Summer Book Giveaway: The Sun Egg

Tomorrow is our last day of lessons for our homeschool academic year, but, of course, the learning will continue as will the reading.  I look forward to restful summer days reading to the boys in the hammock under the willow in the back yard, or peering at picture books by flashlight during a deep-woods night in the shelter of our tent. Books by Swedish author and illustrator, Elsa Beskow, are some of our favorite and I am thrilled to be able to give away a copy of The Sun Egg.  Sonya, from A Toy Garden, generously provides the minibook.

photo courtesy of A Toy Garden

In The Sun Egg  an elf finds a large object in her woods and invites all her friends to come look at it.  Adventures continue to the end of this delightfully illustrated story.

photo courtesy of publisher Floris Books



To enter, leave a comment telling us about your favorite children's book and follow A Toy Garden via email or facebook.  (While I would be pleased to know you follow How the Sun Rose, it is not a requirement to enter the giveaway, but doing so will keep you updated on upcoming giveaways, crafts, and summer fun.)

I will choose a winner the morning of Wednesday, June 5th.  Congratulations to Nancy, who will add another lovely book to her library.

To learn how to use The Sun Egg in storytelling with moving pictures visit Rhythm of the Home.

This post has been shared at:

Needle Felted Tomten and the Fox

On a recent trip to the library, we found two books that are wonderful for the winter season: The Tomten and The Tomten and the Fox by Astrid Lindgren of Sweden, and also the author of the popular Pipi Longstocking. The Tomten books are delightfully illustrated and tell of the Tomten, a spirit-being in the folklore of Sweden, adding a new wonder and delight to our seasonal reading.

Unlike the Gnomes of England who live in the forest, Tomten live on farms in barns or cellars. In these books, the farmer's children leave food for the Tomten each night. As the moon rises, he walks silently, never seen by people, in the snow to make his rounds checking on the farm animals and even giving a mischievous hungry fox some of his tasty porridge. When they wake, the children see the Tomten's footprints in the snow. (The tile below has set in our home for years. Little did we know we had a Tomten in our midst.)

Last night, I made a peg Tomten and needle felted a fox who now stand on our ever-played with nature table.

Our home is surrounded by Amish and Mennonite farms, so barns, cows, chickens and crops are a common sight. Surely Tomten are there. Perhaps after the next snowfall we will go on a search for little Tomten footprints.

Moving Picture Pages & Storytelling

This post is now published at Rhythm of the Home .  Please read it here.

Winter Nature Table

This is our winter nature table. I thought about putting a lot on it since our holiday nature table was sparse, albeit for a reason. But in an effort to keep our nature table something the boys can interact with, I pulled back and kept it hands-on.



Our table is actually a table/magazine rack. on the bottom shelf we keep a large woven basket full of playsilks that make up a nest for our plush singing Audubon birds. On the sides we keep favorite all-year-round books and seasonal books.



On our winter table are 2 playsilks (white & purple), our wood bowl with treasures (polished rocks), pinecones, Woodsprite & Snowchild figures by Zooloonaturals. a bit of wool roving, a paper mache deer, a prism, a postcard of a scene from Elsa Beskow's "Children of the Forest" and snowmen made by myself and Aidan out of glow-in-the-dark Fimo. All ready for little hands to expolore.

Lovely Children's Books

We recently discovered children's books by Elsa Beskow and love them!  While I had seen her artwork before, I had never actually read one of her books until I began research in the Waldorf theories of education.  One of her most famous books is  The Story of the Root Children, which tells about the little flower "children" waking for another spring and sleeping in the autumn. Our favorite is  Peter In Blueberry Land, in which Peter has adventures while searching for blueberries and cranberries for his mother's birthday.  I think Aidan enjoys it especially because he had so much fun picking blueberries last month. I look forward to reading more of her magical, imaginative books to the boys and loosing ourselves in her artwork.