Kia ora and welcome to another episode of the Holistic Human Podcast.

Before I introduce my amazing guest I want to thank again those of you who are supporting the podcast by sharing my posts on Instagram, follow along if you don’t already @holistic_human_aotearoa. It is a free and super helpful way to keep the podcast going. Those of you who would like to contribute with money can do so by heading to buymeacoffee/AmandaLBradley and shouting me a coffee or two which helps pay for the running costs.

Today I am talking to Mona Lewis who is the creator of Sunsprite Handwork. She is the author of ‘Natures Paintbox’ and illustrator of the children’s books ‘A Tataviam Creation Story’ and ‘TATA the Tataviam Towee’ written by her partner Alan Salazar. She is an artist, a dancer, a mother, a Waldorf handwork teacher, and the co director of Practical Art Teacher Training program.

In this podcast she runs us through the handwork curriculum, what she teaches and the importance of story and making it fun. She explains why handwork is such a cornerstone in the Waldorf curriculum. She also gives those of us who want to start a dye garden some tips, and what plants are good ones to start with. She discusses her journey with plant and earth pigments, and why it is such an amazing practice to connect with the local environment.

Honestly one of the best chats ever. I wish I had travel funds so I could zip over to LA for one of her workshops (feel free to donate airfare if you want). We could have talked about handwork, and connecting to nature for sooooo much longer, but managed to keep it just under 90 mins. I think people new to Waldorf will get a lot out of this, handwork is such a great lens into the pedagogy and she explains it all so eloquently.

I feel like we could do another episode just on connecting to place through art and craft. Perhaps I am bias because it’s linked to my thesis topic, but I truly think that most people will be inspired by her take on why craft matters, and how to bring nature based practices to children in a fun way as much as possible.

I encourage you to go buy Natures paintbox from www.sunspritehandwork.com and follow her on Instagram @sunspritehandwork. Also, if you also get your dye garden growing tag us in your posts about it.

Enjoy friends.