Now that it’s the new year and most definitely winter, we’re throwing ourselves straight into a more relaxed and laid-back season of hibernation. A is still attending nursery 3 days a week over the winter - his last term - and I’ve really taken the focus off of bolstering his learning at home for the moment. He is very stretched energetically between school and the emotional stress of siblinghood, and I really feel that some of the best work he can be doing at the moment is practicing gentleness, quiet, and calm movement. He has language, maths, and culture work on his shelves which he does choose to work with, plus his art materials, but he’s gravitating largely towards gross motor activities. He’s pedaling his bike, climbing, jumping, dancing, and rearranging the living room furniture with such an intensity that I know that’s where his main work is at the moment.
Because the other big work at the moment for A is emotional development, we’re incorporating some peace practices that we can all benefit from. We’ve designated our rocking chair as the ‘peace chair’, where anyone can go to rock, look out the window, and feel peaceful. I haven’t found a guided meditation recording that A likes yet, but we’ve attempted the Four Pebble meditation a few times with increasing success. I am learning about mindfulness and trying to incorporate more mindful calm into m y life as well, so I am really hoping to grow our family peace practice throughout the year.
What our days look like right now:
Mornings are a work in progress but we attempt to start the day with quiet time. I spend 10-15 minutes journalling and working on my gratitude practice. Birdie pulls things out of boxes on the floor and, increasingly, crawls about seeing what he is able to pull over. A serves himself breakfast and tries very hard to find something quiet to do, although he needs a lot of support and redirection to come up with something. It’s a challenging time of day because A is ready to launch straight into gross motor activities while the rest of us would like a bit of quiet, but he really wants our company.
We attempt some form of morning time each day (a mix of fiction and non fiction books, plus a music study and sometimes looking at a piece of art or watching some clips of a dance performance). On family days, A and I have morning time while Birdie has his morning nap. We’re trialling having morning time in the car on nursery days - leaving early, parking up outside nursery, and letting Birdie sleep in his car seat while A gets to have a special time reading in the front seat of the car with me.
On family days, we try to get outside to some green space, or to visit with friends, while having plenty of slow unstructured time afterwards for reading, pottering about the garden, baking, and playing music. Once a week we try for poetry teatime, or poems while we’re out and about. A still struggles to play on his own, so we have scheduled independent playtime during Birdie’s afternoon nap. I will usually make a loose suggestion to get him started (something like ‘why don’t you build a house for your dollhouse family?’). Almost without fail he’ll say, ‘No, but I will do XYZ’ and have a jumping-in point for his play.
On nursery days, Birdie sets the agenda and we spend a lot of time on the floor. I’m starting to take him swimming once a week but we are not doing any ‘baby classes’ or structured activities. I regret that I felt we needed to be ‘busy’ when A was a baby - we went to some sort of class or group most days, which I now realise was completely unnecessary, and possibly has contributed to A’s difficulty with independent play. Birdie is only just crawling so exploring the environment is the main work for him at the moment.
We’re loosely following along with the Exploring Nature with Children curriculum https://raisinglittleshoots.com/buy-exploring-nature-with-children/ but choosing one or maybe two of the weekly themes per month. In January we’re focusing on the moon and winter sky, and evergreens in February. I really want to get us out into nature more but I find it challenging in the winter: none of us like being cold, A doesn’t like wearing appropriate clothing all of the time, and Birdie is starting to get restless after being in the buggy or sling for too long. I’m living by the ‘little and often’ motto at the moment, and hoping that our very frequent visits to the local somewhat-wild green space make up somewhat for missing out on longer, more adventures forays into nature.
In the late afternoons I try to prepare some hands-on fine motor activity. Sometimes it’s kneading bread or rolling out dough, other times it’s cutting and pasting, or sewing, or working with modelling clay or kinetic sand. A loves to manipulate things with his hands and often has quite disorganised energy in the late afternoon. Having a focused activity, even for a very short while, helps him re-set.
We are strong believers in an early bedtime (more on an early bedtime here: https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/05/25/the-early-bedtime/) and our evening routine begins around 4:30 or 4:45pm when I start to make dinner. The boys (and sometimes one of us) have dinner at 5:15 - we all sit together, but often one adult has to keep the ship afloat and is too busy to eat at the same time. Bathtime is usually around 5:45, and Birdie is having his evening milk by 6pm. A has a slightly longer bath and a story or song in bed, and is most often asleep by 6:30-6:45pm.
I imagine we’ll do a few more activities in the spring, especially after the term ends and our days look freer, but for now I’m very happy to have a lot of slow, cosy days reading and baking and mooching about on the floor.