Labels: botany, photos of montessori children, recipes, science

Montessori By Hand is 100 posts old! To celebrate this milestone, and to thank you for reading, I thought I'd give away some patterns. Leave a comment and your name will be added to the drawing. Three winners, each of whom will get to pick one of my sewing patterns, their choice!

Labels: patterns for sale, sewing

Some things are apparent early on in life. Here I am donning my hand-crafted hat back when I was a Montessori student, already displaying my penchant for funky, handmade attire: Zooming forward on the pictorial time machine, here I am in my Simplicity/Threads Creativity Contest entry last May:

Welp, who would have guessed? Simplicity up and awarded me some "special recognition!" They sent me this book a few days ago. This was all pretty exciting and totally unexpected, as I don't think I've won anything since the 5th grade county math tournament. (Which I attended, by the way, in the first outfit I sewed for myself, accessorized with some swanky headgear and braces sporting florescent bands. As if the math tournament wasn't dorky enough.) My "special" shirt was made with Simplicity pattern 4017, and is hand appliquéd and embroidered. The best part about this whole thing is that they are sending me back my shirt, which I get to wear whenever I want!

And another fun surprise - Donna from Purple Kappa tagged me for the "Nice Matters" blogging award! Thanks, Donna! It's such a warm and fuzzy feeling to be acknowledged. So now it's my turn to pass on the award to some of my blogging friends who fit the following criteria:

"This award is for those bloggers who are nice people; good blog friends and those who inspire good feelings and creativity. Also for those who are a positive influence on our blogging world. Once you've been awarded please pass it on to others who you feel are deserving of this award."

Jo of A bit of this and a bit of that
Laurie of The Wooden Spool
Anna Maria Horner
Leah of Homework
Amanda of Soulemama

I'm sure each of you know why I am knighting you "Purveyors of Niceness." You are wonderful, inspirational people. Please visit these ladies' blogs if you haven't already!

xo,
Meg

Labels: sewing

An owl toiletry bag with iron-on vinyl lining, from Bend-the-Rules Sewing. A mei tai baby carrier made with fabric from the West Hill collection by Heather Ross. (A gift for this little cutie, who helped me out in the photo shoot for my pattern website.

Labels: patterns for sale, sewing

This morning, my cat Amelie helped us to notice (what we guess) was a Mourning Cloak butterfly larva that had hung itself upside down from one of our window panes. Another was hanging nearby on the stuccoed adobe wall. Nifty, I thought. I'll take a pic and see if I can capture it at various stages as it encases itself in its chrysalis. Several hours later, and thanks again to eagle-eyed Amelie, I watched from inside as the caterpillar thrashed about wildly while the section with its head and six small legs fell off! It then rapidly split its skin from the bottom up. This new skin was wet and red. It slowly dried and became hard. Incredible! Here's what I was able to catch with the camera once I got outside.

Here's the head.

And the new, wet skin. You can still see the red on the top, but the bottom has already begun to harden.

Almost done hardening.

After this, I had high hopes that I could witness and document this for caterpillar number two, hanging on the adobe wall. Here's my bug watching camp - a knitting project and the camera.

But that bugger wasn't going to appease my voyeurism before sundown. He'll probably be nice and pupa-fied tomorrow morning. And I did have a nice time knitting. Wait until I share this with my students on Monday!

Labels: science

Here they are! Twenty-five yoga poses fit for children, ages 2.5-96! The necessary factors finally came together - sufficient time, a sunny afternoon, and a great model! (Thanks to Maria who was in my class for two years. I just had to tell her the name of the pose and she hopped right to it!)

For instructions on how to implement these yoga photos in your home or classroom, visit this post. To print off your own set, head on over to my Flickr photos. Those of you who already have a Flickr account can have prints made and sent to you. Simply click on the Children's Yoga Poses set, and on the set's main page at the top you will see the button "Make Stuff." Click on QOOP make prints. Ordering prints this way will cost you about $5.75, shipping included. There's also the option of downloading the photos onto your computer, copying them to a disc or memory card, and taking them in to be printed off yourself.

Update: The yoga card photos are also available for download through my Box.net account, in a folder called "Yoga Cards." Those of you living outside of the U.S. will have to use this option, as Flickr doesn't send prints to other countries.

Here's another way to order the prints from Flickr, if you don't want to go through QOOP:

To order prints from my main page, click on the picture to see a larger view. From this view, you should see an "order prints" button along the top of the picture. Click on it - it will ask you to change your printing preferences and verify that you are in the US. After you go through this little detour, a link will be displayed that asks you if you want to return to the photo you were looking at. Click on that, and now you should be able to order the size that you want and add it to your cart.

I hope your children love them!

Namaste,
Meg

Labels: peace education, photos of montessori children

Sarah wrote a lovely post about her experience making the reading pillow. Here's her take on it:

Do any of you have reading pillows, mei tai baby carriers, or child's aprons that you have made? If so, please join and add your photos to the Montessori By Hand Sewing Pattern Creations flickr group! You can also click on the photo badge in the sidebar - it's the one just above the labels.

xo,
Meg

Labels: flickr group, patterns for sale, sewing

Every year, my dad would take a picture of me on the first day of school sporting my new backpack and often interesting (especially from 5th grade on) hair-do. I mean ... it's awkward enough to be a pre-teen, but at least ten times worse when you're a pre-teen in the early 90's! I will spare you these embarrassing photos. Instead, here's a peak at this year's back to school get-up. My Note Taker! Imagine my thrill at finding this pattern at Pink Chalk Studio! It's super easy to follow and yields amazing results. I highly recommend it to any fellow teacher - especially Montessorians, who find themselves taking just short of a gazillion notes per school year. It would also be a great asset to anyone parenting Montessori-style (yeah - we're all about observing the child, if you haven't guessed already!) Here's the front of the note taker with it's other handy pal, the fabric-covered binder that holds all of my classroom records. If you're interested in my record keeping system, check it out at my Yahoo group.

Labels: books/resources, language, photos of montessori children, sewing

... enjoy some recent photos taken in my little corner of Mexico. I'm setting up my classroom and getting ready for the new school year to start, so the blog will have to putz along at a leisurely pace for a few more days.

Peace,
Meg

Labels: photography

I've been twitter pated with Bella Dia's inspiration collages for quite a while now, but I lack magazines. As much as I would love a subscription to Marie Claire Idees, I'm quite sure that the little French mag would get quite pouty at the prospect of crossing the Atlantic only to be strapped to a donkey for the last leg of its journey. C'est la vie.

Mais non! My life no longer has to be inspiration collage-less. CHECK THIS OUT! My cousin Luke just wrote a program that allows you to take any image on the web or your computer and digitally paste it onto a magazine collage!

It's called Ript. Click here to download the beta version. Read through "Quick start" to find out how easy it is to use. Even I could figure it out without Patrick, the resident computer know-it-all. I'm already seeing so many possibilities for this program - making inspiration pages for my own reference is the big one.

How cool is that?

Labels: my life, photography, sewing