painting and baking

We had a really nice day today. It could be called our first day of Waldorf preschool, though it was not my intention. We began the day with baking some whole wheat bread. I used a recipe from the Joy of Cooking (the 75th anniversary edition, the recipe is not in the earlier editions) that was very basic. It turned out very flavourful, but it did not rise as much as my bread usually rises. However, I think that was due to my yeast nearing the end of its shelf life rather than the recipe itself. Soon after we started the bread my mom came over to make chicken stock with me. She got that cooking away and I got the bread in the oven and we sat down for a nice little visit.

My sister and her daughter N showed up soon after that and our talk turned to the wet-on-wet technique of painting. N had never painted in this way, partially because my sister did not know where to begin. (I highly recommend Brunhild Müller’s Painting with Children for a good introduction to this type of painting). So out came the paints and Mom set up the children and away we went. Now that A and N are older we shared a little blurb* from Leo Lionni’s story Little Blue and Little Yellow (one of my favorite stories) for them to think about when they painted.

"When Yellow found Blue it called out, 'Oh there you are! I was looking for you.' Then they laughed and threw themselves into each other’s arms, and they were so happy that they turned as green as grass.”

We then moved on to add more colors into the paintings; by the end we had run out of paper and A and N still did not want to stop. We managed to distract them with the suggestion of having an afternoon snack of tea and our fresh bread, now finished. After the refreshment the children played nicely together and before we knew it the afternoon was over!

We were all so pleased with the way the afternoon progressed we have plans to do something similar once a week at my house and on Wednesdays after the Farmer’s Market at my mom’s place. I for one am looking forward to it.



*this is also quoted in Painting with Children