Greek Tzatziki Flowers

We harvested fresh cucumbers, mint, and figs from the garden to make these beautiful tzatziki flowers.

For the tzatziki sauce peel a cucumber with a child friendly peeler.

Scoop out the seeds with a child friendly knife.

With careful attention to keep fingers away from the knife's edge, slice cucumbers in bite size chunks.

Roll the mint in your hands to release the aromatic oils.

Chiffonade the mint in to fine slices.

Squeeze the juice of one whole lemon.

Measure out 2 cups of Greek yogurt.

Mix together yogurt, mint, and lemon juice.  Add sea salt to taste.

Serve with carrot spears, pita triangles, and fresh figs to create your tzatziki flower!

"Influenced, perhaps, by my early experience at a Montessori school... I am all for encouraging children to work productively with their hands.... It is good to give them knives, for instance, as early as you dare.... to slice a hard-boiled egg neatly.... Talk to children as you plan menus. Let their small, sensitive noses sniff.... as you shop."
—Julia Child, Julia Child & Company



Check out this resource for child sized tools : http://www.forsmallhands.com/


                         GREEK PITA BREAD

The kids loved watching the yeast come alive and kneading out their own little pita breads!

                 
                    GREEK PESTO

We added Greek Oregano to our traditional pesto recipe for an Athenian flare!

We accompanied our pesto pasta with a Greek Eggplant Stew.

                  
                 GREEK SALAD

We made a simple Greek Salad with garden cucumbers, tomatoes, basil, kalamata olives, feta, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and sea salt.

                     MOSAICS

We looked at some classical Greek mosaics and explored triangles, rectangles, flowers, and trees by creating mosaics of our own.


Mosaic art assists in the development of:

• Counting
• Matching
• Sorting
• Recognition
• Assembling
• Decision making
• Manual dexterity
• Concentration
• Attention
• Patience
• Problem solving
• Memory
• Logic
• Perception
• Imagination
• Creativity
• Intuition
• Trust
• Spatial and visual organisation (basics of geometry)
• Fine motor skills
• Coordinating a child’s thoughts and actions
• Hand and eye coordination – extremely important step to help a child achieve difficult tasks easily, including reading and writing
• Correlation between seeing and doing (sight and touch senses)
• Skills children will need to learn to read and write
• Curiosity
• Language skills as the child listens and follows instructions and talks about what they are doing
• Creative self expression

For the tree mosaics, we first sorted the different colors and shapes of beans.

Then we drew a simple tree shape or had one drawn for us by an older child or adult.

We painted our trees with glue.

And designed our trees with the different beans.

               GREEK MYTHOLOGY

We learned about the myth of Pegasus and Bellerophon.  This Usborne collection is a great introduction to Greek mythology, but we still had to 'edit' parts of the story for it to be appropriate for our young audience.  The kids loved learning about this heroic winged horse!

                YOGA ADVENTURE

We visited the coast of Greece in our yoga class!  First we took a train from Austin to New York...

... then an airplane across the Atlantic

... and finally a boat to the Mediterranean Sea!

In the sea we became powerful sharks...

... a happy school of dolphins

... and some singing surfers!

After our long day at the beach, we relaxed into the sand and listened to the sounds of the waves.

              HOBERMAN SPHERE

This breathing ball is an amazing tool for teaching children how to take nice long deep breaths.

If you are looking for more yoga and mindfulness this summer check out our friend Elisabeth's awesome camp:

https://www.facebook.com/shineyourlightyoga42

                   
                    CALENDULA

We learned all about the healing properties of calendula from the herb fairies this month!

Calendula is an excellent herb to help heal all kinds of skin irritations, including burns, bug bites, and diaper rash.

These happy herbalists ground some calendula flowers and added water to make a healing paste.

Their buddy had a bee sting on his foot so they checked on his heartbeat and applied the calendula paste to help heal his foot.

                    
                   WORM FARM

This crafty rhino beetle sneaked into our worm farm too!

              
              IMAGINATIVE PLAY

The kids were craving a camp out so they created a camp fire and made up their own stories while they used long spears of mint for their 'marshmallows'.

Tea for two!

Wagon ride!

                
                  SENSORY PLAY

Research shows that sensory play builds nerve connections in the brain's pathways, which lead to the child's ability to complete more complex learning tasks... plus it is seriously FUN!


Kids feeling cranky in the heat this summer?  Get out the shaving foam!

And then hose them off on the water slide!

These kiddos were splashing in rhythm!! 

A huge thank you to all the parents who came out for the parent workday!!!

See ya next time!