Nature

by

Respectful Parenting of Chicago’s Meet Up

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

This group is intended for parents with a basic understanding and appreciation of Resources for Infant Educarers™’ RIE® principles — Respect for the child as a whole person and trust in the child to be the initiator, explorer, and self-learner. Let’s create a community in Chicago where we can offer RIE®-friendly play groups, the space to observe together as parents, and an online discussion board to share experiences and perspectives.

“We have a basic trust in the infant to be an initiator… we provide the infant with only enough help necessary to allow the child to enjoy mastery of her own actions” -Magda Gerber. 

We’re about:

Respectful Parenting of Chicago

Chicago, IL
85 Parents

“We have a basic trust in the infant to be an initiator… we provide the infant with only enough help necessary to allow the child to enjoy mastery of her own actions” -Magda G…

Check out this Meetup Group →

by

Garden Aid

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Organic gardening can be a bit of a struggle for newbies before you learn about the tricks of the trade.

Master Gardener, Renee Lembcke suggests…

    • Plant pest deterent plants such as marigolds, lavender,  mint, lemon balm and lemon grass near your produce.
    • Find plants who are fond of each other and plant them together.
    • Spray plants with solutions of water, lemon EO, and dish detergent.
    • Wash away bugs and keep compost burried beneath the top soil, too hot to for breeding, and keep the compost pile or bins away from favorite plants.
    • Introduce preditor friendly habitates like praying mantis, ladybug and hoverfly homes, and also plant their favorite plants so they stick around – Poppy, Calendula, and Nettles.
    • Don’t sweep away the spiders until it’s time to harvest and when you do, let the spiders go back to the surrounding plants where you found them so they may continue to thrive and work for you.
    • Hang fly traps, like glass bottle traps just a bit away from your garden.

      • Spray plants with a garlic, water, cayenne pepper and dawn dish soap solution. (7 large pureed garlic cloves, 1 gallon of water, 1 tsp cayenne, 1/4 cup of dawn. Strain after 24 hours to use.)

 

Owner, Susan Bernstein suggests…

    • Keep the soil at the base of plant free from fungus and mushrooms by maintaining propper spacing between plants.
    • Set up slug traps in shallow dishes, buried so the rim is about even with the top soil level and fill with beer. even with top soil level and still with beer.
    • Create copper pipe or sheet metal rings around slug favorite crops.
    • Place upside down mesh laundry hampers over plants before butterflies and moths find them or erect butterfly netting around plants so butterflies and moths don’t lay their eggs on your plants which will soon turn into hungry caterpillars.
    • Sprinkle eggshells or hair boundries around the base of plants to create a border.
    • Wrap valuable produce to keep insects off.
    • Allow chicken to visit your property for a feast.
    • Set up chicken wire fences around your property to keep out little hungry critters.
    • plant a few vinegar soaked corncobs in between plants .
    • sprinkle some pepper flakes over the dirt .
    • plant clover in another part of your garden severe Travis have something more delicious to eat then your crops .
    • To keep cats from digging in your yard, take a few handfuls of thin stick or skewers and stick them in the dirt at various angles. The sticks will make it so kitties won’t be able to find a clear space to squat and plan their digging.
    • Plant vegetables in raised garden beds and line the bottom mesh wire so moles don’t up root them in the course of their tunneling and digging.
    • When your plants die don’t leave them around for bugs to eat .

      • Plant a row of sacrificial plants, like radishes, around your garden to distract bugs for more precious crops.

      Gardener, Jessica Cannaday suggests…

        • Mulch and natural compost to keep weeds down. (Mulch in pathways, compost around your plants) .
        • Only till/turn soil in the spring and fall. Turning your dirt too often buries seeds that are not visible to the eye, creating more weeds to pull .
        • Water in the morning to help prevent fungus and root rot .
        • Plant rabbit gardens first. Pots of lettuce, peas, etc. that are easily accessible, and near your garden. Let the animals find this treat before you plant your food. Make sure you maintain and continuously plant the rabbit garden throughout the season. As long as food is accessible and in the same place, they will continue to visit their garden to eat and leave your stuff alone.
by

Autumn and Winter News and Events

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

New and exciting events are on the horizon at Maplewood Child Development Center. Over the last two weeks wheels have been turning and plans drafted. Here is a short list of the Autumn and Winter Events and projects we have planned.

Social Give Back Projects

Maplewood will be supporting the Irving Park Community Food Pantry this November by collecting non-perishable healthy foods and non food items such as toiletries, house hold cleaning products and supplies, winter proofing materials, and more. A complete list of items can be obtained at www.irvingparkfoodpantry.com

This months second charity and social service organization is the Connections for Abused Woman and Their Children, www.cawc.org. There is a great need for young adult literature, which we are collecting for their literacy for young adults program. We are also accepting on their behalf, children’s books, cold weather scarves, hats and gloves/mittens and a slew of other items which can be found on the organizations’ wish list posted to their website. For every book donated, Maplewood will match with two books.

 

Community Out Reach

Most neighborhoods in the Chicagoland area have a public library. Unfortunately our own does not. This is why Maplewood has joined the Avondale Neighborhood Association in their project to bring a public or private LIBRARY to our neighborhood. In the mean time, Maplewood will be partnering with Word World, Home Depot, our Alderman Deborah Mell and local contractors to build LENDING LIBRARY TREEHOUSES to be located at a few of the local children’s parks and businesses. We are very excited about this project.

No neighborhood feels complete without a little Autumn twinkle and light. Here at Maplewood, we value the creative arts and the art of story telling. We’ve got in the works a beautiful LANTERN LITE NATURE WALK planned for our neighborhood families. Over a few weeks in November and early December we will be making lanterns out of nature collections of the beautiful falling leaves, twigs, flowers and what ever else little hands pick up. Then on one day to be scheduled in early December, Maplewood will be meeting at a neighborhood park to get together just as the sun begins to set. We will march off on an outdoor adventure, a nature walk, with each of our lanterns, lighting up our beautifully tree lined streets. We encourage families to take pictures of your lanterns and email them to MaplewoodCDC@gmail.com or post them to our www.Facebook.com/MaplewoodCDCavondale so we may include them in an article for our local Avondale newspapers and blogs.

 

For our Neighborhood & Maplewood Families

As the weather chills outside we will be hosting a number of indoor MY CHILD AND I PLAYDATES for infants, toddlers, and preschool age children at Maplewood Child Development Center. It is our plan to provide a variety of days and times over the upcoming months to allow flexibility for our busy neighborhood families. During the month of November, all playgroups will be free of charge in lieu of donations to the Irving Park Community Food Pantry and the Connections for Abused Woman and Their Children organization.

We are also paring up with local yoga and fitness instructors, chefs, artists, musicians and contractors this autumn and winter to provide fun EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSES for our Maplewood families.

 

In & Around Maplewood Child Development Center

This autumn and winter our plans for our two OUTDOOR CLASSROOMS are being set in motion. Drafts have been drawn and we are already starting to collect nature playscape materials like boulders and bridges. We are eagerly awaiting Spring so the gardening and landscaping designs can start to take shape. We are partnering with three very talented individuals from our local Chicago Botanical Gardens, Morton Arboretum, and Dirsmith Construction.  So EXCITING!

Indoor winter gardening, you say? What does that even mean? This fall we are designing and building some beautiful indoor garden plant beds along side Urban Farms – ModPod and partnering with a two local artists at Ravenswood Community Art Center who will be making us some beautiful indoor container gardens. We are very eager to set the date for our WINTER GARDENING PARTY with our Maplewood families. We will be providing indoor sized garden plot kits for each Maplewood family who attends. Already, our beautiful spider plant has sprouted spiderlings who as they grow up with be ready to find new homes on our Maplewood family’s in-home garden plots.

Learn about the newest, coolest, slimiest house pet…. PET WORMS. Yes, and what great pets they make. They eat your garbage and feed your garden and house plants. Maplewood families, are you ready? We are! Next up on our list of things to do is to build our worm home and we want you to help. Our tumbling compost bin outside is full to the brim and ready to hibernate for the autumn and winter. So we are now need to adopt some pet worms. We will be building our vermicomposting bin and invite you to learn about why these squiggly squirmy hungery little critters are going to be our favorite house pet this season. For a donation of healthy non-perishable foods to the Irving Park Community Food Depository, we are supplying the materials so you may take your own worm house home. Date: TBA