Herb Study

Yesterday we started a year long Herb Study through Herb Fairies. The actual program is probably a couple of years younger than Grace with the recommended age of 5 - 12. Each month we are sent a short chapter book, recipes, herbal magazine with activities and information, and other great materials. The story part of the program is definitely too young for her but she will still read them because actually this gives her ideas on how to maybe create her own series of children's books in the future. The illustrations alone are inspiring. The "meat" of the course that we are most interested in is identifying the herbs in the wild, creating recipes and medicinal properties with the herbs, and getting a little whimsical in the process with a make believe fairy land. So, yesterday we started the first book that deals with chickweed. Luckily we have a big patch of chickweed right in our front yard that we have been collecting from over the past few months to give greens to the chickens during the cooler months.

First we went out to the yard to collect the chickweed. It was very easy to distinguish because of the great illustration and description that is included with the Herb Fairies materials.

We learned that chickweed can be used to treat cuts, scrapes, pink eye, and ulcers. The recipe we used yesterday required apple cider vinegar. 

We covered the chickweed in apple cider vinegar. The vinegar will pull out the nutrients from the chickweed over a four week period. Shaking the bottle every day is a requirement. After the four week time frame is up we will be left with a salad dressing and the leftover chickweed can be added to our compost pile. 

So far Grace seems to be enjoying the activities and information provided. Children in the younger age range will definitely enjoy the coloring pages and chapter book. We still have several more activities with the chickweed to do before losing our patch to the summer heat. Next month the material and book will cover wild violets.

I am participating with the Barn Hop. I am also linking up with Teach Me Tuesday.