Children – is gratitude!
Nowadays, unfortunately, there lost the most important human virtue – gratitude and devout attitude to everything that is given and gifted to a man. But these qualities – is the basis of the moral life of man, the basis of personality. To educate in children these wonderful qualities is possible through very simple things, including through a joint meal.
В Детском Посольстве совместная трапеза – это всегда праздник. Нарядная скатерть и салфетки, красивые столовые приборы и обязательно зажженная свеча. Перед едой мы поем благодарственную песню и желаем друг другу приятного аппетита. Так же и по окончанию трапезы мы произносим благодарственные слова. Пища, принятая в состоянии умиротворения и благости целительна для любого человека, а тем более для растущего ребенка.
In the Children’s Embassy a common meal – it is always a holiday. There are fancy tablecloth and napkins, nice cutlery and always lighted candle. Before eating we sing a song of gratitude and wish each other to have a nice meal. Similarly, at the end of the meal we say thank-you speech to each other. The food eaten in a state of peace and goodness is healing for everyone, and especially for the growing child.
During the year, the table is always full with fresh food, vegetables and fruits. From biodynamic farms they bring us grain, milk, nuts and honey. All children’s menu is carefully balanced. Food must be healthy, because it directly affects the formation of children, even more so than education. “I am what I eat.”
It is very important to note that in the Children’s Embassy. the children themselves actively and with great pleasure participate in the cooking. We believe that it is very helpful for them to see how to prepare the food. Everything happens naturally, like at home. We knead the dough and bake with the kids cookies, buns and real bread. Moreover, the flour for cakes children mole by themselves on manual mills. Children are very fond of touching cereals for porridge, cooking salad and muesli, buttering sandwiches, pressing the juice from fruits and vegetables, filling the soups with aromatic herbs.
Kids themselves lay on the table, spreading a tablecloth and napkins. They are arranged plates, prepare cutlery, cut paper napkins.
One of the favorite activities of children – it is washing dishes. Every child after a meal, cleans up after himself a napkin, wash his plates and cups. This is a special ritual that delivers great fun for children.
Come to the Children’s Embassy, SHARE OUR MEAL!
A little morning sketch on the topic.
It starts the morning. Child-minder, before the arrival of children, puts on a nice apron and organizes her workplace. She does everything smoothly and beautifully, as they say, with the soul, with her gestures, her good thoughts in advance creating a pleasant working atmosphere. And this is very important – to create the appropriate mood. On the table for cooking there are: cutting board, small knives in cases, a tray of vegetables and greens, a jar with barley, measuring spoons, graters, bowls for washing and more transparent plateaus. On the laid cloth diaper clearing there stands a clay pot for treats. At a nearby table, two tray-boat are already prepared. One is for the cups of the juice and the other one is for the bowls for fruit salad for a luncheon.
For children, on the right and on the left of the caregiver’s place there are chairs and a small wooden plank lying. At the high table out of reach of children “there lives” an electric stove, which heated saucepan and a pot for porridge. Next to it there is a shelf with spices, vegetable oils, honey pot, a jar of jam and a garland of dried herbs. Everything has to be thought out to the smallest detail, comfortable and aesthetically pleasing.
Child-minder in advance washes and wipes vegetables puts them nicely on a tray, the laid a linen cloth, put a copper basin of water on the low table beside her chair and begins to cook. First of all, you have to mash the berries in a transparent jug for Morse, so that they had time to brew and put bread to bake for dinner.
Kids one by one come in the morning into a group with baskets, where there is either an apple, which they had brought from home, or pear, kiwi, tangerine and lowered their fruit into a prepared bowl of warm water, happily wash their backs, sides and bellies and then spread them to a large clean beautiful dish. Wiping hands, one of them immediately runs to the playhouse, horse – rocking, dry swimming pool, and someone wants to have help to smash berries or cut his fruit. Child-minder takes apples from a dish and begins beautifully cut in a circle their peel, dropping it into a clear jar and peeled fruit cut in half or even smaller and puts on the board to the child, then he is given a special knife, removing it from the case. A kid cuts fruit into pieces and adds to a transparent plate. When all the fruits are cut, the child lays one piece of each fruit in the salad plates for each child , which were prepared in advance on a tray – this will be a treat to lunch. Some of the children may have to do it themselves, but someone has to be helped to spread out all over the fruit evenly, not to offend anyone. The remaining pieces fall into the pot for the treats, which stands on a sheltered with a clearing cloth. It can be used for little surprises during the game. If a kid went to the pot, and it turned out to be empty, then, as a rule, he was happy to sit and cut a new fruit, lays it out to the plates, and the remaining pieces are replenished to pot. When the fruit is small, it happens that it is not enough pieces for each plate. Then pieces are cut in half yet to treat all your friends. Orange peel, bones of different fruits are put into a basket to dry on the window. After drying, they will join the range of children’s shop, or they will fill fragrant linen bags for baby baskets in the locker room.
The pitcher with smashed berries there added a leaf of dried mint, oregano little honey or cane sugar and hot water, after which it is stayed in a corner, covered with a warm heater pad made of wool, which was fulled by children.
It is coming the time to cook a soup. With a song “Mistress once came from the market” child-minder begins to peel vegetables and, slowly, chop them in small pieces and separates neatly into a plate. Older children also help carrot to “take off its clothes”, and on a small grater they rub it. Cooked vegetables are lowered into a preheated pan with homemade ghee. And while they extinguished the time to yummy porridge . With a song “Porridge-Malashka you’re so good” they opened jar with barley. On each day of the week there prepared a certain kind of porridge. Children love to fiddle with bulk products and at this moment sure someone of the children comes out to help fitting in a cup the seeds with pour scoop and pour it in a clay pot, where the porridge will be prepared. This occupation is especially liked by active children.
Fill cereal with boiling water and in five minutes, having changed the water, we put it on prepared stove. Time determined by the hourglass, which is watched with great interest by all the children. You can add melted butter, cinnamon, cardamom and a little turmeric to it. Porridge always turns out very beautiful, fragrant and delicious. All the children eat it with great gusto. On request, they can add to it over breakfast raisins, pine nuts and honey.
Before the completion of the work at the kitchen table we spill compote into cups, filtering it through a strainer. At the same time we watch, what a beautiful color it turned out, and listen to – what song is sung today by murmuring water for each cup? This work can be charged by older children.
They like to push the thick berry juice through a sieve and adjust to exactly half a cup of compote.
Cooking with children gives them great, and not interchangeable impulses for their free play, which takes place in parallel in the game. Girls ,watching a real job of a child-minder themselves at this time grate zest and chestnuts in a small house for their doll children, and a group of guys from the table – ship store food, buying it in the market at the kids, and carry it on trucks in the holds. From time to time someone goes out to participate in the desktop of the child-minder or just takes a delicious piece from the pot. Typically, for an hour almost everyone finds something to do during the preparation of food at the desktop of the child-minder. But once someone stays for a long time, and some – only a few minutes. In any case, the whole cooking process in the presence of children is incredibly healer for them. And to be honest, all so cooked food is much different to taste, it is much better than the brought one from a factory-kitchen. Homecooked food – is a homecooked food!!!
When the soup is almost ready the teacher puts the pot into the oven to come in its own. There is also sent a pot of porridge. By this time there is pleasant and appetizing aroma in the group. You have to cut fresh vegetables for dinner. Several circles cucumbers, peppers, cabbage beautifully arranged on a plate, and from a mini-garden on the windowsill we tear feathers of greens and onions. Plates are covered with a cloth and set aside until lunch.
The used dishes piled in a bowl. Children take rags and wipe off the table tithe, collecting them in a bag to feed the birds. Used rags they rinse in a basin with warm water, wring out and put on the battery dry. The child-minder folds beautifully the tablecloth and removes the apron.
Cooking takes about an hour. There are no extraneous conversations. All work is carried out very carefully, slowly, and with a good feeling. Every vegetable is picked up by a child-minder as a treasure, peel is scraped in a smooth tape very carefully, to get the spirals. Products are cut in different pieces – cubes, strips, circles. On scales we measure out equally nicely chopped onions and carrots, beets and cabbage, putting them each to its bowl. Kids with interest are involved in the whole process of cooking. Each of the fruits and vegetables you can touch, smell, see what is hidden inside and be surprised, because, for example, in the apple the seeds live in a small house, and in a circle of carrots to the light can be seen the sun. The whole process turns out to be really creative. Once again, as a result of such a collaborative work the food turns out very tasty, kids eat it for breakfast and dinner with great pleasure.
The most valuable thing for children – it is not the result. The result is important for adults and for kids is important the process itself. And, in this sense, the joint with the children preparing food, is enriching children very much, feeding them, and in the literal and figurative sense, with new experiences, and new skills, and, of course, new tastes, flavors and vitamins.
Have a nice meal to all of us!
P.S.: This is one example of how in the Children’s Embassy, we successfully combine business with pleasure, intelligently organizing our joint activity with a child. After all, in the course of this, the usual, at first glance, the work, how much you can give the children a living but not dry book information. How quickly and with interest all the kids learn useful skills, if you manage to come creatively to the daily business. Scientists have proven that a completely different processes occur in the brain of the child, if, on the one hand, we show him three painted apple in a book, and please choose the larger of them or count or name the color, and a very different process when the front of the child are natural bulky fruit that you can touch, smell, taste, and even to cook from them something tasty for friends. They, either, can count, talk about their colors and even colors, shapes and sizes and it is a more natural form of education, and, by and large, the only justifiable in terms of both mental and physical health of our children. In addition, the information that a child receives in the course of activity, and not as a result of sitting in a chair for more than a book volume, interesting, exciting and useful. This way of understanding the world can be called safe and sound. Of course, it is easier to buy a book of recipe, to open them to the child, to sound pictures, to ask the circle, to paint and cover them with a sense of accomplishment to a long future of the child and quite another thing – it wisely organize their work and allow the child to participate in domestic affairs enriching him in parallel with new knowledge and useful skills. Especially because it is so criminal in terms of the health of children widespread in recent decades, school kids learning organization model, practically useless in the long run. Resulting not from the perspective of the natural physiology and mental development of children is useless information, they can not use it. We will not delve into this topic, let us say only that in the Children’s Embassy, we choose not the easiest on the technical side, but the best, useful and healthy in terms of the development of our children the way. And there is truth in this choise.
This approach to the interaction with the child differs qualitatively he Children’s Embassy from common approaches to teaching children. And it is typical for all the embassy occupation.
Yes, it is indeed it requires more energy for an adult, requires special training and high professional skills of teachers. But we believe that in the upbringing and education of children should not be punching. Our teachers do not hide behind the names of techniques they use. In the first place the personality of the teacher, his life experience, his interests and hobbies. Important nuance is how smoothly he moves beautifully and correctly says how much he is friendly and open to the world and people. This will “feed” the baby. After all, first of all, in the early years of a child learns the human earthly existence. And from whom does he develop this hard science? Children learn not only in the forty-five minute sessions, during which the lesson lasts, but every second, literally, “absorbing” all the impressions of the world, the internal state of the people around him and from the outside of their perception. Therefore, living with a child, we need to configure ourself as a tool to clear beautiful sound.
Not the children we have to adjust to the standards and methods of teaching systems but methods must be selected according to the characteristics of each child. This is our firm position. This is the philosophy of the organization of the learning process, such high demands on the caregiver did not initially involve mass replication. Everything has to be thought out to the smallest detail, and at the same time, be very agile, light and lively.