It’s so easy to fall in love with nature in the springtime. I do every year. I know not everybody is into Earth Day and I know that the problems that face us as caretakers of this planet are vast—sometimes too grim to contemplate. We all make choices every day and I know I do not always make the best ones. And yet I think the first step to solving some of these massive issues is to instill in our children a love of this amazing world we live in, to cultivate a sense of reverence for the nature that is all around us.

Teaching children to appreciate nature is really not necessary; they already love it, wonder at it, learn from it. Children love animals, rocks, sticks, butterflies, flowers. Children need to splash in puddles, dig in the earth, and run their hands across the bark of a tree. They do this without our prompting, as long as we allow them to, discovering all along, unearthing small mysteries and miracles every day.

There is a wealth of children’s books about the earth. More are being published every day and your local bookstore or online retailer is sure to have a display or special on such books in honor of Earth Day. Some have a clear, scientific slant and some have a cute, cuddly animal slant. Honestly, there are so many that no single family could possibly explore them all!

What is a trifle harder to find are books with a reverent stance, that are poetic or provide a global ecological stance without being ALARMING. Here are a few we enjoy:

Clockwise:

Frank Ash’s The Earth and I — A simple, rainbow-hued story of a boy who loves the earth and cares for her; perfect for preschoolers.

Graeme Base’s Uno’s Garden — A story of people moving into an unspoiled Eden and ruining it, and then the gradual return of the marvelous creatures and plants that lived there. Eventually they achieve balance with nature. It is also a mathematics story. Asher loves the creatures and the challenge of finding the Snortlepig. Lucas likes the pictures and the math.

Nancy Luenn’s Mother Earth — A beautiful and poetic personifcation of the earth, with a message that we should enjoy all that the earth has to offer and give back to her, too. I found this at the library and then scoured the Internet to find a copy for our home. I think it may be out of print, but you can still find copies.

Linda Glaser’s Our Big Home: An Earth Poem — Illustrated by one of my favorite illustrators, Elisa Kleven, this book is intricate and stunning: “We all live here. People, ants, elephants, trees, lizards, lichen, turtles, bees. We all share the same big home.”

Tony Johnston’s The Whole Green World — Also illustrated by Kleven. A girl counts her many blessings: shoes, a dog, a stick, a sack of seeds, a watering can, the sun, birds, ladybugs and ants, breezes, cake, a book, the moon, flowers and trees.

From Mother Earth.

From Our Big Home: An Earth Poem.

Shari Halpern’s My River — A used bookstore find published by Scholastic. Perfect for little ones. It shows how the river belongs to all creatures equally.

Earthways: Simple Environmental Activities for Young Children — This book is a good investment and one I’m sure we’ll keep for many years.

Joseph Bruchac’s Between Earth & Sky: Legends of Native American Sacred Places — For slightly older kids, this book tells of earth legends from various native peoples. The oil painting illustrations are lovely.

Nature Crafts for Kids — This is where I first saw the Easter eggs with the negative prints of leaves and flowers. Make a barometer, a birdbath, pressed flowers, candied violets, a sundial, baskets, evergreen garlands, and much more. Another keeper.

If you like what you see here and choose to purchase one of these books for your family, click the links here—my family will be supported just a tad by your purchase.

What’s in your Earth Day book basket?

I thought this was going to be a cool birthday gift for Lucas (which I won’t yet name because I still hope to make one), but before I knew it, this needle-felting project rapidly became another Easter egg. I think I really love Easter eggs. This egg is rather like one I made and gave to Grandpa and Mimi a couple of weeks ago. I has flowers all the way around the back.

I’ve seen some gorgeous wool “paintings” in books and online and I thought I’d try my hand at needle-felting something new. I didn’t really consult any how-to resources (and probably should have). I just got out my roving and went for it. Honestly, this wool is so forgiving. The last thing I need to do is to create some hooks on the back and hand it by a pretty twig, I think. Small bursts of creativity are better than none, right?

We are expecting about 30 friends to come tomorrow and celebrate Easter with a day-long brunch. I can’t wait to see their smiling faces! Today has been for Easter projects. Banana bread is baking in the oven right now and making the whole house smell divine.

Ian and I are going to make a bunch of food:

• Barbecued salmon fillet
• Vegetarian quinoa with roasted red and yellow peppers and shallots
• Vegetarian butternut squash casserole
• Banana bread
• Pumpkin bread with tiny chocolate chips
• Chicken apple sausages
• Big bowl of fruit
• And maybe hot cross buns, if I have time …

We decorated and hung felt eggs today on our (somewhat neglected) ficus tree. These were made with crummy, 20¢ craft felt and scrap pieces of 100% wool felt. The boys were quite taken with the stars, so they focused on creating eggs with stars. Asher really loved using the scissors!

We’ve been dying Easter eggs too. We had to compromise. The boys wanted to use the pearlescent commercial dye kit that Grandma gave them. The eggs were both easy to color and are also quite beautiful, in lovely pastel shades.

I, on the other hand, was hankering to do some natural dying again, like we did in 2008. I’ve seen some gorgeous eggs online and in one of our craft books that use leaves and flowers to make a negative image on the egg. We did the yellow and red onion skin dyes today, and this is what we came up with. Not quite a perfect result, but two of them look really great. We’re supposed to shine them up with oil.

The dark brown eggs were dyed with the red onion skins. Three of them didn’t get the leaf technique. The lightest egg was dyed just by wrapping the boiled yellow onion skins around the egg and leaving it overnight. If we have time tonight, we’ll do some with red cabbage and hopefully make some pretty blue eggs, too.

OK. Gotta run to the grocery store! Happy Easter!

I’ve been doing a lot of needle-felting in the evenings after the children go to bed. I’m finding that my capacity for intense mental concentration (as I would need for editing) is just no longer there after about 9 p.m. I’m enough of a worrywart that I have trouble relaxing and find that having something to occupy my hands helps. I can’t really explain why the stabby-stabby motion of needle-felting is soothing to me, but there you go.

Here’s my new blue bird friend. Somehow, making spring art (art? can I call it that?) seems appropriate. This mama bird will live on our nature table for a while.

I just wasn’t satisfied with the eyes I tried out. I kind of like her without eyes, but maybe I’ll add some later.

These three blue eggs are only about an inch long.

However, these Easter eggs I’ve been needle-felting are two and a half inches long and fit nicely in the palm of my hand.

The other day, grandma came over to help us with our worm farm. She gave it to me last May as a birthday present, and much to my surprise, I’ve managed to keep the worms alive all this time, feeding them kitchen scraps and coffee grounds. I wasn’t too excited about this part, however.

Grandma is less squeamish than me and has years’ worth of experience farming worms. While I worked on an editing project, she and two gleeful boys tackled the job of removing the compost, separating the worms into three groups (one group for the garden, one for the worm farm, and one for a new worm farm for her to take home), and restarting it afresh, returning the not-yet-compost food parts to the farm.

That’s a lot of worms, man! Good stuff!

Then she let the kiddos paint flower pots that she brought them. (Thanks for the pictures, Grandma.)

Unsurprisingly, some wackiness ensued. Lucas likes to impress …

And Asher really enjoys the hose, no matter the weather. In case you’re wondering, yes, they were dressed identically (their choice) but you probably can’t tell with all the mud.

This was Lucas’s entertainment for last Friday evening: a homemade, hand-sewn blank notebook with a felt cover. His idea. His supplies. His execution. All his.

While I sat watching with my mouth agape and he confidently stitched the cover on, he reminded me that he already had loads of experience with this sort of thing because he went to a bookmaking day camp last summer, where he made two different styles of books.

He then ruled the pages and proceeded to fill them up with fantastical water creatures chaotically drawn in classic, blue ball-point pen ink.

Saint Patrick’s Day is coming and I have to admit, it’s a holiday that I quite like. I just always have liked it; don’t really know why. I have always made sure not to be pinched by wearing plenty of green on Saint Patrick’s Day.

I was inspired to needle-felt a Saint Patrick, mainly to see if I could make a doll this big. He’s almost 12 inches tall and made entirely out of wool roving, two pipe cleaners, and some sort of silky fiber that Parnasus gave me a long time ago, which was perfect for his soft beard and hair. I don’t really know what it is. His bishop’s hat sports a jaunty shamrock, which is kind of like a cross, too, and it gives a nature connection that I appreciate. I felted little green snakes onto Patrick’s robes. I’m happy with how he turned out! (Now I know I can make a similar Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, or seasonal doll like Queen Summer or King Winter, or whatever.)

Saint Patrick’s Day isn’t a big holiday in the Waldorf school, which could be because it falls just before the spring equinox and Easter. Since Lucas is in second grade this year and the curriculum has focused on lots of stories about saints, I figured we would bring Saint Patrick into our home.

Some very brief online research reveals that the legend of Saint Patrick is that he drove all the snakes out of Ireland, which may be a metaphor of Christianity conquering the indigenous, pagan (snaky) religion. I also found plenty of sites that claimed this story and its interpretation was nonsense. Probably Ireland never had snakes. It’s known that Patrick was the son of a wealthy Roman-British family who was captured, taken to Ireland, and enslaved for six years. Later he escaped and returned to Britain, entered the priesthood and studied for years, and then became a missionary in Ireland again, where he converted people to Christianity for twenty years. An angel told him in a dream to convert the Irish. He may have used the three-lobed shamrock to teach the Irish people about the Holy Trinity. Who knows?

The Dear Little Shamrock

There’s a dear little plant that grows in Ireland.
‘Twas Saint Patrick himself sure that set it.
And the sun on his labor with pleasure did smile.
And a tear from his eyes oft-times wet it.
It grows thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, and the mireland,
And it’s called the dear little Shamrock of Ireland.

That dear little plant still grows in our land,
Fresh and fair as the daughters of Erin,
Whose smiles can bewitch, and whose eyes can command,
In each climate they ever appear in:
For they shine thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, and the mireland,
Just like their own dear little Shamrock of Ireland.

That dear little plant that springs from our soil,
When its three little leaves are extended,
Denotes from the stalk we together should toil,
And ourselves by ourselves be befriended.
And still thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, and the mireland,
From one root should branch, like the Shamrock of Ireland.

—Andrew Cherry

I sewed a thing! I made this pillowcase for Asher’s birthday at the end of January, but of course, a pillowcase doesn’t get top billing when it comes time to celebrate turning 3, either for him or for me, so I’m only getting around to gloating about it now. I used an online tutorial that I found here, to help me with the french seams, which were entirely new to me. The tutorial is great! Much thanks to its creator!

I can’t quite explain it, but I’m really digging this pale, spring green with the dark red. This color combination is all over the boys’ bedroom now. I hope they like it as much as I do. (The green rug is new from Ikea and we all love it, especially the price.)

I have supplies for a pillowcase for Lucas, too. Which I hope to make sometime soon.

I meant to post this weeks ago but it slipped my mind. Lucas made all these cutie pies with modeling clay. Modeling clay is really fun when you’re stuck indoors!

I forget what the critter at the back right is, but the others are a turtle and a bluebird. In the front are a swan, a dolphin, a duck, and a penguin. But you knew that.