harvest festival

Yet another year of our lovely Harvest Festival.  A story in pictures...

The Harvest Feast (brought indoors for fear of rain).

Come said the wind to the leaves one day

Come o'er the meadows and we will play

Put on your dresses of scarlet and gold

For summer is gone and the days grow cold

Blessings on your pumpkins dear friends.  May Autumn find you all well.

solstice celebration

You know, the thing about having a strong rhythm in one's life is that, when it comes to blogging, one keeps rhythmically blogging about the same things each year, each season and each day.  Forgive the constant repetition friends.  We've just, you know, got this rhythm going...

Once again we gathered for a small Summer Solstice celebration with some of our dear Waldorf friends.  The day was overcast but still festive and, as always, a gentle and enriching commemoration for this seasonal quarter turn.

Mostly these festivals are about the getting together and, for the children, the play!  We adults hold the inner meaning in our hearts and plan a few games and crafty crafts for the kiddos but they just enjoy the fun of it all.  So, we set the stage for joy and frolicking and also put out some Fimo oven fire clay.  (I know... it looks like cheese.  All the kids thought so too.)  The children crafted little clay suns (and various other objects) that we later turned into refrigerator magnets for them to take home and display.

Then they were out in the grass, jumping on the trampouline and fishing for shells in the pool with their toes.

While they were distracted, Green Man crept into the yard...

He spoke his now traditional verse:

"I am the Sun -

And I bear with my might

The earth by day, the earth by night.

I hold her fast, and my gifts I bestow

To everything on her, so that it may grow;

Man and stone, flower and bee

All receive their light from me.

Open thy heart, dear child, to me,

That we together one light may be."

                                                           (by Ch Morgenstern from Summer by Wynstones Press)

"With these crowns and gifts of the earth, I knight you all princes and princesses of the Summer.  Together we'll hold the sun in our hearts to light the world all year long..."

The little ones loved their shells and gorgeously warm and sunny stone orbs.

Some wore their crowns and a few sat with we grown-ups to weave some flowers into the ivy wreaths.

Of course there was a fire and a delicious pot luck feast.

And, as the season turned, we embraced the new summer rhythm of long days and warm nights, free time and unscheduled outings. 

Welcome all (at least in the northern hemisphere) to afternoons lazing in the shade and enjoying bare feet on the grass.  May the goodness and fullness of Summer fill your days.

the last of the spring showers?

We spent most of the day inside making treats for the fairies and watching the dark, dark clouds dance a little dance overhead.  Somehow Summer preparations in 60° weather don't feel quite right.   We did make some sweet and tasty cookies and cakes though and, this time around, Naiya even delighted in fashioning that dough into a few fruity pies!

She set them out in the garden just so.

And with so many to offer, placed a few in their covered gazebo.

She made a couple of Ojo de Dios as a gift for the Queen.

And cried when Pippin sampled her beautiful display. 

I told her I thought the fairies would likely not mind sharing with all the good living things who venture into our back yard so we went inside to tidy...

And then the sky opened up and the rain began to fall.

Such is Mother Nature with her own sort of magic.
We covered the treats tables with "skylight umbrellas" and all was well.  We shall see what tomorrow brings...

midsummer's eve preparations

There's a lot of Solstice preparation going on over here today.  We woke and made the dough for mini cookies and cakes that we'll bake and decorate later to offer to the fairies who live in our back yard.  We did this last year and they seemed to really love it. 

(this is last year's offering)

 Of course Naiya loved it too. 

The recipe is very simple and for frosting I think we just used powdered sugar and food coloring:

Simple Sugar Cookies

     1 1/2 cups butter

     2 cups sugar

     4 eggs

     1 tsp vanilla

     5 cups flour

     2 tsp baking powder

     1 tsp salt

Cream the butter and sugar then add the eggs one at a time and mix.  Stir in the vanilla.  Combine the dry ingredients then add them to the sugar mixture.  Mix until well blended.  Cover and refrigerate the dough for at least an hour (or overnight).  Roll the dough out quite thinly (perhaps 1/4").  Cut by hand or with these nifty mini cookie cutters.  Depending on thickness, bake at 400° for 5 - 8 minutes.  Decorate, stack, fill and nibble as you please...

We've also just finished our newest fairie house.  This one is actually for a letterboxing gathering we're attending but leaving out treats and gifts for local fairies is a fun way to celebrate the change of season with children I think.  This house is a temporary letterboxing "box" (that will only be up for the day) and the stamp will sit inside.  We didn't originally plan it this way, but when the logbook wouldn't fit in the tiny door, we made the book the welcome mat!  (This tiny wooden house was purchased at Joann Crafts and with a glue gun, watercolor and natural goodness found in our backyard, we transformed it into its fancier camouflaged state in no time at all.)

Finally, since Green Man was such a hit at last year's Summer Solstice celebration, we're hoping for a visit from him again this year.  It's amazing what one can do with silk leaves and a glue gun...

Man, I love me a good glue gun. 

We're still running around frantic with sausages to pick up, camping supplies to sort through and some secret mama work to do...  It seems that Green Man could use some assistance in fashioning ivy crowns for the wee ones for tomorrow afternoon.

I hope all of your seasonal festivities are bringing joy and wonder for you and your wee'ns.  We're hoping Father Sun will actually make an appearance to help us celebrate the first glorious day of Summer.  Perhaps you can dance us a little dance or sing a little song to help us encourage him to visit...

may faire

I've written a few times (here, here and here) about the May Faire at Naiya's Waldorf school.  It's my favorite of the seasonal celebrations held there and was a special treat this time around because of the amazingly warm weather that seemed to bring record numbers of community members out to join in the festivities.

The Queen and her court shared Spring's bounty of flowers with the children before their procession to the May Pole.

As always, the day was filled with music, dance, delicious food and wholesome activities for the whole family.

I didn't photograph most of them but this year the classes hosted a number of fun booths including paper boat making and races down the creek, the fashioning of fairie rings, garland braiding, a paper butterfly craft, a cake walk, a "Better Gnomes and Gardens" ring toss, fishing for stones with feet in the wading pool, bean bag tossing and pole fishing for all manner of undersea prizes. 

By day's end we were worn out and, with what seems a precursor to some illness, Naiya's voice was nowhere to be found.  She was tuckered and fell asleep early and easily. 

Yet another Spring welcomed in good company on a glorious day.

may day hair garland

Each year for May Day and for the May Faire at Naiya's school we have been putting together hair garlands to lend a bit of natural decor to our festival garb and liven up our merry making.  I've even posted a garland tutorial.  (Click here if you're interested in checking it out.)

Often, however, these coronets stay in place for a picture or two and then end up on our gathering blanket to wilt in the afternoon sun.  They're lovely and Naiya and I both enjoy putting them together but, she complains, they can be a bit cumbersome and, especially for active children, not really that practical.

That's why this year we decided to try something new.  What you see in the photo above looks like a  garland but is, in fact, just a series of hair clips holding little bunches of flowers onto her hair in a circle round her head!

To make it, I pulled a little hair back from the front of Naiya's head, made a braid on each side and bound the the two plaits in the back.  I then gathered very small flowers into two-ended bunches and clipped them onto the braid in the middle.  She has five clusters round her crown with the largest in the back covering the band where the braids meet.

She loved her "garland" this time around and it stayed in place until her night-time bath.  No wires.  No floral tape.  No complaining.  And put together in about 4 minutes.  I don't know that we'll ever make a proper garland again!

screen-free week: gardening

Planting a garden is yet another wonderful way to encourage children and families to unplug during screen-free week.  Working out doors with living things in an herb or veggie garden allows children to see how some of their food grows and feel a connection between the earth and themselves.  (It can also cut down on grocery bills!)  A flower garden or butterfly garden likewise create connections between our families and the earth as we experience budding, growth, blossoming and decay through the seasons.

In my garden there is a seed,

I am the one who put it there.

Who will help it now to grow?

Earth and sun and rain and air.

In my garden there is a flower,

From a seed it came to birth.

Who then helped it to grow so tall?

Air and rain and sun and earth.

may day

They're back!  Just as in years past, the fairies have chosen today to return in full force and our back yard Queen left Naiya a beautiful bouquet and a sweet gift on the step.

Let us take our baskets early
   To the meadows green,
While the wild-flowers still are pearly
   With the dewdrops' sheen. 
Fill them full of blossoms rosy,
   Violets sweet and gay
Cowslips, every pretty posy
   Welcoming the May. 
Then our lovely loads we'll carry
   Down the village street,
On each door, with laughter merry,
   Hang a basket sweet. 
Hey-a-day-day! It is spring now,
   Lazy folks, awake!
See the pretty things we bring now
   For the May-day's sake!

                                                                                                                    -Evaleen Stein 

A most merry May Day to all!

screen-free week: storytelling

“Story-telling is almost the oldest art in the world - the first conscious form of literacy communication.”   - Marie L. Shedlock, The Art of the Story-Teller

For today's Screen-Free Week hand-out we provided copies of a sweet tale called "The Bubble Story" from the Wynstones Press book Summer as our take home activity.  Along with the story was this short list of great storytelling resource materials for very young children:
(We're providing these materials primarily for children of pre-school and kindergarten age.)

• From Wynstones Press, a series of six books containing poems, songs and stories for young children: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spindrift and Gateways 
• The Complete Grimmʼs Fairy Tales various collections available 
• English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs
• Seven-Year-Old-Wonder Book by Isabel Wyatt 
• The Tales of Tiptoes Lightly by Reg Down 
• A Donsy of Gnomes, 7 Gentle Gnome Stories by Sieglinde De Francesca Healing 
• Stories for Challenging Behaviour by Susan Perrow 
• Storytelling with Children by Nancy Mellon 
• Storytelling & the Art of Imagination by Nancy Mellon 
• The Wisdom of Fairytales by Rudolf Meyer

What better way to fill our screen-free time than with the endlessly imaginative world of stories? As entertainment goes, listening to and reading stories are probably the most parallel replacements of television shows and movies that weʼll find. Not only do stories serve as fanciful diversions, they likewise help children develop concentration, memory, creativity, literacy, morality and verbal communication skills. They also aid developing people of all ages in understanding both their inner and the outer world.

One very important element of Waldorf Education in the early childhood years is the fostering of a childʼs creativity and imagination. It does this, not through providing fantastic stories that excite children, but rather through creating an environment which allows and encourages a child to exercise the parts of his or her being needed for life-long creativity and original thought.  To do this, the child must be inwardly active. This is accomplished when the child must, out of her own inner picturing, create what the “castle” or “princess” or “dragon” is.

When images are supplied for children, we rob them of the opportunity of creating them themselves. Even illustrations in books take away from the childʼs exercising of her image- forming capacities. But with illustrations at least the child must bring those pictures into movement using her imagination. In video form, the pictures that move by themselves can actually hamper a childʼs development.

Stories, of course, come in all shapes and sizes ranging from simple incident narratives to exceedingly complex, interweaving machinations. Of course, stories will be different for each of the changing stages of a childʼs development, but there are endless supplies of books, anthologies and real life experiences that can be the source of tales told as we sit enjoying quality time together.
We can read stories from books, perform them as simple puppet shows or even act them out.  Remember that our own lives, personal history and imagination are some of the greatest story resources we have.

     “One of our most human capacities is the ability, as well as the need, to create stories. It is through the medium of story that we make meanings of our life. We each have our own personal story, which dynamically changes as our understanding and integration expand. Bruno Bettelheim tells us that the young child achieves “understanding, and with it the ability to cope, not through rational comprehension... but by becoming familiar with (life) through spinning out daydreams - ruminating, rearranging, and fantasizing about suitable story elements in response to... [life] pressures.”
     Through the use of story, we can give our children powerful tools necessary to make sense of their lives. Stories offer our children examples of solutions for the difficulties they will encounter as they grow and develop. They also image for our children various qualities of character that will aid them in these difficulties. These images can lay a foundation of strength that will serve them for a lifetime...
     Not only does the realm of story help growing children make sense of their inner experience, it can help them understand the way the outer world works, as well...””
                -   from Heaven on Earth, A Handbook for Parents of Young Children by Sharifa Oppenheimer

“In his book A is for Ox, Professor Barry Sanders develops the thesis that true literacy, and the ability to reflect upon oneʼs self and oneʼs actions, which it encourages, can only be based upon a firm foundation of oral language. His book provides a fascinating and cogent argument why, as he states, “The teaching of literacy has to be founded on a curriculum of song, dance, play, and joking, coupled with improvisation and recitation. Students need to hear stories either made up or read aloud. They need to make them up themselves or try to retell them in their own words... He also shows that this continuing emphasis on the spoken word in schools needs to be built upon the oral foundation provided by the parents in the home, through conversation, singing, nursery rhymes and stories...”
                - from You Are Your Childʼs First Teacher by Rahima Baldwin Dancy

screen free week: letterboxing

As I mentioned yesterday, we're celebrating Screen-Free Week at Naiya's Waldorf school.  It's a bit odd actually since one of the tenets of early childhood Waldorf education is to maintain an almost completely screen-free environment for all the children.  Like us, many families have exposed their kids to little or no tv, movies, computer screens, video games, ipads or cell phones and likely won't until they're 9 or 10. 
Yup, we're those people.  
Feel free to run screaming from our nuttiness at any time you choose.
There are folks at our school for whom being screen-free isn't a regular practice however.  A lot of them are new to Waldorf education or just struggle with (or oppose) the concept for various reasons.  Since we've not had screens in out daughter's life from the beginning and we're not big screen folks ourselves (other than internet usage and blogging :), having a young child who doesn't watch movies, tv or use a smart phone for anything is pretty easy for us.  (I think it's a lot harder if screens have previously been in your life and then you try to give them up.  Kuddos to all those struggling with that transition!)  We don't really miss screens and spend a lot of time making crafts, telling stories, gardening, doing chores and exploring nature.  Others struggle though to reduce screen-time or to understand why they should.  It can be hard to wrap your head around.  That's why we're sharing information and ideas by celebrating this campaign, and today we're hosting a play date to help inspire families to enjoy the out of doors (a fantastic way to replace screen time) in new and interesting ways.

About two years ago our family discovered Letterboxing and that has become a big part of our  outdoor family time. 

But what IS Letterboxing you ask?

For those unfamiliar with this fun and interesting pastime, Letterboxing is an intriguing outdoor hobby combining elements of art, puzzle solving, orienteering and exploring and is great fun for children and adults alike.  It originated in the 1850's in England but has morphed over the centuries into a worldwide, more modern sort of game wherein seekers follow clues (found on various websites, through local clubs or discovered by word of mouth) to find small, waterproof boxes hidden in public places. 

Each box contains a logbook and rubber stamp and explorers likewise carry a stamp and logbook when out on a quest.  When a letterbox is discovered, finders make an imprint of the letterbox's stamp in their book and leave their personal impression, the date and perhaps a small note in the letterbox's visitor's book. The rubber stamps are most often hand carved and can be amazingly intricate and beautiful.  The clues range from very straightforward directions telling one exactly where to go to complicated puzzles or riddles that offer only vague inferences to a box’s locale.

It’s like a treasure hunt where the treasure is both taken and left behind!  (It’s also a little like geocaching if you’ve heard of that but with more artistic flair and no plastic trinkets.)  It’s also a great way to find beautiful places when on a road trip or visiting out-of-town relatives or friends.

For our Screen-Free Week play date, we planted three letterboxes in a local park and handed out logbooks, stamps (store bought) and clues to those who came to join us for the day.  We'll not post those clues here since we pulled them after the event but for those interested in trying out letterboxing in your local community we'd suggest checking out the Atlasquest or Letterboxing North America websites.  Both are filled with tutorials, tips and thousands of clues to boxes hidden all over the world.  There's probably a letterbox near you!  (If not, maybe you can plant one!)  Why not join the letterbox community and enjoy some great screen-free fun?