Botany Studies: Herbal Remedy Kit

Just a quick post to show how much we LOVE our Herbal Remedy Kit from LearningHerbs.com.

LearningHerbs.com - Browse their website - they offer SO much more! (and so much is FREE!)

I think this was actually making elderberry gummies
(not included in the kit,
but the elderberries are!
And the recipe is easy-easy-easy -
we added some extras for specific ailments)

The Herbal Kit - price ranges from $67-97 with various promotions. WORTH - EVERY - PENNY.
In fact, after you have the kit and you get started - just getting your hands into it, you'll find that you can buy replacements or change things up through purchasing items from Mountain Rose Herbs (or elsewhere, but we love Mountain Rose Herbs too!).... and we do that! BUT we decided to buy a second kit too!

The kit includes step by step EASY instructions. Nothing fancy; nothing complicated. So don't let my out of order photos here scare you! Legoboy could do all of these himself - in fact, he does done much of it all by himself, when modifying or re-making some items later. He has been doing so since he was 9 years old. :)



We have now made everything in the kit - including the elderberry syrup which works SO great for the flu virus! (the FDA does not approve of that statement, just as a disclaimer - even though there are scientific studies done that strongly show the affect of eldererry syrup on flu strains)

By the by - when it comes to flu.... I had those dried elderberries for almost 2 years. Every time I'd open that cupboard, I'd think, "What is that smell?" It wasn't *bad*, it just wasn't a yummy kind of berry smell either. Well, the day after we fully moved into our house (the apartment was empty but still needed a final cleaning), I opened the new cupboard that housed the elderberries, and thought, "Oh, THAT smells SO GOOD!" When I realized what it was, I realized, "I am sick." Our bodies do tend to crave what they need, until we train them otherwise. And I'd been ignoring all the signs of being sick (blaming it on the stress of moving, the all-day training I'd done that Friday, then doing the final moving of stuff in the rain at the end of a long day, coming into the house (where carpet people were supposed to be GONE already) to find broken dishes in the sink and broken glass all over the floor --- apparently the pounding from above had shaken loose a light fixture, hitting the sink and shattering everywhere, I blamed my feelings on "that time of the month", and my son's own moodiness (oh wait - he was sick too!!!). Talk about ignoring all the signs!!!!

Elderberry syrup though. YUM. And when my body didn't need it anymore, it didn't taste so good anymore. Still good, but not something that I was craving. Same with Legoboy. He really noticed the change in desire for it as he got better.

The best part of doing all this learning together? He could take care of me when I was sick and I could take care of him - no worries!

The pictures below start with the second kit; then move to the first kit. In no particular order. I will try to identify what is going on in each picture, but this is not a narrative so much as a demonstration of what could be done with an herbal remedy kit!

Full contents before unpacking anything.
That white spot is a wrapped up bottle of Lavendar essential oil.
Chunks of beeswax
All the jars, bottles eyedroppers, and tins needed for this particular kit.
Dried herbs (see below)
DVD instructions (with online access and some printed instructions)

First Kit:

stinging nettle sitting in place to make an infusion (all the goodness goes into the water,
then you strain out the physical herbs and drink the infusion - highly nutritious - and EASY)

strained herbs - these can go into the compost or be used other ways, depending on the herb mixture

This is maybe the stinging nettle infusion - the top part looks right,
but the liquid looks the wrong color.
So it might still be the herbal healving salve
herbs when being strained. 

the completed herbal healing salve
once you know how to make one kind, you can make ANY

getting supplies ready for making the salve

further straining the herbs that had been extracted into warm olive oil
just the liquid/oil is then added back to the pan with the beeswax
The bag helps to squeeze all the rest of the goodies out of the herbs. 

the herbal healing salve setting up - just poured into the jars
warm is darker and more liquidy yet
the solid parts are cooler and lighter in color

just a pretty picture of the lavendar essential oil, the olive oil and the tin tops

the salve while setting up - some was still warm (darker)

the pretty box the herbal remedy kit comes in ;) 

overview of the kit contents

closer look at the kit contents

melting the beeswax

Geometry in Nature

Recently, Legoboy participated in a class at the local-ish museum called "Geometry in Nature". Not a homeschool thing - this was on a Saturday so any children could come. 

I had this awesome post up - almost ready to go - went to edit just a TINY bit - and the whole thing was lost. That has never happened before and I was NOT happy. So 5 months later, here is what I was able to salvage. I didn't feel like (and still don't feel like) re-doing it all :( 

They mostly focused on Fibonacci and on fractals. 

The whole day led to lots of follow-up work and discussions. 

Alleged fractals in painting: 

Which calls to mind our awesome hallways: Elsa's Frozen palace!!!

Waiting for the other kids to arrive - he was the only one there ON TIME. Hm. 

Image of the swirl

Later we enjoyed this website: 
Fibonacci Numbers and Nature


Google these phrases!!!!

• swirl in pinecone
• swirl in pineapple
• Fibonacci sequence image

Making Space for the Child

Fore-note: This is a draft post from when we were still living in our tiny apartment. Some interesting tidbits still in here ;)

I don't even remember ever having the maps in that location! Ha!

Oh! This article at Maria Montessori blog sums it up SO nicely!

The article (go read it!) briefly describes the difference between a home that welcomes children by making them part of the family dynamic and a home that separates child/adult spaces.

Is it good for a child to have a "children's space" to go to? Sure. It can be. But if that is coupled with "you don't belong where the adults are", it's not well-balanced.

My son's toys are in the living room. I want him to LIVE in the living room. Yes, he has school and Legos in his room - and a 3 year old tomato plant - and some personal effects.

Playing with the materials ;)
These were set up in the small bedroom for a long time. 

He wants to keep his clothing in my own walk-in closet - he has a lower clothing rack for hanging his clothes; and the bottom 3 dresser drawers. I only need 2 of the drawers anyway, so it works well to have 1 dresser and share it.

His food is my food - we don't have "mom's stash", though we might have certain foods that he likes that I don't and vice-versa (he has some peppermint extract that he uses in his own recipes that I don't care for, for example). When he was younger, he had his own pitchers for milk, juice and water with appropriate daily servings - yes, they were his "own" but he had free access to them in the main/only refrigerator in his house ---- I provided ways for him to access the family dynamic of the home without entirely separating him out.

Some of us have separate school spaces - classrooms in our homes. These are great for those who have the space! And when we have that well-balanced with the children still learning and exploring in all areas of life, and the family spending time with the "Montessori school" supplies together, having fun - then the children have a fantastic Montessori homeschool!

Setting up the bead cabinet in the hall of our new home. 

In our small apartment, we've had to take the very, very integrated approach - by necessity. I keep saying "I want a separate classroom" - and maybe part of me still does, especially for things like math supplies; and to have a dedicated science shelf again (had one; transitioned to co-op; transitioning back home with a full key-board in the science shelf's place doesn't work so hot! Time to get projects cleaned up in my room so we have more space in there ;) ).

Multi-purpose the bead cabinet ;) 

Botany Illustrations

Neat side exhibit at our local museum recently:

Zoom in on this one! Look at the letter s in sassafras! It looks like "saffafras"!
This led to more conversations about the change in handwriting over the years.
And how necessary it is to maintain cursive writing - personalized writing - so that
we can continue to communicate with your ancestors.  

Such beautiful illustrations!

Even as recently as the last century, we were publishing books
in both Latin and English.
And I thought Latin was a dead language !?

We bought this one.
LOVE it! 

Dictionaries and Thesauruses in the Montessori Homeschool

It is important to NOT just have one resource - one dictionary, one thesaurus, one atlas, one encyclopedia set. No ONE resource is complete - no one resource will meet the needs of every child (or even every need of ONE child). There are different types, different focus for each one, different style that will appeal to different ages and personalities.

So don't be afraid to have a few on hand - thrift stores and library sales are great places to hunt down such materials; and utilize the library for its resources (and visit a few different libraries!). Explore what each one has; if you find a particular resource that is used a LOT in your home or school, that would be the one to invest in ;)

Thus, what follows is a(n incomplete) sampling of what is in our home for our family's purposes and our co-op/tutoring purposes.


This is not a definitive list.

In fact, this isn't even all that we have here - it is simply the ones I could find still on the bookshelves and not buried in the stacks of books that my son reads through on a *daily* basis. ;) But these are all used at least several times a year, if not weekly. When we moved, we culled some books; and last year I culled a LOT of books that we just weren't using. So this is what we have :)

2 sets of Science Encyclopedias - one is OLD but still pretty good.
The other is newer (ok, it's from my childhood, but my childhood isn't old ;) )
The newer set even came with a project book. 

Found in the basement when we moved in. Interesting stuff.
Taber's Cyclopedica Medical Dictionary

These are atlases and maybe need their own post???
The Kingfisher People's Book of Oceans
ChildCraft's Whole Wide World

More atlases
My World - Globe
Activity Atlas
Picture Atlas
Reader's Digest Children's World Atlas
(these were all Goodwill finds)

Webster's New Explorer Dictionary of Word Origins

Huh. More atlases. I was looking for dictionaries and thesauruses!
Where in the World is Geo?
HarperCollins Concise World Atlas (we LOVE this one!)

Scholastic Student Thesaurus
Encyclopedia of the Animal World
(the project book from above)
American Heritage Student Thesaurus

Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary

 Go here for a picture of my then-3-year-old reading the above BIG red dictionary. 

Legoboy's First Dictionary
NO dictionary is "too old" for a child! 

My First Encyclopedia
(we also have "My First Dictionary" around here somewhere)

The Lincoln Writing Dictionary for Children

The Cost of Montessori Elementary Language - WORST CASE SCENARIO

My main caveat for the elementary Montessori language materials is that most of it has to either be made or purchased in packets that may or may not correspond with your albums/manuals.

For those using Keys of the Universe, many printables are available or will be available in the near future.

Language Elementary Montessori Materials - Click here for the full materials list and price comparison for IFIT, Alisons, what Keys provides

Alison’s: roughly $1200 if buy ALL (don’t buy all!) and some add-ons

IFIT: roughly $500 if buy all they have

NOTES:

Nobody has everything; much is printable from KotU or available at Garden of Francis – or purchase additional packets from Alison’s and change the presentations (less key-based though).

Literature books are not included (see enclosed lists)