It was around one year ago that we created our first nature table. It was a small wooden folding table in our family room, and it worked well. My daughter Hannah was 4 at the time and she could easily reach the table to arrange and re-arrange it. My son Jacob was 6 or 7 months old at the time and not yet mobile. We were able to set our scene without taking him into account at all.
Backing up a little, nature tables are fixtures in Waldorf classrooms. They are changed seasonally or with holidays, and they offer a way to bring a bit of the outdoors inside. There are wooden figures, books, pictures, flowers, leaves, candles, rocks – whatever works for you. Our nature table has held toys, felted figures, treasures that my 5-year-old Hannah discovered outside, seed packets and even Barbie. While I do sometimes offer suggestions, I try to let my kids, and particularly Hannah, take ownership of the nature table.
Hannah offers her suggestions for improving the nature table
Over the past year our nature table experienced a couple of iterations. As I said, it started out on a folding table. Once Jacob started crawling and pulling up, that stopped working so well. He would pull on the cloth covering the table and that would be the end of the scene, which is particularly bad when the scene contains water-filled vases. We moved the tableau on to the shelf immediately above the table, but that didn’t work for too long, either. Jacob’s expanding reach, combined with Jon’s need for a piano shelf, put the nail in that coffin. Finally, we settled on the top of one bookshelf, and it has remained there ever since.
I appreciate that the nature table offers us a place to store the little bits of nature that my child always brings home with her from the outdoors. I also appreciate that it is an ever-evolving representation of the world and our family. What aspects of the outside world are interesting to us right now? What flowers are blooming in our garden? What seeds are we planting? What special occasion are we looking forward to?
Our Spring 2010 nature table
I am honestly not that good at providing structure or routine to our daily family life. It’s just not my strong suit. Maybe I’m too overwhelmed, or maybe my children aren’t the right ages. Our days can be chaotic and I don’t always spend as much time engaging my children in creative activities as I would like. I appreciate the nature table, as one little corner of my home that is about ritual and routine and engagement. I like making felted flowers or little people out of modeling beeswax with my daughter to put into our tableau. I like seeing it when I eat my dinner. I imagine that it will remain a fixture in our home for some time to come.
How do you bring nature into your home? Or do you? I’d love to hear!
amberstrocel
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I love this idea!
We do spend some time outdoors but we haven’t had the experience of making them a treasure indoors. Yet. But I definitely will remember this idea when we are ready for it!
.-= Sara´s last post ..Pooh =-.
Twitter: Miss_Scarlett99
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I suspect if I tried that the items would end up scattered about my house, defeating the purpose
Victoria is always bringing home things from outside and giving leaves to her preschool teachers so she’d probably like having a table. The unknown quotient is Amelia who, like Jacob, is a little too keen on destruction.
Perhaps by summer we will be able to try that
.-= Carrie´s last post ..Mabel’s Labels BlogHer ’10 Contest =-.
I love this idea. I really do. I love this idea so much that it makes me a little sad that I doubt it would work well in our house. My son is like a massive destructive force. He would just spread everything all over.
We also can’t have anything that resembles a plant – either living, dead, or silk – as my cats will do everything they can to eat it and puke it up…probably on my pillow. I had to give up indoor plants, ribbons, anything of a crunchy texture years ago.
The beings in this house are keeping me from having a nature table!
We stick with the outdoors. Luckily my back room has no less than 11 enormous windows looking out onto nature and it helps to bring the outdoors in.
.-= Marilyn @ A Lot of Loves´s last post ..Argue, Rinse, Repeat. =-.
Twitter: pomomama
says:
Our nature table is a pile of rocks (some decorated with eyes or fluff) at our front door where the Wee Guy is encouraged to leave them by me cos I’m paranoid that if the aforementioned rocks ever made it into the house they would most probably shortly exit the house via a new hole in the window glass.
end of public service announcement
.-= pomomama aka ebbandflo´s last post ..the secret of youth =-.
What a wonderful idea! Thank you for sharing; I’m going to try to implement something like this.
We keep lots of houseplants at kid-friendly height… but that’s the extent of nature inside – that’s organized anyway (you know, we have bugs, muddy foodprints, sand…).
Here’s my post on our Montessori at home – there’s a photo of our kids plant area: http://www.seriousshops.com/blogs/post/Montessori-Inspired-Organization-at-Home.aspx
.-= kblogger´s last post ..The First Signs of Spring =-.
We have a nature table too and it the landing place for all the random things my son picks up outside. Leaves, rocks, flowers, etc. No critters yet, thankfully. Not sure what we’ll do once the little one starts pulling up and eating everything. Acorns certainly pose a choking hazard. That and all the pretty wooden toys are about as “Waldorf” as we get these days. I suck at the rhythms, man. I’m way too laidback (ahem, lazy?) for that.
What a nice idea! I love the color and variety in your nature table. My girls are constantly picking up sticks and rocks but they are not allowed inside. The rocks we put in our garden and one year we had a special “rock garden” that we organized into a pattern. In the summer I grow flowering plants and use them as a centrepiece each week. The only nature we currently have indoors are some cactus that we planted which are about the size of a pea right now. I gave up on keeping indoor plants years ago because I just didn’t have the time to care for them. My theory on this is that they didn’t make noise so they didn’t get fed! lol
.-= Tanya´s last post ..Expectations of a new mom =-.
Twitter: bitterindigo
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I try not to go overboard on saying things like ‘it makes me feel better that you feel bad about that too’, but it DOES make me feel better that you find it difficult to provide structure and engage your kids in creative activities every day, because you’re a really good mother, so it makes me feel like I might not TOTALLY suck for finding the same things difficult. You know — some weeks it’s like mardi gras with the art and the dancing and the exchange of ideas. Some weeks it’s been five days since we practiced the piano and we’ve seen the Jonas Brothers way too often. It all balances out. Right?
.-= allison´s last post ..***************Lest Ye Be Judged and all that crap =-.
I love this I remember this from my days in Steiner Kindergarten:) (100 years ago…lol)
.-= Mel´s last post ..Thankful Friday: Universal love =-.
Twitter: fuoriborgo
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We don’t have a nature table, my problem is how to keep nature out of our house:) But we do have a microscopic nature collection tucked in a box (it is not the most idyllic of sights). Nature tables are not part of our waldorf schools here, perhaps a local adaptation because of our smaller houses.
I see your felted collection is growing Amber, I’m envious, I still have to get my tool.
.-= Francesca´s last post ..Flowers under the snow =-.
Love it. We don’t have one. I will have to think about this. Maybe a nature tray.
.-= Capital Mom´s last post ..Wonderwall =-.
This is lovely. I’ll bet it’s a fun activity to share with your daughter, the selecting and arranging of your items. I have tried recently to be more intentional about bringing some of the beauty from our backyard into the house, mainly by clipping bits of random plants and flowers and bunching them into a vase. My husband is quite the gardener, and some of the arrangements we end up with are beautiful, just because the raw materials are so beautiful. It’s almost like you can’t put together a bad arrangement
Anyway, thanks for stopping by my blog, and I’m glad to meet you and explore your blog.
Twitter: ladymrules
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Are those felted eggs in the right hand side of the tableau? I bought some felted balls on my last trip to the Pacific Northwest (after being inspired by one of your posts) and the micro dude loved them. So pretty, and soft upon impact.
.-= Lady M´s last post ..If You Give a Baby a Cookie =-.
I love nature tables. I have never really found a good spot inside the house for one though. I do have a spot outside the front door that I let the kids put their nature finds, like bird nests or pretty rocks or bark. I have a touch basket in the daycare bathroom to. It has pine cones and shells and bark and rocks. Not seasonal, but definetely nature.
.-= Melodie´s last post ..Love – The Secret Ingredient For Healthy Self-Esteem =-.
You really do have the best ideas ever. Have you thought about writing a book? It could be called “Really cool things I could be doing with my kids if I weren’t too lazy to dream up all the cool things that I could be doing with my kids.”
.-= TheFeministBreeder´s last post ..March: The Month of Gina =-.
Nature Table! I love it!
We have a little basket of the sea-faring variety, but your nature table is way cooler. Especially because of the way the kids get to decide the objects of import and rotate them over time. Brilliant, Mom!
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