April
Theme
April is a time to embrace the season of growth, awakening, and new beginnings after the stillness of winter. We focus on a few key areas that we weave into everything we do. Our main intentions for April are:
- Growth
- Awakening
- New Life
- Easter April 20th. 2025.
- Khmer New Year, April 14th 2026 (Sister Tuesday)
The Nature Table
Colors – Dark Green and Yellow.
Theme – A Hare, an Easter Chicken and Easter Eggs.
Books – Khmer New Year and Egget.
Songs
- Frøet, jeg ligger bare her og gror / The seed, I am just lying here to grow
- Soltrall / The Sun is Shining
- Kling, Klang, Klemme
- En liten kylling i egget lå / A Little Chicken Inside the Egg
- * Plong Plong Ey
- * Arapiya
- * Hippity Hoppity Easter Bunny (fingerplay)
- Ten Fluffy Chickens (fingerplay)
- * Little Hasse Hare
- Larvens sang / The Caterpillars Song
- Hestehoven
- The Butterfly (fingerplay)
- Flutter, Flutter, Butterfly
Activities
- * Easter egg hunt and nest making
- Painting eggs and chickens
- * Growth of watercress
- Counting in Khmer
- Leaf challenge and Nut play
- * Coconut dance
- Decorating the Easter Tree
- * Pre-cultivation of crops
- * Easter marzipan
- * Cooked eggs with color
- The hen – the egg – the chicken – beeswax
- Caterpillar – cocoon – butterfly – beeswax
- Easter bread
- * Wet felting of eggs and caterpillars
- Collecting stones
Stories
The Seven Sisters – Khmer New Year – Tuesday 2025
* The Easter Hare and the Little Bunnies Stories
Larven som ville bli blomst / The Caterpillar That Wanted to be a Flower
Khmer New Year, Easter, and Growth
Living in Cambodia has helped us carry the stories of Khmer New Year with us. We tell the story each year, count, and sing songs to keep these memories alive—so that one day, Theo Vilje will carry a part of it with him, too. When he was just one, some of his first words were in Khmer, and now, a year later, he’s still using them. After we came to Norway quite a lot of our friends and family know that Ahkun means Thanks, and Simen’s niece and nephew went home to their mom singing Arapiya after just some days with us in the cabin this month.
Khmer New Year
This time of year is a good moment to pause and remember the place and the people we love. In Cambodia, Khmer New Year is truly a water festival—but that part doesn’t work so well when we’re in Norway. Instead, we spend time dancing with the coconuts we brought back. Theo Vilje has taken these songs and dances and shared them with other children, who seem to enjoy them just as much.
Easter
Each year, we make a few adaptations because of Easter, which often overlaps with the end of March or the beginning of April. When that happens, we simply shift things around—bringing more of the friendship theme into April instead.
Easter has always been a time we celebrate with other children, so the month is often filled with more crafts than usual. Wet felting and marzipan-making have been favorites for all the kids. Even at age one, the experience of warm water and wool was exciting enough on its own.
Growth
After mid-April, we begin working with the story of the caterpillar. By then, we’ve already grown watercress and talked about eggs turning into chickens, so it feels natural to wait until after Easter to begin with the caterpillar stories and songs, as we approach the spring month of May.
Pre-Cultivating
April is also when we start growing plants. We’ve followed this rhythm of pre-cultivating seeds whether we’ve been in Norway or Cambodia. I’m not sure it’s the “right” time, but it has always worked for us. Of course, if we’re traveling, we don’t pre-cultivate—but we still explore. We collect seeds from what we eat, and often plant them in any soil we can find, even if we know we won’t be around to watch them grow.