whole family rhythms : a spring giveaway
beeswax sun / vivid watercolours / flower crown / thumbprint buzzy bees
Meagan of Whole Family Rhythms and This Whole Family has been busy of late. In June she welcomed Juniper, a beautiful baby girl born at home in the early hours of the morning. Winter was a blur of newborn bliss but regardless, Meagan has completed and just released the Spring Guide; brimming with inspired ideas for celebrating the season.
Whole Family Rhythms are a series of monthly and seasonal guides created and designed to help you maintain a steady rhythm in your home. The rhythms include unstructured, child-led play both outdoors and indoors; early childhood stories and finger puppet plays; weekly bushwalking themes; daily art, handwork or creative projects; holistic baking and cooking recipes for the whole family as well as weekly caregiver meditations and projects for families of all ages and sizes.
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There will be two winners of this giveaway. Each winner will receive:
The Whole Family Rhythms Spring Guide with over 70 pages including: weekly oral stories and fingerplays, bushwalking themes, seasonal crafts, wet-on-wet watercolour painting, drawing, modelling as well as weekly caregiver meditations, monthly caregiver handwork projects, and seasonal book and nursery rhyme recommendations (valued at $29).
To enter all you need to do is leave a comment telling us about your very favourite way to celebrate the arrival of spring. Meagan and I will choose the winners based on the best little story you can tell (no essay required!). Winners will be announced in the post at 9pm on Thursday 12th September.
You can read more about the seasonal guides over here, pop into Meagan’s blog here, or follow her on facebook (she always shares fascinating articles/films/recipes).
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Well, this year we are celebrating the arrival of spring a little differently for us – because the arrival of spring heralds the arrival of our first little baby, as well as our first wedding anniversary! So we are celebrating by not only throwing open the house and clearing out the clutter, but by washing tiny clothes and setting up a little room…it has made spring (one of the my favourite times normally, I love the transitional seasons) even more exciting and promising!
We love to collect fresh flowers from the garden and get caught up in the dreamy season of Spring. We also make our Spring Nature table and look forward to and help by contributing to our school Spring fair. Spring is the best!
littlebubalishka.blogspot.com.au
We take photos and paint and craft all the new sights we see I am in the uk though. Would still love to win goid luck all 🙂
For some people spring is September 1st, for others it’s when the Japonica blossoms, for us it’s when the seed catalogue turns up in the mail box. Almost without fail it is on a cold, rainy most un-spring like spring day and we sit somewhere warm to get ourselves in the mood to work on our wish list. The kid gets to chose a flower and a vegetable to grow for herself (sunflowers and cherry tomato’s this year) and we always try out two new things in addition to our staples (caraway and chili peppers this year). Then we wait (for the last frosts to pass) and weed…
Spring is that first day when we open up the doors to the back deck and leave them open all day long. Inside and outside, with no door between them. Bliss!
Fiona
fjkelly6 at gmail.com
This year I'm expecting a baby which seems like the perfect spring thing!
Our favourite way to welcome Spring happens as a little moment here and there. Nothing grand but all precious like noticing the buds and blooms on our afternoon walks, playing outside as the days becoming longer, planning our vegie garden, watching the birds make nests and of course saying goodbye to our wee Winter folk and welcoming our Spring sprites.
Donning hats and sunscreen, being outside as much as possible, planting seedlings and today we had our first proper swim at the beach! Love the warm weather 🙂
Thanks
Lauren
X
We open up the doors to fresh air and relish in the lovely flowers available! Walks around the neighbourhood have been a joy; seeing what everyone else's garden is up to. Hats are being worn and new sandals are needed!
getting outside and tending our garden minds racing with the many possibilities of a new season.
Thanks so much
In the spring we like to look for all signs of spring. We walk around looking for flower buds and any green. We love Easter and Equinox. We also like to plant flower seeds or veggie seeds and watch them start to grow. As soon as we can, we forage for fiddleheads.
We are in the North, so we always celebrate the arrival of spring with the tapping of our trees and the boiling sap late into the night. Once we have a few bottles we host a family pancake breakfast! We love observing the change of seasons this way as we feel we are truly present in the change with our full days spent outside exploring the spring melt, crafting, having fires and generally keeping busy while minding the simmering sap.
We are celebrating spring in our new house! Not only a good opportunity to go through everything and have a good spring clean but it feels like starting again, a fresh start! Oh and doing lots of walking too.
My favorite way to celebrate the arrival of Spring is to go on nature walks with my littles, looking for the firs spring flowers! We love it and it really signals spring to us!
we celebrate by going outdoors and into the forest
Our family celebrates the arrival of Spring with a little "weekend vacation" of camping. We lounge around the campfire, ride our bikes through the trails, and take in all the sweet smelling air spring has to offer.
To be honest, we go camping quite often but Spring really is our favorite time to start!
For me, spring arrives when the jasmines bloom. We go past this big jasmine bush on our walk to kindie two days a week and my 3 1/2 year old knows that when the tiny blossoms pop out and the air is filled it is spring time..she checks it almost every time! I first moved to sydney in 2007 and the two (australian) springs we have missed since i have longed for that jasmine smell!
On the first day of spring this year we had a "spring fairy party"… we collected blossoms, magnolias and daffodils and drank rosehip tea and played in the sun. Our family has been rather transient for the last 5 years (having moved state once, city twic and house 6 times) we wanted to do something that welcomed the season and created a tradition for the new and permanent family home we moved into only a fortnight ago.
This will be our first spring in New South Wales, our first Spring as a family of 3. So much awaits us! Can't wait to sit in the sunshine with my baby, watching his dada take on the waves.
Ooh, glad I popped over! Yes, for me too, it's the jasmine and the warm air. The jasmine grows down our side fence and as I open the children's bedroom window it's perfume overwhelms me in joy. Saraswati comes and brings the children gifts and I kick off my slippers and walk around barefoot. Katie x
We go to Stepping Stones at Steiner School, and we welcome Spring with some new songs mostly about flowers blooming and planting. We've enjoyed Spring so much already this year!
We always start out spring with a beach visit, just for a fossick if its too cold to swim. We plant our summer vege and weed away all that winter brought to the garden. We watch the tulips mummy bought daddy grow and turn a vivid yellow. We start eating salads again and watch the children gulp down their beloved cucumber and tomatoes. But most of all we love to celebrate spring by picking flowers and watching the leaves burst from brown twigs!
My little man and I turn our sporadic Winter-time "neighbourhood block walks" into joyful "let's see what Spring has brought" daily, even twice daily, walks. We walk a little slower, we breathe in lovely scents and warmer air, we look more closely, we notice the changes in our neighbour's gardens (even if it's just a cheeky "look how tall their weeds are Mama!!")and we talk more to our neighbours who are also spending more time in their gardens and out in the street.
Even if from now here, en France we are coming to autumn, I can say that I already think of our future spring, next year… perhaps the think that makes me smile a lot when spring is coming is to prick out willow (wicker) collected during the winter and waiting fir his new life in the garden. Just some days after we prick it out, it begin to make leaves and that's quite magical, this symbolism of the winter dormancy and the spring waking up!
I don't celebrate the arrival of Spring. I really struggle to welcome Spring, and I downright fear Summer. This year, I've been really focused on mindful living and to that end I've embraced the 'Springtime morning', where I can sip my coffee outside and not have icy fingers. I appreciate that.
Picking beautiful smelling freesias to have in the house, watching all the trees on our walk to school go from 'Knickee noos' to buds, to blooming and making paper flowers to decorate our nature table tree!!!
This week we have started our days with morning yoga, a cup of tea and then miss 3 has picked Daisy's for daisy chains and crowns. It's been a wonderful way to start our days and then we harvest or weed our front yard veggie patch, smelling the herbs, admiring our daffodils and sunflowers in full bloom alongside our winter veg.
As the snow starts to melt, we head up into the Black HIlls to find what new life is emerging under the Ponderosa pine trees. Here are a few pictures of our time this spring on a hike: http://missyvanee.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-visit-to-spring.html
In Iceland, where I grew up spring is always marked with spring cleaning! When the spring lillies start popping up in betwween the still melting patches of snow it is time to air out the house and clean every courner! Still today i need to clean out every cupboard in order to feel springy!!
Going to the beach! No swimming just yet, but a lot of digging in the sand under the warm sun. Maybe a little paddle with our feet only, then a big snuggle with a warm towel. Thinking to ourselves, "this is going to happen a lot more from now on". Wonderful spring! Thanks for the chance to win!
The spring is like a fresh rhubarb tart served on a carpet of lace.
Snow drop walk!