end of the big day.
Prepared Playdough or you can make the playdough with the kids. Here is my favorite recipe:
Combine dry ingredients in a sauce pan. Add the water and oil. Stir together and heat slowly over low heat. Stir almost constantly until the playdough sets up. Let it cool to warm before playing, playdough right off the stove is hot.
Food Coloring (Please note that I am searching for affordable coloring made from natural materials that are healthy. I do use powdered herbs for coloring when making a large quantity of one colored playdough for the school, yet I need something wonderful for coloring playdough when we are making personal playdough for taking home. If any one has a source, please share!)
Essential Oils I like to offer lavender, sweet orange, cardamon, spearmint, rosemary and rose geranium.
Dried Herbs like lavender blossoms, ground cinnamon and rose petals
Glitter
How do you welcome little ones to your school for that first big day? I would love to hear all about it!
Well, the first day has come and went. We had a blast making our playdough. Some of the kids made some really neat pieces of art with their playdough and all the additions we used. Fresh lavender stalks became trees and dried roses became lava.
Enjoy the pictures!
Please Note about essential oils: Essential oils are concentrated plant substances. They are dangerous and should not be used unsupervised around children. Always keep the oils up and out of reach when you aren’t using them and be sure that an adult is the one who holds and uses the bottles. I tell the kids that the essential oils are for teachers to use. Some oils smell like really yummy food, so please do be careful. Use mild oils like the ones listed above.
Shared on: The Weekly Kid's Co-op, DJDaniel4's Mom, Charlotte Mom Favorites
This time of year we are always busy preparing something for those loveliest of people... Mommies.
This May we are making foot soaks for pampering hard-working feet and to go with it? The cutest footprint butterflies!
Read MoreBreathe deep and what do you feel? Taking a slow deep breath relaxes mind and body bringing clarity and calming anxiety. Now take a deep breath of a high quality aromatic essential oil and all the therapeutic benefits of the oil are added to the experience. Um, I am feeling more relaxed just thinking about it!
We conducted our own little experiment to see how different essential oils made us feel. Seated in a circle on the floor I passed around smell sticks I had made from card stock. Each stick had a number on it which corresponded to my list of essential oils. I did this because I didn't want the kids to know what oil they were smelling but then I realized, silly me, they can't read yet! I got a good chuckle at myself for that one. Anyways, we passed around the sticks one at a time having fun sniffing. After everyone had their fill of smelling each stick, we tried to figure out how what we had smelled made us feel. We took the smell stick and placed it on a wheel I had drawn with the emotions calm, happy and refreshed.
It was so very cute to watch the kids smelling and feeling. When we passed around the stick with orange on it the kids got giggly and wiggly. We decided that orange made us happy! Lavender produced a group of peaceful, relaxed and quiet kids; still where they sat and reflective. We decided that lavender was a mix between refreshed and calm, but "mostly calm." We also investigated cedarwood, spearmint, cardamon and rosemary.
Here is a chart of our results:
After all of our sniffing and feeling was done, I asked the kids to each choose their very favorite oil to create a piece of art work with.
Can you guess what oil was the most popular?
"Happy!"
"Orange!"
Isn't it wonderful how children just want to be happy? What a gift it is to be around such joy. A few kids wanted lavender and one chose cedarwood. Apparently, none of them needed to be refreshed!
Next I gave them piece of paper with a drop of their chosen oil in the corner. I asked them to create a piece of art work with the emotion and smell as their inspiration.
The kids were very creative and had a blast!
Thanks to 2flowerslearning for the great post inspiration for this fun class!
Shared on: Kid's Co-op
A sweet celebration of a girl turning ten years old, my daughter's right of passage into "the double digits" was hallmarked by a riotously fun slumber party. The girls danced to all the new songs; giggled and played tag; ate cake with ice cream; and had their faces painted by a professional face painter. As the evening wore on into night we followed all of this fun up with a bit of herbal crafting before bed. My daughter requested we make dream pillows, spritzers and have foot baths. It was great to work with a group of older children because they can do many things preschoolers just can't do yet!
Cuddly fleece surrounding aromatic herbs what girl could resist? We based our pillows off of the instructions for making a no-sew fleece pillow on Family Fun. We made our pillows like mini body pillows for extra cuddliness. I have made these a few times before with children of various ages. At ages 9 and 10 the girls were able to tie the pillows themselves and I am sure they could have cut the fabric too, but I made sure to have that part done before the party so we could focus on the fun part! This pillow needs to be tied and stuffed. Notice the how the cloth is cut, easy-peasy to do!
We sat in a circle on the floor. The room alive with chatting and tying. When someone had a bit of trouble with her project we would all help. It was a nice little gathering. After the girls had their pillows mostly tied they stuffed them with fluffy filler stuff from Hobby Lobby. Then we made herbal bundles to put into their pillows stuffed full of herbs to enhance sleep and dreams ~rose petals, lavender, mugwort and hops. All the herbs were chosen by my daughter during a visit to Rebecca's in Boulder where they let her meet and sniff the herbs to her heart's content!
Here are the beautiful herbs we used all ready to bundle up; from top to bottom ~ red rose petals, hops strobiles, lavender blossoms and mugwort leaves. A fest for the senses!
The girls laid out their chosen herbs on a scrap of cloth which we then folded around the herbs and hot glued shut. It is important to do something to contain the herbs with this kind of pillow because the pillow is not sewn shut and loose herbs fall out of the pillow. Then they placed their herbal bundle in their pillow on top of the fluff filler, right near the surface so the fragrance of the herbs will drift out when they cuddle with their pillow. After that, all that was left was to finish tieing their pillows and viola! A soft aromatic sleep inducing handmade pillow!
Making spritzers is always so fun. It brings out a bit of magical witchiness with all the smelling and blending of precious elixirs into something amazing.
To start this project each girl received a blank label for her bottle. Creative juices were flowing around our kitchen table as the labels were transformed with stencils and colored pencils.
With their finished labels adorned the girls came into the kitchen where I had laid out a variety of relaxing dreamy essential oils ~ lavender, cedarwood, ylang ylang, cardamom, orange and rose geranium.
The girls sniffed and explored each oil asking questions while formulating their own brew. It was lovely to watch them each pick out what their nose was drawn too. No blend was the same! Once they had chosen oils we added them to beautiful cobalt blue spray bottles which were filled with water. We stuck to using 5 to 6 drops of essential oil per ounce of water. Then we screwed on the spray top; the girls added their labels; a shake and a spray and they were off to enjoy.
Last but not least, the girls indulged in warm salty foot soaks. Deep pans and bowls for the girls to put their feet in were filled with very warm water and the girls, sitting in chairs, eased their feet into the water. "Ah's" and "oh's" echoed around the room as their bodies visibly relaxed.
We had a variety of warming and relaxing things to add to their foot soaks: epsom salt, ground ginger, lavender blossoms and essential oil. As they relaxed and softly chatted, I added what they chose to the water and it was quiet for the first time in hours!
As they finished soaking, their feet were dried and we started foot rubs. They each got a squirt of an herbal infused oil enhanced with lots of lavender essential oil to rub on their feet. The skin on our feet absorbs whatever we put on it very well so it is a great place to use natural oils for promoting health. Lavender on the feet helps ease the body into peacefulness and calm. After all this nice soaking and rubbing, the girls had their feet warm and snug in socks and they were off again to sleep.... well, I wasn't that lucky but they were much calmer after all of our fun together!
Eydie from Fanciful Faces was the incredible face painter we had to our house. She was so fun and could paint anything the girls requested. We had everything from a butterfly to a panda to Santa Claus to our dog's exactly replicated on my youngest child's face. If you are in the Front Range of Colorado, check her out!
Squishy texture blobbing through fingers with a mystical doughy smell raising up told me that I was doing something important. I could create anything from this stuff! And the satisfaction I got from squashing and rolling this forgiving dough was immensely pleasurable. This was playdough to me and it was one of my favorite toys from childhood. And now it is one of my favorite things to share with kids and they sure do love it. At preschool playdough provides a quiet time for kids creating side by side and with a sense of comradery while sharing the playdough toys around the table. Playdough is great for parents too. I have found hours of time for me to get something done around the house while my little ones happily pound, roll, and squish the afternoon away.
Color and Aromatherapy
Tactile experiences help kids explore and make sense of the world; teaching them about cause and effect as well as developing small motor skills. There is something about squeezing a soft blob that releases stress just like those squishy stress balls made for adults. This is enormously helpful for a child who maybe experiencing overwhelming emotions that they don't know how to put into words. By adding something that smells or looks beautiful to the playdough you amplify the power of this classic toy. So the children and I use aromatic substances to color and scent playdough. And when the playdough is freshly made warm from the stove, the gentle heat further releases aromas from plants and essential oils. So nice.
Lots Of Recipes & Activities For Playdough Fun!
- A Happy First Day Of Preschool With Calming Aromatherapy
- Cinnamon Day
- Flower 'n' Spice Play Dough Mandalas
- Rose And Chocolate Play Dough For Valentine's Day
- Roses At Preschool For Valentine's Day ~ A Celebration Of Roses
- Super Fun Homemade Gift Idea For Little Ones
- All Natural Pumpkin Spice Playdough
- Ginger Snap Playdough
- Purply Lavender Scented Play Doh Colored With Hibiscus Flowers
Playdough is made from a few basic ingredients you might have on hand now. Follow my basic recipe or look for another online, there are many to choose from. When coloring playdough with powdered plants you might find it works best to mix the colored powder in when you cook the playdough. Otherwise you can let the kids work it in while playing.
RECIPE FOR HAPPY PLAYDOUGH
1 cup of flour
1/2 cup of salt
1 cup of water
1 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tbsp oil
Optional: powdered herbs for color, either mix in when cooking (can give more even color) or let the kids mix in at the table.
Combine dry ingredients in a sauce pan. Add the water and oil. Stir together and heat slowly over low heat. Stir almost constantly until the playdough sets up. Let it cool to warm before playing, playdough right off the stove is hot.
Please Note about essential oils: Essential oils are concentrated plant substances. They are dangerous and should not be used unsupervised around children. Always keep the oils up and out of reach when you aren't using them. Some oils smell like really yummy food, so please do be careful. Use mild oils like the ones listed above.
Herbs for kids and families! Crafting, learning and projects for children, parents and teachers including herbal crafts. Also natural living ideas for healthy families.
