New and busy year! (With lots of cooking!)

I feel so guilty and sorry for my Paradise Island, being left all quiet and empty here.. I wish I would have time to write here more.
But yes, the truth is, and it's not all bad, that life is busy. During the day there's me and my two girls. :) Jasmiina is standing more, can cruise along, while holding onto things, and basically she just takes part in everything now. Adelaide wants to read and read some more, she could spend all day long reading books, and she is especially obsessed with doctors now. We haven't been to one with her in forever, so it's just from books. She just loves this subject! Doctors and human body. Anatomy and everything. (She just sits at the table and asks random questions of what we've read about - Why do you have lungs, issi?) So far we are supporting this interest just by reading and talking about it. But, I'm thinking, I should think of more ways.. Definitely, an anatomy puzzle. Matching game with human organs.. Trip to the dentist (we should go anyway) and an anatomy/health museum!? WOW! That's a lot to do. So yes, you see why we're so busy.

In any free time that I have (my "self-care") I do something connected with Montessori. My Montessori Blog, mainly (I suggest you follow it, if for nothing else, then just the pictures), it's Instagram account, Facebook page and Facebook group, trying to post in the other Estonian Montessori group.. Plus I try to keep in touch with my group of homeschoolers from the Homeschooling course.. Ah. In addition, I have applied to one Montessori lecture, a whole-day-long one, in February! Exciting.

Our daily routine is still quite calm. (Otherways it gets way too overwhelming.) Roughly - Mondays, at home, resting from the weekend. On Tuesday mornings I have applied to one movement class for Adelaide. We went once. It was ok - jumping, running after balls.. Nothing special. She kind of liked it. I don't know, why didn't she like it more? There were some screaming children, she said she didn't like them. I hope we can go again next week and try it out again. On Wednesdays, home again, or maybe visiting our neighbors. On Thursdays we have our Montessori play mornings, which have started again this year. We have some changes, new people coming (because one who was coming before moved and can't come anymore), these mornings are our favorite part of the week. Friday, maybe home, and then there's the weekend, which usually is very busy, with tons on birthday parties, trips and guests.

One subject that I want to write about is practical life and cooking. Adelaide got her learning tower somewhere between 1 and 1,5 years old, and around 18 months that was her favorite thing to do! She used to say: padz, padz! (palīdzēt, in Latvian, to help) and go to the kitchen. :) And before Jasmiina was born, that was one of the main things we did.
But somehow, after Jasmiina's birth it got so busy, I didn't have so much time and patience, I tried to throw something quickly in the oven, and as Adelaide became a bit more independent and played on her own, I used that time.
After a while I noticed that she doesn't come to help me anymore, when I go to the kitchen, and that overall she is not so interested in cooking or participating. Which was sad, because she for sure would have enjoyed it.
At summer it was a bit better, at least she did somethings outside, but now I often came back to the same realization.
At least we had the play mornings, where the children are always cooking something. But yeah, not that much at home, at least not as much as I'd wish. And as Jasmiina was growing up, it became even MORE difficult.

So this problem has been on my mind for a while already, and this week has finally been so successful! There were some discussions in the FB groups about children in the kitchen, after the article that I wrote, and they inspired me to do more.

Because the fault was in me, of course. I was too stressed, rushing too much, also too controlling. So Adelaide naturally didn't enjoy cooking with me. When letting children work in the kitchen, we really must step back and relax, take a deep breath and mostly observe. Let them do. And stop being so controlling and uptight. The result is actually so wonderful, that it's totally worth it!

So this week I was doing better. I actually prepared the environment (read - cleaned the kitchen) and invited Adelaide to join. On one particularly nice day, while Jasmiina was napping, I set up all of the ingredients for making muffins, and she did them surprisingly successfully! Basically, she did everything herself! I only had to stop her from eating all the butter.. (She's butter-crazy.) Helped to give the batter a good mix. And after she had spooned the batter into 3 holes, she didn't want to do more, so I finished it. But everything else she did herself. :) And it looked like enjoyed it.







































And the next day, that is today, we started the morning with making some salty curd cookies for breakfast. And she was more eager to help than in the past, she was mixing the dough, rolling little balls of the dough and pressing them on the pan, then painting some egg on top and sprinkling cumin. Yum!


Then we had a little shopping trip and I was looking at some child sized tools at the shop. Saw this little pan and asked Adelaide, if she would like to fry with it. And she said yes! We have been having some egg craze lately, all about egg frying. Made an omelette at friend's place last week, there she participated. But at our play morning this Monday she didn't want to fry (see the post about it here!). So now we came home and she wanted to make an egg for dinner.












She did so well. She was a bit afraid of the heat, Adelaide is not a daredevil and always has been very reasonably cautious. I tried to encourage her to continue, when she wanted to quit, and she actually did it until the end and then was so happy and proud about the omelette that she made all on her own! She really did. :)

So I feel like this really has been a success. I desperately want to try to keep a nice, prepared environment for her, that she would feel welcome to prepare food.

Comments

Popular Posts