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Knowing how to best support your child’s sleep can be difficult. Babies don’t come into the world having the capability to put themselves...

Simple and beautiful craft to do with children from start to finish!

Here at The Orchard, our in-home, LifeWays-inspired child care place, being outdoors, rain or shine, hot or cold, is a given.  It is also a challenge because, although we value and promote unstructured free play outdoors, we look for opportunities to share nature together. Apart from unstructured, surprise encounters with nature, this happens in two ways. One day each week, beginning about 10:45, we gather the first aid kit, emergency phone numbers, cell phone, and our snack

Before I had children I didn’t even know how to spell “rhythm.” Little did I know then how much I would come to appreciate yearly, weekly, daily and even smaller rhythms that would come to support my life and our family.

First, let me confess something. Even though as a young mother, I studied Steiner’s teachings and read Y ou Are Your Child’s First...

Anne-Marie and Chrysalis Toddlers Asked about the principles that guide care for the infants in her home-based program, Chrysalis Family Support and Child Care, Anne-Marie Bley shares: Before Chrysalis was an offering, it was a conversation between two friends, a conversation about the qualities of human attachment about the kind of attention and care necessary for human growth. We two friends and colleagues are both retired Waldorf teachers, familiar with RIE (Emmi Pikler an

What does it mean to say YES when taking care of children birth to three?  The child’s first words are often “No.”  One of the best ways not to chime in with the children and always have to say “No” is to create a YES environment.  The environment is key to all sorts of exciting discoveries and developments for children, and is something that I thoroughly enjoy creating!  I sit often and just watch the children play and explore, and as I watch I think about ways to make this

What do you do for yourself? You create a family life that includes you. Then you are not bitter later that no one appreciated all the sacrifices you made for them. You didn’t make any sacrifices; you felt satisfied. Later you will remember that it wasn’t always easy, but you were doing what you wanted to do.