It's harvest festival time here in the northern hemisphere, and each weekend is filled with more festivals than we can attend. This past weekend we enjoyed a sunny day at the arboretum while we strolled through the booths of an international festival dedicated to plants. This festival is very child-focused, so we did a week's worth of enrichment activities in one afternoon. The activities were a perfect mix of botanical lore and the cultural uses of various plants.If you're looking for some ideas to celebrate plants and the harvest with your children, here's a list of the activities we enjoyed. They are all doable, most with very few supplies.
We ate pomegranate seeds and listened to the story of Demeter and Persephone and learned why we have seasons. This would make a lovely after-dinner ritual. (This is the beautifully illustrated version of the story we heard. It's by Kris Waldherr.)
We saw a tea ceremony and made origami cranes. Here's a tutorial for folding the cranes.
We sampled Tibetan butter tea for the first time. Here's a recipe.
We walked on "coconut stilts," a game kids play in Singapore. It would be challenging but fun to figure out how to scrape out a coconut.
We "painted" chocolate Day of the Dead skulls with icing and ate them--they were much tastier than the "raw" chocolate we ground with a stone mortar and pestle. You can use these skeleton candy molds. (We made sugar skeletons with these one year and decorated them, but they weren't edible. I think using chocolate is a much better idea.)
We drew mehndi patterns on silk with fabric markers (here are some gorgeous patterns and their meanings), got mehndi tattoos, and helped make vibrant flower mandalas. The mandala was drawn on a large cardboard circle, and the children filled in the shapes with flower petals. (See a whole gallery of flower mandalas here.)
My youngest enjoyed playing in a baby pool filled with black beans. You could do this with rice as well.
Enjoy the season, wherever you may be!
8 comments:
I never take the changing seasons for granted. It is being observed with global warming that spring and autumn are shrinking and summer and winter expanding. In the future there may only be two season and then horror of horrors perhaps only one.
I guess that might be why I make the most and celebrate what we have now.
Whauw the flower mandala is georgeous! In my work with children we experience each season. We often make a group mandala but we never made one with flowers, it's beautiful!
Wow! Wonderful activities. Thanks so much for sharing them here. I had planned to introduce my little ones to Dia De Los Muertos this year and the idea of chocolate skulls is perfect.
what fun links to follow! it really is an amazing time of year in our region.
I wish we had been able to go! It looks like it was a spectacular afternoon. Thank you for sharing all the links! xo
Amazing activities! Did you put them together? Wow! Will have to try some of them : )
Maybe that's the kind of tattoo I should get, a nonpermanent mehndi tattoo to satisfy my recent craving for a tattoo. All the fun without the regret!
And the picture of your son with the beans took me back, because we did have a baby pool filled with rice the boys played in and with. This post is making me excited about a literary festival coming up that I may drag the kids too.
And Margie - your comment is really depressing because I do love the change in seasons.....
thank you for sharing these wonderful activities! I am so grateful for the inspiration that your blog brings to me when ever I come for a visit. happy autumn!
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