the little travelers * travel blog

saying goodbye

After three years of having my Waldorf-inspired preschool, I'm passing it on to someone else.  It's time for me to focus a bit more on the travel stuff and say goodbye to my littles.  Those that started coming to me at two will be starting Kindy in September and the little ones will have someone new to call "teacher."  The teacher title for me is one of picked up and put down a few times already in my life and I'm sure will happen a few more in my future.  For now, just Mom will do.  But then again I have those other titles that have been trying to get more attention from me the last few years - like Producer, Editor, Marketer- some of those I like more than others, but are all also transitory I'm sure.  We're leaving California for a bit to spend some time in Arizona with Oma and Opa.  Californian is also a title I've dropped and picked back up many times in my life. I'm sure this will not be the last time either.

A few photos of the things I'll miss about the littles.

  

May the path ahead of you all by wide and long.

I love you all and will miss you dearly!

Needless to say, this blog will now also reflect this change in that I will no longer have toddlers in my life.  It will now be more focused on the middle years as that is now the age of my gals.  Hopefully, we'll be able to travel a bit more and have a few more adventures away from the backyard, though I will miss our backyard and all our animals that now all have new homes.   Really, I'm a nomad at heart so the change feels good.

Washing

Setting up an outdoor washing station is perfect for summer time.  We always want our littles to help but sometimes the mess inside is more effort than certain days allow time for.  The outside washing station is perfect.  One bucket or pan with soapy water (we use a natural soap so we can toss it into the bushes when finished), one for rinsing and a drying rack.  Even the two year olds in play group wash their own dishes after snack.  

And their napkins

This simple drying rack was made from posts found in the garden section at home depot.  I added the cross bar for stability and then strung twine from screws in the wood.

summer harvest

We are thoroughly enjoying our summer's fruits.  These grapes are even sweeter than they look.  Really crisp and really sweet.  So much funner than the market!

Oooh, and the blackberries...

the very lonely strawberry...

the bunnies can reach these, so they hardly stand a chance.

and perhaps most impressive of all are the bananas!  they were too heavy to stay on the tree, but will ripen after cutting off the tree.

necklaces

These necklaces make a great craft and can be personalized in so many ways.  Here we took the kanji (Chinese charter used in Japanese) for "friend."

I've done similar ones as a craft for our church using the the sanskrit symbol for 'om,' which also came out really cute.  The key is using materials that you'd actually want to wear.  Here we used a hemp cord and wrote in permanent bronze marker on a stone purchased at a craft store in the jewelry making section.  It already had a pre-drilled hole.  

Just google whatever symbol it is you're wanting, then print it out and of course practice a few times before you put it on the stone.  

Other ideas are using small seashells, little pieces of driftwood, a found stone, small paper mache.  There are so many languages that use different alphabets, Thai, Arabic, Korean just to name a few.  It's a great way to learn something about another country and of course makes a great conversation starter as people always want to know what it says.

fairy houses

We always like to make sure there's room in the garden for building fairy houses so I don't over-plant or get too attached to the 'landscaping.'  We come home from walks with baskets of building materials.

We did this as an event at my daughter's school's harvest festival as one of the activities offered.  It was a fundraiser so it costs one 'ticket' to build something that that would be left behind.  

Some parents were very concerned about this aspect of charging for something that they couldn't take home.  I had a strong hunch that the kids would not care and would be unattached to their creations.  It turned out to be the case- not one kid complained that they couldn't take it home.  But there were a lot of plan making about coming back to visit the houses again to see how they were doing or if there had been any visitos.  It was a huge hit- the kids really got into it.

We had certain classes collecting items and dropping them off.  Unfortunately our area does not have the kind of big acorn caps seen in these baskets.  I spoke to the mom about where she found these and she very excitedly replied, Ebay!  haha.  gotta love The OC!     If you haven't seen Kristin's fairy houses- the movie it is a must for fairy lovers! It is perfect for Friday or Saturday movie night. Kristin and her aunt travel to a small island known for fairy houses. It's very sweet and charming.  There are lots of great pictures on the site for inspiration.

babies.

Nearly 10 days old now and growing every day.

Fairy mail

We have lots of pulleys and small baskets around that are often used for fairy mail.

Fairies sometimes leave the messages and sometimes the girls send them to each other.