Relaxing with Buddha and Cloud Dough

It’s raining again today.  August and raining.  And you know what? I don’t mind one bit.  I’m a true Vancouverite, I suppose, but to me there’s something supremely comforting  about hearing rain drops hitting my rooftop.  I live for sweater weather.  Even Little Bear can’t wait to pull on his rain boots at the first sign of rain clouds!

BUT. What do you do when it’s pouring rain all morning? No more gallivanting to the beach or the park.  No sunny picnics.  No playground play dates.  And do you know what that means for Little Bear? Major cabin fever.

As part of our routine, Little Bear and I usually have an outing in the morning.  When it’s pouring like it was this morning though, it’s hard to get outside.  And since I had lots to do inside, I decided we’d have a fun, relaxing and comfy day at home.

All was good for about an hour and a half.  It was at that point that I noticed Little Bear starting to get restless (read: he was trying to dive off the couch onto Ziggy).  I decided he needed a little help in the relaxing department.

The first thing I did was put on some beautiful Buddhist chanting.  I wish I could tell you the name of the CD, but I can’t since it’s in Chinese so I can’t read it!  My mother recently showed Little Bear and I around some local Buddhist temples, and this was a CD we picked up from the Ling Yen Mountain Temple in Richmond. While we were there, Little Bear was completely mesmerized by his surroundings and was quiet and peaceful. I had been worried about him making too much noise, so I asked someone there if it would be a problem if he was too loud.  They chuckled and told me there would be nothing to worry about and that he would stay quiet.  I had my doubts, but boy, was I wrong.  Little Bear followed the example being set in the surroundings and was calmer than I could have ever imagined for a 2 year old.

Little Bear recognized the CD as being from the temple and while he sat and listened to the chanting, I grabbed a few supplies to make this super easy and fun activity: cloud dough!

Cloud dough is a soft, silky, sand-like dough, made from common household ingredients.  Think of it as playing with soft, somewhat pliable sand.  Tactile relaxation at its best! To make our cloud dough more relaxing, I added in a few drops of lavender essential oil. Lavender has a zillion benefits, just a few of which include:

• antiseptic properties
• anti-inflammatory properties
• eases anxiety and restlessness
• eases depression
• eases insomnia
• good for digestion
• and of course, it smells great!

Making the cloud dough takes minutes, at most.  First, gather all your materials:

1. 4 cups of flour
2. 1/2 cup of oil (any oil…I used vegetable oil, but you could use baby oil or whatever else you have around)
3. Your favourite essential oil.  I used lavender.

Next, put all the ingredients in a bowl or basin and mix (use your hands…your fingers are the best tool).  Your kids can help put this together.

When you’re all done, add measuring cups, spoons, scoops, sand molds, or whatever other toys you want!  Little Bear enjoyed scooping the sand back and forth between measuring cups and then later I gave him some plastic farm animals which he happily buried into the cloud dough.

 

 

Final step: enter Nirvana.  Perhaps this Mama Bear can have a cup of tea while Little Bear sculpts a mini Buddha in his cloud dough.  😉

August Book Club: Week Two

Welcome to our farm week, all centred around Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown. This is our second book for August.  To find the first book, click here.  To find the August schedule, click here.

If you follow us on Instagram, you saw that yesterday we started by reading the book a few times and then got out into the yard before it got too hot. I had some weed wrangling to do, so Little Bear helped pull weeds, mowed the lawn with his toy lawn mower, and picked flowers for me! We talked a lot about what we saw in the garden. He asked some great questions and really impressed me when he asked about what bees do to flowers. We have two large bushes in our front yard which get these amazing orange flowers every August. There are drones of bees working in and around the bush, collecting pollen. We talked about what pollen is and what bees do to it. He was surprised when I told him that was how we got honey.

How to become a blueberry: 101

Brought home a few blueberries today.  A few as in…50 lbs.  That’s a lot of blueberries, but who can resist them? When it was just Arun and I eating them, we could make our way through 30-35 lbs of blueberries in the off season, no problem.  Little Bear has no problem eating his way through bowls and bowls and bowls of blueberries, so this year we decided to up the amount that we buy.

Making Dragons

As part of our King Jack and Dragon week, Little Bear and I made fire-breathing dragons today.  This activity is fun, hands-on, and helps your tot practice key fine motor skills (gluing, folding, ripping and painting).

August Book Club: Week 1

Welcome to the first (mid-) week of the August book club.  Our week started off leisurely, as we forgot that we had a Monday while we relaxed in the sunshine of the long weekend.  Today everyone was back to work, even the toddlers! Busy day of playing, creating, learning, and of course, reading!

The first book is King Jack and the Dragon, by Peter Bently (with illustrations by Helen Oxenbury.  For more on the book, including suggested activities, check out my original August post here.

Today Little Bear was feeling a bit tired, so we did a lot more reading and free play and less structured play.  He has read this book before and loves it, so he asked to read this book 5 times in just the afternoon and early evening.  He was particularly interested in the pictures of the dragons and beasts, asking what they were.  And since he was so sleepy, he had fun reading and cuddling a stuffed dragon that he was recently given by his aunt.