Welcome to A Little Garden Flower & Waldorf Essentials

My favorite tools

We talked a bit on Be a Beacon last night about some of my favorite tools for marking when I am reading work to comprehend as inner work or even for my school planning.

 

The top post its are just small page markers and are great for short notes in your reading. The bottom ones are my absolute favorite - they are stiff tabs called "durable filing tabs." I like these because you can write on them!  I use these a lot when I have books I refer to often and don't want to continually look things up.  I use them a lot in my copy of "Rhythms of Learning."

 

Have a great weekend!  If you haven't check out the Beacon program it isn't too late!  It is never too late to join - all of the shows are archived so you can go back and listen to them all when you join.

Blessings!!

All fixed!

We are all fixed.  I am so thankful for people who know more about servers than I do!

Blessings!

Store issues

We were so excited to fix one trouble we were having with the main site and then somehow while fixing those we did something to the store.  So... please give us some time and we will try to get it under control - in the meantime, please email us with any requests and if you want to sign up for Be a Beacon you can do so right here on the blog.  Blessings.

Reflections on Martinmas

I was pondering this week as we painted lanterns and prepared for our small celebration why this festival seems to be one of my favorites. So many people love the dragon slaying qualities of Michaelmas and while I enjoy that festival, I think maybe I am just at a point in my life where I am not slaying dragons anymore... I am coming to peaceful agreements with them.  Martinmas is almost the opposite of Michaelmas.  It is all about light and the love of Christ - the impulse of seeing something within ourselves that we want to give to others out of pure love.  It is this love and devotion that gave Martin the thought to share his cloak with the beggar.  This is the same love and devotion that I try to hold in each day.

The weather also brought my thoughts to the last seven years we have spent in south east Idaho... the first year we had a festival at our house, everyone came and made lanterns, ate dinner, walked and had fun.  I remember it was COLD... bitterly cold. The second year children were sick, the third year I was newly divorced and joined by a dear friend, the fourth we had a great festival planned and it poured rain, the fifth we skipped... can't remember why... last year we worked with a local school group and this year... well three out of four are ill.  We settled on an inside celebration.  Yesterday we painted new lanterns, we are enjoying some awesome bread from Tammy (dear friend, office help and radio show companion!!) add some soup and a fabulous new book of gnome stories to read aloud and we are set.

Be a Beacon starts tomorrow!  Are your ready?  Did you miss it?  It isn't too late to join!

More thoughts on the Will... for Mom

As we get ready to start the Be a Beacon series, I have been meditating on moms a lot. I often hear "I am trying this but don't see a change"  or "how long does this will thing take?"  I know that when I say "it is a journey" sometimes it just irritates people so I began meditating on a good analogy.  I started thinking about professional sports stars.  If you woke up tomorrow and decided you wanted to be a basketball star but didn't know anything about basketball, how would you go about learning?  First you would have to learn about the game - all the rules.  Then you would have to learn how to play the game.  You would still not be an expert - there would be endless days of practice.  Practice.  Without practice we can not excel. Practice doesn't mean we do a bunch and then declare we are finished - practice means working on with iron perseverance, here a little, there a little, line upon line.  Daily practice.

So the next time you fight prayer and meditation... think about the daily practice that must happen in order for someone like Michael Jordan to be great - then go pray!

With love and support.

Melisa

Living in Abundance

For the farmer who sows the seed,
I give thanks,
For the farmer who harvests the crop,
I give thanks,
For the child who washes the crop,
I give thanks,
For my hands that cut the crop,
I give thanks. Amen.

I am so thankful. Thankful for my family. My close friends that put up with me.  My home.  So many things. I was thinking today about abundance, one thing that always makes me feel rich is a full pantry and a stocked freezer.  This time of the year really helps me to realize how rich we are.  We don't keep a garden at this house but my father in law grows enough for a small country and while he has the temperament of Mr. MacGregor, (as per Sam after learning about Peter Rabbit) he really loves to feed us all!   I was thinking about planning and preparation this morning as I was getting ready to process and freeze all of these veggies . Planning goes so deep.  When we take the time to plan meals then our budget is saved and we have food on hand to cook.  When we take the time to put food away for the winter months we are ensuring a side dish or main dish during traditionally lean months.  We are so accustomed to just running to the store for something but what if that wasn't possible?  I guess my thoughts have wondered here since Ellie and I have been discussing farming.  Today we talked about Grandpa being our farmer - while grumpy and often gruff she knows he loves her and in his way helps provide for her with the abundance of his garden. 

After a morning of chopping and knitting and chopping some more... then a bit of blanching and packaging... we are blessed with the fruits of our labor.

We sat down to a delicious lunch of broccoli soup and homemade bread.

In love and gratitude...

Melisa Nielsen

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT! BE A BEACON!

“The self-education of adults is essential for the Waldorf approach to educating children, because Waldorf does not consist solely of methods, techniques, or structures, but rather the development of human capacities – those of the children but also, and more importantly, those of teachers and parents.”

~ Robert McDermott

Welcome to Be A Beacon! You are in for a treat - an inner work treat.  We have been talking about the importance of inner work for years and we are answering a call to address inner work for our very important demographic - MOMS!

There are so many paths to inner work - where do you start? We will explore many paths, many cultures and many teachers.  Among those teachers we will discuss the work of Rudolf Steiner, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Abraham, Deepak Chopra and many more. We will work with concepts from the Bible, Koran, Gita and many other holy books - there are many, many common threads. I will work to relate my own experiences as well to bring you a dynamic program that will have you on the road to really feeling like the BEACON you should be for your family.  This is a very exciting new service and I hope you will all take the journey with us!

"At every moment the listener may say to himself: that, of which they speak, I too can learn, if I develop within myself certain powers which today still slumber within me. There remains only one question — how to set to work to develop such faculties."
~Rudolf Steiner, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds

   Monthly Membership includes:

• Special access to newly recorded shows available only to those participating in the program.  These shows are meant to get you started on this journey and to get you thinking about what inner work means to you. These recordings include:
• Welcome to "Be a Beacon"
• Catalysts for Change
• Personal Gurus
• The Importance of Inner Work
• How to Meditate
• Bi weekly lessons and discussions delivered via private yahoo group
• 2 monthly private live radio shows/interactive chats
• Archives available for duration of membership
• Planning and goal setting tools geared directly to Waldorf homeschooling
• In depth inner work study covering many faith groups, including in depth Steiner and other modern inner work experts.

Some of the monthly themes include: getting started right, relationships, balancing, knowing when to cut back and how, Steiner's basic 6 in depth,  festivals and inner work meanings, exploring biography, mediation through Waldorf art and so much more.

When you join, you will also receive recommended reading and tools to get you started along with an invitation to join the private group.

Register through our store - we have monthly, quarterly and six month options.  Sign up soon!  The series starts on Thursday, November 12 at 9pm EST.

Grade three paintings and planning

Ellie aka Smurfette has been loving grade three. Her writing is coming along on its own and she is really blossoming - of course right along with being a moody almost nine-year-old!  I wanted to share this painting that we worked on a couple weeks ago from the garden of Eden.  It is one that I found last year on a blog I love to visit, Teaching Handwork. I generally keep a folder on my computer for paintings, drawings or other lessons that I might want to use with our school work.  This really helps me in planning.  When I do my planning, I sit and print out batches at a time that I may want to try before bringing them to my children.  I know that I discuss planning a lot and I know there are some moms that roll their eyes, but really there is no substitute for it.  In the days since my recent accident, I have really come to appreciate the planning I did a few months back - I took the time to really make sure our lessons were laid out. 

Planning gives us such freedom!  Freedom to really take things deeper or to realize that we were the ones that needed the depth and we can move on when we see our child is ready.  Sometimes we plan big elaborate lessons just to have our child not connect with the material as we hoped - in years past, I may have looked at that as a failure on my part, but I have recently, through my own inner work, realized that I often go deep in planning a particular lesson block because I needed to!  There was a gap that I needed to understand and that my enthusiasm brought to my child just what it needed to and the rest of the knowledge is mine to treasure - my own little friendship with the material.  Really and truly, take the time to plan!  And then take the time to LIVE - enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Many blessings!

Melisa Nielsen

Hint #3

"This universal mood of gratitude is the basis for a truly religious attitude...Love, born out of experience of gratitude during the first period of the child's life, is the love of God. One should realize that, just as one has to dig the roots of a plant into the soil in order to receive its blossom later, so one has to plant gratitude into the soul of the child, because it is the root of the love of God.  The love of God will develop out of universal gratitude, as the blossom develops from the root." ~ Rudolf Steiner, Gratitude, Love, and Duty

Tomorrow is our BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!  Be sure to check in to see the big news!

Hint #2

"Never will a person's will - nor as a result a person's character - develop in a healthy way, if one cannot during this period of childhood receive religious impulses deep into the soul.  How people feel their place and part in the universal whole will be expressed in the unity of their life of will. If they do not feel linked with strong bonds to a divine-spiritual, their will and character must remain uncertain, divided, and unsound."

Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child in the Light of Spiritual Science