There's a new parenting/cookbook (my favorite combo!) on the block, and this is a must-have. Sara of Feeding the Soil and Kylie from How We Montessori have joined together to offer a primer on inviting young children into the kitchen. Kids in the Kitchen will provide you with all of the ideas and tools you'll need to make endless food prep into a memory-making, skill-building, family experience. 

Whenever I read the news about another mass shooting or more death in Syria or corporate greed or climate change, I feel an overwhelming need to turn my attention and focus toward hope. For me, that hope is our children. Maria Montessori said, "If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men [and women]."

The Montessori approach to education and parenting helps children become confident, loving, compassionate, and responsible for the well-being of themselves, others, and the world around them. It is a truly transformational approach that has the potential to change the world. 

I first experienced Montessori as a child and later as a teacher and parent. I am currently working to create more public Montessori schools in diverse communities nationwide as the founder and executive director of Montessori For All. 

Kylie found Montessori when she was searching for a parenting philosophy that resonated with her and her family's needs. She was immediately attracted to Montessori's emphasis on "fostering independence, following the child, order and consistency." She currently spends much of her time writing and communicating with parents around the world via her blog, How We Montessori.

We came together to create the cookbook we couldn't find in bookstores. It explains all the benefits of cooking with children (as young as 18 months), details step-by-step directions for setting up the kitchen in a kid-friendly way, includes a sequence of skills to prepare children for cooking, and features ten simple recipes that are illustrated with photographs so even pre-readers can follow along with confidence and independence. 

The simple act of allowing children to cook helps them develop a core of confidence that is so instrumental to their formation of self. 

The cookbook is a very accessible, visually appealing primer on getting your young child into the kitchen. Could you share with us your own family kitchen routines? What does a typical day in your kitchen look like - busy? Peaceful? Chaotic? Fun? How does involving your children change the way you cook and the way you think about cooking? 

From Kylie: 
A typical day in our kitchen is all of those things--busy, peaceful, chaotic, and fun. Having children definitely changed the way I cook. More importantly, being a parent changed my entire life. I've learned to focus on the process not the outcome, to accept that things will not go as planned and to really live in the moment. I've learned that the key to living an active and engaged life with children is to look past the barriers and find ways to say yes. When things get a little crazy or out of control, I think about the wonderful memories we are making. Usually the the bigger the mess the louder the giggles.

My fifteen-month old has begun to pour his own milk at breakfast, he will help with snack and dehusk corn or shell peas at dinner. Most of all he likes to be by my side so he spends a lot of time in the kitchen exploring or sampling the food. My four year old loves baking and he loves experimenting. His favourite thing at the moment is making up his own flavor combinations and writing his own recipes.

No matter your child's age or personality, it is important to empower them. Give them the equipment and skills so they can work independently. Involve them in decision making as much as possible. Often they amaze us with what they are capable of.

From Kylie:
Not only are all children different but I've also found that children have different energy through the day. My best advice is to focus on the child and get to know your child in the kitchen. A little preparation can help. For a child who likes to work fast, have everything ready to go, ingredients out and measured. Other children might enjoy the process of collecting all the ingredients and measuring. It helps to have basic ingredients in the pantry and the basic tools for cleaning up ready. Flexibility is also important. Cakes can be turned into muffins, water can make up for too much flour, dinner can be late. It all works out!

Tell us about your non-profit organization, Montessori for All. All profits from cookbook sales go directly to benefit this great organization.

In the United States, there are more than 4,000 private Montessori schools and only about 400 public ones. Montessori For All seeks to change that. We believe that all children deserve access to an educational experience that develops their minds, hearts, and bodies. We believe that children's educational options should not be limited by their families' incomes. We seek to open and lead high-performing, authentic, dual-language, public Montessori schools in diverse communities across the nation. We are currently working to open our flagship school in Austin, TX, in the fall of 2014. 

Thank you, Sara and Kylie, for putting so much of yourselves into Kids in the Kitchen: Simple Recipes That Build Independence and Confidence the Montessori Way . I know it will be a fabulous, go-to book for families with young children!

One year ago today, we held Lachlan skin-to-skin for the first time since his surgery. 

Though we didn't dwell on all that he has been through in his one year of life, it has been a week of reflection for me. For, when you have a baby whose heart works only because of the skilled hands of his surgeon, a baby who struggled to nurse or take anything by mouth for the first five months of his life, who was fed with a tube ...

There's something so amazing about the pictures of him on his first birthday, February 27th. He takes it all in, this little one. He's full of sweetness and spunk. At one year old, he asks "waz dat" about every 13 seconds or so. He wants to know everything, see everything, hold everything ... eat everything in this world. Have your cake, little Lachlan. This life is pretty amazing, isn't it?

We ended up baking him the "Baby's First Birthday Cake" from Organically Raised: Conscious Cooking for Babies and Toddlers . It was plates-in-the-air yummy. 

Patrick cooks big. Big projects, big mess, big fun. We're talking pasta, bagles, cakes, bread, tortillas - it seems to me that flour is the common ingredient. 

This is oh-so-pleasing to my two year-old, who fancies eating flour. Plain. No sugar needed - he'll just eat the flour by itself. 

The kitchen is humming once again with man-power. (We've always shared the kitchen, although we have different cooking methods and priorities.) I see him laughing, talking calmly, brushing flour off one child's brow while keeping the baby's hands occupied with measuring spoons. And I love him all the more for it.

Update: The pasta making set we have is this one, and the pasta dryer is nothing fancy - just our clothes drying rack. 

Purple! The photo does not do this justice, my friends. In our CSA this week, we received the most gorgeous sweet potato, and I immediately set to work steaming it up for my little sweet potato.

When I originally set about this parenting gig I intended to make every single thing that entered my children's mouths from scratch. Since then I have achieved a healthy balance of concern for what my babies eat and kindness for myself. With Lachlan, I have other worries. But, paradoxically, I am very aware of giving my little fellow good, whole food. So although I don't fuss over it, I want to give him healthy, tasty meals so that his body can serve him well. 

So yes. I buy him organic baby food on occasion (rip off! I know!). But I also make it when I can. It's so easy. (And those little jars are so useful for so many things, including storing the homemade stuff.) 

Organically Raised: Conscious Cooking for Babies and Toddlers is a crunchy-granola-yummy-cookbook that I've been enjoying greatly this time around. The sweet potatoes, both steamed and baked, have been a hit with both boys.

I opened up one of those jars of pureed sweet potato while on a picnic and I looked down at the spoon and thought to myself, people will think that I'm feeding my baby neon purple play-doh, for sure! It is a striking color of purple. 

Yum!

It's fig season. Make these figs. Eat them. Faint from gustatory pleasure. Oh my. 

Who, me? Make a giant mess of my diaper while Mama is cooking dinner? Naw. (Wink;)

We finally feel at home in our kitchen. So much happens in this space. Food preparation (both real and wooden), baking, tasting, singing, carrying, laughing, frying, bouncing, dancing, spinning, stirring, pouring, washing, wiping, sweeping, and eating. A whole lot of "ings."

It's such a joy and a challenge to be in the kitchen with young children. I mean - there are moments when it's just so perfect that you can almost hear a chorus of angels singing in the backround - a two year-old pouring and stirring or happily washing dishes while the baby coos and laughs in the carrier. Then there are moments - you know exactly what I'm talking about - when the background music is so hard rock that it makes your head spin and explode. A two year-old whining, a hungry baby, a pot to stir and veggies to chop and something to get out of the oven all at the same time. 

It makes me think about the leisurely days that Patrick and I spent in the kitchen, pre-babies, making excitingly complicated dishes. This day will come again, but probably not until I have gray hair!

I don't mean to bemoan cooking with little ones. It's just a dance that you have to learn as a parent. Every day I feel myself discovering more "best practices" and making note of the things that don't work. One thing that's had to change around here is our la-dee-da attitude towards meal planning. Since we live and work at home, I've found that we have to have all three meals planned for smooth sailing. I took the time a few weeks ago to come up with a weekly breakfast and lunch menu, and it has made a big difference in the flow of our days.  This weekly plan doesn't change; we always have the same meals on Mondays, for example. Simple. 

I do plan our dinners weekly on Saturdays to keep our evening meals seasonal and to keep things a bit exciting for the cooks. I have, however, given up on trying to cook fancy, new recipes very often. We typically invite friends over on Saturdays, a day when both Patrick and I aren't working, so we can do more extensive cooking. 

I was very inspired by the article on batch cooking in this season's Rhythm of the Home, and I'm hoping I can organize something of the sort with my local friends.  This idea (via Pinterest) of doing all of the prep work and freezing individual meals for crock pot dishes is also quite appealing. In addition to making kitchen work more simple, it would also be a great way to preserve the harvest. We always have an abundance of a certain veggie in our weekly CSA share, so I could just look for a crock pot recipe using that veggie and make a few batches to freeze.

Off to make supper!

My mom turned 60 on Saturday, and we hosted the party at our house. Much has changed since her 59th birthday celebration. Last year she celebrated without us at my parents' home in California. This year?

Well.

This year, we celebrated with her in our new home. Which is just a handful of miles away from their new house. My parents moved to North Carolina right before Lachlan's second surgery! Even though we are both still getting used to our new surroundings and unpacking this and that ... even though we are far from our beloved California mountains ... even though life is not always peaches and cream ... we are together. With Mima and Papa close by, we are all happier. We eat berries and cream together. And chocolate cake (a yummy recipe from A Homemade Life .) 

For Mima's big birthday, we were excited to welcome my aunt and her partner from up north, and we were all surprised when my other aunt from California showed up as well! Much laughter ensued, and we all learned a bit about campfire cooking as we tried out our pie irons for the first time, christening our new backyard fire pit. Homemade bread, fresh tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, and some butter makes some delish pie iron paninis. 

I'm thinking I could eat that for every meal for the duration of tomato season.

Here's to my own love-filled Mama. My boys are lucky boys indeed, to have their Mima's presence warm their days.

P.S. More on the shelf (it's actually our old bookcase) and the kitchen soon. I'm still too shy to show it off in its unfinished state quite yet!

Today called for a mission of sorts. When asked if he wanted to go to the museum, Finn said no. When asked if he wanted to go swimming, Finn said no. Being in a saying-no kind of mood, I suggested that we switch things up a bit and do something we've never done before. 

"Want to make cookies for the birds, Finn?"

"Mmmhmmmm," he nodded, finishing the long-awaited affirmative answer with his typical sing-songy lilt. 

We started with a trip to a wild bird store to pick up some bird seed.

Then he and Grandma got to work in the kitchen. Recipe here.

The recipe calls for eggs along with their shells, which happens to be Finn's kitchen specialty. (Scrambled eggs with a crunch, anyone?) The birds, apparently, like the crunch.

Placing the cookies in the feeder, we waited patiently in the wings for a "tardnull" (cardinal) to appear. 

Bird happiness. Boy happiness. We'll do this again.

Blog tour update:

Jean of The Artful Parent made up an Art Satchel from Growing Up Sew Liberated for her girls. Stop by for her tips on making the satchel with stiff interfacing instead of plexiglas. She also posted an excerpt from the book - "Nature As Teacher." Thanks, Jean!

Also, just a teaser - the Art Satchel will be one of the kits I'm going to offer at my store! I'll include the plexiglas and everything!

Check out Elsie Marley's jammies here and Made By Rae's here.

Tomorrow's stop - the Rhythm of the Home blog, followed by Friday at Uncommon Grace!

This humble little apron means more to me than you would think it warrants. It's a simple design, really - so easy to make, and so gratifying to give to a young child. It represents joyful, messy times together with children, both in my classroom and now in my own home, baking and making art with my little one.

But it's more to me than that, even. It was the first sewing pattern that I mustered up the courage to share with others. I remember drafting the pattern while I was still living and teaching in Mexico, hoping that it would be of use to other Montessori teachers and parents as they made materials for their own classrooms and homes. I was nervous putting it out into the world. The basic apron has been a downloadable tutorial on my blog ever since.

Yet, it doesn't stop there, my appreciation for this little apron. It soon became apparent that others really enjoyed the pattern, both for its sewing ease, its design that promotes a young child's independence, and for its practical use in the home. The feedback I received from the first users of the pattern was positive, and it gave me the confidence I needed to start writing up patterns for my other designs (like the Emmeline Apron - the apron I wore daily in my classroom!)

Before I knew it, I was designing patterns as well as teaching. Now, I'm mothering and designing patterns whenever I can find a moment. (Most moments courtesy of my dear husband, who is Super Dad.) Occasionally, enough of those moments come together and allow me to write a book.

Growing Up Sew Liberated is about to be released (official launch date is June 6) and I couldn't be more excited. It is written for those exact same people I drafted the apron pattern for - but there's oh so much more inside its pages. It was such a joy to write, and I hope that you love it as much as you loved the humble little apron.

So, with a nod to my roots as a designer, I'm really pleased that Interweave, my publisher, wanted to re-release the child's apron with a few more bells and whistles.

You can read Tricia's write-up about Growing Up Sew Liberated on Sew Daily, where you can also download the new-and-improved Child's Apron pattern. The new pattern features two size ranges (3-5 years and 6-8 years,) as well as instructions on making two new versions of the apron: a waterproof, whimsically embroidered Laundry Day Apron, and the playfull and practical Plant Care Apron.

Click here to download the new pattern.

Happy sewing!

Menu

Chocolate Pancakes

Mud Pie

Sweet Gum Ball Ice Cream

Mud Bread with Herbs

 It didn't take the Daddy and me very much time or effort to set this up, yet the results? Oh my. Stamp of toddler approval, my friends. Water? Check. Dirt? Check. Rip roarin' good time? Check. Mess? You betcha. Little one busily playing for two hours straight? Mmm hmm. The mud pie kitchen makes all of us in our house very happy.

It cost virtually nothing to put together (the old bench was free and the pots, pans & kitchenware were thrifted.) To cover the unsighly front and sides of the bench, I used a thrifted sheet, cut to size and nailed to the wood. Add a hook to hang an apron from and you're done. The sides of the bench are open, so one side can be used for storage and the other side is the "oven."

I gleaned my inspiration from an article in the 2010 summer edition of Rhythm of the Home. You can see more ideas at Let the Children Play.

I'm hoping that this is one of the things that the boys remember about their childhoods when they are adults. Water + mud + silliness = fond memories.