September Nature Table

Toadstools, toadstools

Beneath the trees

Turn your painted caps to me

My tower is tall

But still I see

Toadstools, toadstools

Beneath the trees.

~borrowed from Live Ed.

September is here, finally!  I am not a fan of summer and hot weather, so I always anxious to get going with Autumn.  And although the Autumn Equinox is not until the 21st, it is starting to feel fall-ish already.  Cooler, drier weather is settling in along with much cooler nights, perfect for snuggling under flannel sheets and puffy blankets.

Nature walks inevitably end with pockets full of treasures gleaned from the forest floor.  Mushrooms, seed pods of infinite varieties, and pretty leaves are always plentiful and bright with warm Autumn colors.

Our last walk yeilded an astounding variety of colorful mushrooms that, while not edible, were irresistable for collecting for our nature table.  It was also time to prune our little espaliered apple trees, so we had lots of leafy branches for our Apple Blossom Fairy to sit upon.

A word to the wise though!  Make sure to keep mushrooms out of reach of small children and animals.  Also, they only keep about a day or so indoors, so discard them once they begin to rot.  Otherwise you'll have a soggy mess, and possibly uninvited guests, such as worms or bugs that were on the mushrooms.  We found an army of little white worms that must have hatched from eggs laid on one of our mushrooms.  It was....umm....interesting.  Gross....but interesting.



Our September Nature Table



Our felted acorns on the top tier.
We made these last year, but will
be making more soon.



Our Apple Blossom Fairy in her little
nest of apple branches.  (We recycled her
from our May nature table!)



The gnome in his garden.  So many colorful
mushrooms!  I've never seen such a bright
purple one before!


For those of you who have never felted acorns before, here's the link to a nice little tutorial. 



Celebrating Mabon

Autumn is definitely the favored season in our family.  It's a busy, sometimes chaotic, and eventful time of year.  We celebrate many birthdays, all within a couple weeks of each other, have fairs to go to, apples to pick, pumpkins to carve, food to can, garden work to be done, and various other activities to enjoy together.  So to introduce the kids to Mabon, the autumn equinox, was a special treat.  We celebrated all day with food, songs, crafts, and of course, enjoying the outdoors. 

I do like holidays, but although I consider myself to be a spiritual person, I am not religious.  The marking of the seasons and changes of the natural world hold more meaning to me than special dates imposed on us by religious protocol.  Having said that, we do celebrate some Christian holidays, like Christmas and Easter, and starting this year with our foray into Waldorf-dom, the holidays of the saints, like Michaelmas.  At first, I considered omitting these from our studies, but after further research I found that I loved the meaning behind the stories associated with them.  The basic messages of hope, courage, love, and strength they have to offer are universal and certainly of value in teaching young children.  I'm finding it really easy to include this element without having it seem like a religious education.

But I digress.  I was able to dig back through all my pagan-y books, some of which I haven't read in years, and find some really great stuff to do with the kids.  We started each day that week with songs and finger plays about the usual assortment of autumn things:  leaves, apples, squirrels, nuts, and the harvest.  All week we read great stories, all having to do with the turning of the wheel of the year and changing of the seasons:  When the Root Children Wake Up, In the Land of Elves, Fall is Not Easy, Leaf Man, The Stranger (not really Waldorf, but a great story), Around the Oak Tree and Autumn by Gerda Muller.  (All of these are on the book list at the bottom of my page.)

S's leaf man gardener with
rake, spade, and rows
of "vegetables"



 On the day when we do paper crafts, the kids made leaf collages ala Lois Elhert.  I should say however, that due to the astonishing lack of variety of fallen leaves in the neighborhood, we used some fantastic double sided leaf paper I had on hand.  Tons of different shapes of leaves and nuts and seed pods that were printed on both sides so they could be used any way the kids wanted.  We'll do plenty of projects with real leaves later.

Autumn colored God's eye.

On the day we do fiber crafts we made God's eyes.  Remember those?  Popsicle sticks glued into an X by your art teacher and then you got to wind string around them?  We used real sticks that we collected on one of our walks.  I was amazed at how well S did winding hers all by herself.  I had to help F with his, because at not even three years of age, he didn't quite have the coordination to make the yarn go quite where he wanted it.  He did enjoy wrapping some sticks with it though.  While we wound the yarn around, we talked about how the four sticks represented the four seasonal changes; the equinoxes and solstices.

My kids love to have candlelight at just about every meal, and even request it at snack time.  So we made a beautiful Autumn centerpiece together.  I scooped out a bit of the middle from three apples and popped some candles in.  The kids decorated the rest of the plate with things they collected from around our home; maple leaves, bittersweet, and acorns.  It came out great, and a week later, we're still using it at mealtimes.  It was an especially nice Autumn dinner by candlelight.  Our usual blessing was said, but seemed to take on a special meaning for the day:  Earth who gives to us this food, Sun who makes it ripe and good, Dear Sun, Dear Earth, by you we live, and loving thanks to you we give.

I hope you all enjoy this Autumn and all the bounty it has to offer.  I'd love for you to share some of your own traditions for these holidays!  The more the merrier!

A Bushel and a Peck

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
        ~from After Apple Picking by Robert Frost

F finds his perfect apple

What a way to spend the last weekend of summer!  A textbook New England late summer day, warm sun, cool air, and the smell of ripe apples all around.  After eating our Baked French Toast (the very same one mentioned in my previous post), we took a trip up to our new favorite orchard, Quonquont Farm in Whately MA.  Just a little plug for them here:  it is the most beautiful little orchard I have ever been to.  After driving by the amazingly restored farm house, you're right in the middle of a well organized orchard of apples, pears, peaches and berries.  The apples looked fake they were so gorgeous!  Seriously.  Perfectly round and red on all sides.  Like someone went around airbrushing them for a magazine photo shoot.  S called them "Snow White apples" because they appeared to be something right out of a fairy tale.

After trekking up and down the rows and amassing large quantities of perfect apples of at least five varieties, we decided not to get too carried away and we called it quits for the day.  We left with a bushel and a peck (heehee, just like that song) of apples to be eaten as is and transformed into a number of tasty desserts. 

seven quarts of apple sauce
and many more to come!

Picking apples, while very enjoyable, can be a bit much for some kids.  There's a lot of walking, heavy bags to carry, and you can't always reach the apple you want.  But S and F were troopers.  They lugged those bags the whole time without one complaint.  In fact, they wouldn't relenquish them to us until we paid for them and brought them to the car.  There was some hard work in picking so many apples, but they were rewarded, as they usually are, by all their efforts.

Sometimes, when my husband asks the kids about what they did during the day, they tell him about the housework they did, or the yard work, or what we cooked together.  He laughingly commented the other day, "You're not homeschooling them, you're running a sweat shop!"

I think that so many people underestimate the value of work as a child's play.  Children learn through imitation, especially for the first seven years.  How wonderful for them to learn that there can be joy in the simple and necessary tasks of every day life!  Children want to do what we're doing.  They want their little and important lives to be filled with purpose just like ours are.  So many people at dinner time usher their kids out of the kitchen and plop them in front of the TV so they can "get [whatever] done."  While I acknowledge that toward the end of the day, patience is running thinner and the task of meal preperation can be a bit of a chore, I try to see this time as an opportunity for togetherness and learning.

Now I am admittedly what many people would consider a "Type A" personality.  You know the ones.  Neat freaks, lists of things to do, organized closets, and dust-free bookshelves.  It has taken my having children to loosen me up a bit.  Don't get me wrong, I still have to do lists (that actually get done), organized closets, and dust-free bookshelves, as well as a small business I'm trying to keep afloat, but I can slow myself down when I need to so I can include my kids in whatever I'm doing.  Taking the time to find the fun in work has given me a whole new perspective on how I spend my days.  I'm reminded of the opening to that Mary Poppins song, A Spoonful of Sugar: 

In ev'ry job that must be done
There is an element of fun
you find the fun and snap!
The job's a game

planting bulbs

This time of year is so full of opportunities for meaningful and fun work.  Planting bulbs, baking, canning, preparations for upcoming holidays.  All of these can be so joyful for children to participate in.  So go now and do something useful with your kids.  Unless you're reading this while they're in bed.  In that case, let them sleep or you'll be sorry in the morning.  :) 

Soup in the corn maze

Since the morning was crisp and fall-ish, and we had no other plans for the day, we decided to go do one of our favorite fall activities:  the corn maze.  The people over at Mike's Maze did another outstanding job creating this year's maze, which had the theme of "finding art".  Really, these guys must sit around all winter thinkg this stuff up.  It's crazy.  The maze itself was a replica of the famous Andy Warhol print of the Campbell's Tomato Soup can. 

Hidden within the maze, but clearly marked on the map you're given, are quizzes and challenges.  This year we completed 4 block-type prints, each of four colors, of famous paintings.  We also answered more than enough of the quizz questions correctly to win each of the kids a little pumpkin.  Okay, you only need three correct answers, but still, I went to art school for four years and these questions weren't easy!  I have to admit, I was pretty impressed with my memory.

After finally exiting the maze, we had a snack of cider and fresh grilled corn with butter and basil....YUM...and then the kids had pony rides.

We have been to this maze several times in the past, and it has become a bit of a tradition now for our family.  S remembered going last year, and we all remembered how F, who had just turned two at the time, kept rounding each corner of the maze with an excited exclamation of, "CORN!" as if we hadn't been walking around the middle of a corn field for 45 minutes.

In preparation for the beginning of our homeschool year, which starts tomorrow, I have been immersed in setting the rhythms of each day and the rhythms of the week.  It is so wonderful to see how traditions are emerging in the rhythm of the seasons and years of our family.  I, and I'm sure the children, find it comforting to know that there is always something exciting coming soon for our family to celebrate together.  It is becoming such a joy to create for my family the opportunities that become these traditions and much cherished memories.  Together, we are very blessed indeed.