Tomten day

On Thursdays we honor our Tomten, the spirit of our household. Today Thursday is also Thanksgiving, so he'll get portions of our feast throughout the day. Here's his breakfast. 

Fresh coffee with sugar and cream, & scones. 

Here's a hail we made up this morning:

Hail to the Tomten - the spirit of our house,

Hail to the Huldafolk all about, 

Hail the Gods & Goddesses who watch us from above, 

Hail to our Ancestors who greet us with their love. 

Pip Podcasting

My kinsman Pip, a skaldic artist and all around nice heathen guy is doing podcasts of his music, all of which is suitable for heathen families, kids, and campfires. Enjoy!

http://piparskeggrskald.podbean.com/

Snowfall

Here's a song to enjoy singing together. It lends itself well to pantomime. 

First we mime shaking out a sheet, then sway as we sing and sign "snow". The sign for snow is made by holding the hands out high in front of you, palms down, and wiggling the fingers up and down and the hands back and forth as you bring them down, like snow flurries drifting and dancing down from the sky. It's just like the sign for rain, but more animated. You can figure out how to mime fluffing pillows and shaking blankets, just like you do it at home. For the This way and that-a-way's we sign snow while turning and sashaying around. It's pretty fun. 

Dame Holda shakes her bed like this - 

and the snow comes down, 

and the snow comes down. 

She fluffs up her pillows,

she shakes out her blankets, 

and the snow comes down, 

and the snow comes down.

It goes this way and that a-way

It goes this way and that a-way

It goes this way and that a-way

All through the town.

MORE FOOD - Fruit of the Week

So, each week we do a "fruit of the week". It can be any food, really - vegetables, grains, even meats are all "fruits" of the earth in a way. This is a great home school type activity, learning as we go through our day. We take inspiration from "the World's Healthiest Foods" website, and of course just by things we see - at the grocery store, in movies, wherever. Turns out it's actually pretty easy to get kids to try a food if you let them play with it first. 

This week we found a Pomelo - it looked like

 a huge green grapefruit,

 I wasn't sure what the heck it was about, so baby picked one out to take home and investigate. She likes holding her chosen item as she sits in the cart or runs around while I shop. 

When the item is smaller than a Pomelo we like to get a few of them, so she can carry them around in a basket, help me cut them up, break them open, peel them, or whatever without worry about wrecking a few.  The playing with the food, smelling it, talking about the look and smell, tasting it raw and then later prepared is key. Sometimes we even like to do a little craft with them, like making potato prints, cutting 

apple swans, or making maracas with beans in old poster paint jars. 

We look for recipes using the item on Epicurious, and end up talking all kinds of things, like seasons, ecology, culture and folkways, etc. Sometimes it turns out the the recipes we find are not particularly kid-friendly, but usually they can at least give us some inspiration. For instance, there were no recipes for pomelo, so I looked at grapefruit recipes, and got some ideas. In this case, there was a shrimp and avocado salad, and we make a salad with some of the same ingredients, so we adapted that, and added the new fruit to the familiar food. Often the idea is just for a food pairing. In addition to doing the salad, we learned the Pomelo grows in the Philippines, so that's a great excuse to get some Philippino food, and ask people we know for stories about their experiences in the Philippines. 

Also we don't hesitate to do foods we like more than once. You can do varieties individually, and then again together. Like for instance squash, some of the squashes are not too exciting to me, but they seem like more fun when you do a few at a time, but just focus on one. We did pumpkin, and compared it to acorn squash. We did squash in general and compared spaghetti squash wi

th butternut and zucchini.  Squash are crazy cheap, and this can make them a little more interesting; we vary our diet, explore our world, and learn things by accident.