Crafting With Your Child — Creating a Nature Table
Today, we will uncover the gifts of nature and how taking time to slow down and connect with the natural world can strengthen your sense of well-being as a parent. This can create space for newfound patience, perspective, and an important self-care tool to add to your parenting tool-belt.
Nature Meditation: Preparing inwardly to build your seasonal table
Walk with your child for any length of time. Allow yourself to slow down to the pace of your child. Notice your breathing, slow it down. Take big inhales and even bigger exhales. Try three breaths at least, the last breath, hold for 10-15 seconds. Exhale. Feel your body and mind slow down.
Could you take a moment to observe yourself in quiet curiosity? Now you can take time to observe your child in the same quiet curiosity. Watch where they wander. What do they stop for? What they want to share with you. It is a gift to experience the world through their eyes as they discover it. It’s all still so new to them!
Get in touch with your senses:
What do you see? What colors are surrounding you?
What do you smell?
What do you hear?
How do you feel in the environment? Is it dry? Moist?
Is there something to awaken your taste buds? Wild mint, grape, or blueberry.
Take a moment when your child is fully absorbed in their surroundings and fix your eyes on one place or one natural object. Look at it in great detail (for as long as possible). See what you notice about it. What elements are prominent? Earth, Water, Air, Fire (in this case, maybe the sun)
How do you feel as you connect a little deeper into this space? Take a minute or more to sink deeper into observation of the place.
Before you continue on your walk, look around and see if there is anything that calls to you that connects you physically. A leaf, branch, seed, stone, etc. Bring this natural object back, and with it set the intention to remember your sensory experience you just had while in nature. Don’t worry if you don’t find anything in particular. You can bring back the image with you and recreate its colors, shadows, and feeling.
Why build a nature/seasonal table?
There are many beneficial reasons to create a nature table in your home for yourself and for your children. The natural world has many gifts to share, and we can bring some of those gifts and essential reminders to slow down, take in our surroundings, and connect to what is in front of us right at that moment.
Your children live in that way at every moment of their day. They are connected to the present, and we can help support them by also finding time to pause and sink into the present moment with them. When children are out in nature, there are so many wonderful things for them to experience. The pace of the natural world makes sense to them. It is slow, expansive, and full of delightful sensory experiences for their growing sensory systems. Just think, how wonderful it is to be exploring a pathway into a beautiful grove of trees. The gentle strength of the trees all around calls us in to explore the shade and respite from the sun and wind. The sounds of all the birds and creatures that dwell within the canopy add another layer of delight, as they enter into another type of world, the natural world. Where currency is the ability to forage for food, and the steady pace of the sunrise and sunset dictates the day for all creatures within.
The gentle rhythm the seasons hold as we experience different temperatures and climates. The changing leaves, and the new growth or lack of growth of flora. While the rhythm of a steady-paced day with limited activities helps to hold the child in steadiness, so does the greater rhythm of the seasons. It creates connections to the natural places that surround us in our specific region of the world. In nature, the child can know, this is a place with a peaceful and steady cadence, I belong here. This place and this world are good.
How to build a nature table?
With your newfound discoveries from your sensory exploration meditation, you can begin to draw from inspirations found during this time. What colors stood out to you? Were you drawn to a location in particular? What was enjoyable to look at? To smell? To hear?
Start small and build your way out. You can begin with a simple craft to create a holding space for your nature table. For example, a painting you made that inspired you from the season. You can add special stones, flowers from evening walks, a lucky feather that blew in your path, or a small felted creature you or someone else made. Really, anything that brings you even the slightest bit of joy.
I am sure your child picked up some treasures they found curious or they enjoyed and brought them along. You can show them how to add it to the nature table and make it a creative process for the whole family!
Make sure you clear out objects and don’t worry about becoming attached to any one thing. As in nature, there are natural cycles of coming and going. Let go of anything and send it back to its original home in nature. This can also be a spiritual process. Letting go of what was and allowing space for the new. New inspirations, new connections, new experiences…the rest is for you to decide.
By Lauren Wheeler
Preschool Lead