I’m not sure what happened, but our littlest chick, Firefly, is not doing well. I first noticed this morning when I came in to change the chicks’ water. I easily counted nine chicks. Where was the other one? The chicks were all crowding into one corner and I moved them away from it with my hand. At the bottom of the pile of chicks was Firefly. They had been standing on her. (See her down low in the right back corner? I didn’t yet realize she was being trodden on when I took this photo.)

Her left leg appears to be injured, but I can see no obvious wound. She can’t put any weight on it, and seems to have only enough strength to kind of flop about a little. We have isolated her in a small box with her own food and water. I’ve watched her move about her box, and eat and drink many times today. She is sleeping often. I’m more concerned that she’s getting adequate water than I am about her eating. With other animals, eating is a sign of not yet being finished, but dehydration kills quickly.

She appears to be more comfortable now, but who knows? She is an 18- or 19-day-old chicken. And we are inexperienced at raising chicks. While she has slept today,  she has at times appeared dead, with limbs akimbo and neck splayed out on the litter. (But even healthy chicks sometimes look dead when they’re sleeping.) At least we know that if she is indeed on her way out of this world, she can pass in peace; she won’t be tormented by her flock. Chickens aren’t at all compassionate toward other chickens with weakness or injury.

I wonder what happened to her. I keep trying to figure out how she was hurt. I wish she weren’t Lucas’s favorite. I don’t really expect to find her still living in the morning.

Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Our babies are here! We picked out ten wee chicks at the feed store on Thursday and it was a thrill. We got two chicks each of five different breeds in the hopes that this will help us to know them all as individuals even when they are grown.

Lucas picked them all out. They are sweet little handfuls of fluff.

They are completely “a-DOH-able,” as Asher says. Fuzzy and peepy and sleepy and ever so young! Just two or three days old now. For the next few weeks they will be living in our makeshift “brooder box” in my office, the warmest room in the house. We have learned that they need to be kept warm — really warm. You and I would call it hot. We have had to make adjustments of our plans and setup to accommodate this new info. (I expect to say that a lot during this chick-raising adventure, since this is our first time!) As they grow, they will become more comfortable with slightly lower temps. Nevertheless, we are all enchanted.

More later. I think I’ll go hold one and watch her fall asleep in my hands.

Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Lucas has been very busy for the last week and a half working on his major project for third grade. In the Waldorf schools, third graders study lots of practical things like cooking, measuring, building, and making clothing. They also study shelters—the various types of homes people made or make for themselves in different parts of the world throughout history. The students have to choose a people with a particular type of shelter, build a diorama of their shelter, and write a report about it.

This the first big homework project, and it synthesizes what the students are learning in school with all kinds of other awesome qualities of third graders: their practicality, their extensive experience of modeling, their creative thinking, and their love of measuring, using tools, and building. It also calls into use their developing writing skills, their recent study of grammar and parts of speech, their artistic ability, their awakening to the real world around them and awareness of others, and their blossoming love of realism.

Lucas wondered if he could make a house boat for his shelter project—after all, some people live on house boats. After some research, he and Ian hit upon a people indigenous to the Andaman Sea called the Moken, and we checked in with Lucas’s teacher to get her okay to proceed.

The Moken live on their handcrafted boats, called kabang, most of the year, and travel around the islands off the coast of Thailand. During the monsoon season, they live on land, but that’s only about three months of the year. They fish and trade fish for rice. Their kabang keels are dug-out logs that are passed down from father to son. “It can take a family four months to build a kabang. The traditional boats have sails and oars, but the new boats run on diesel engines” (from Lucas’s report).

Lucas used clay to make his kabang keel. Bamboo skewers were used as struts on which to weave the boat’s gunwales, which are traditionally made from zalacca wood. Lucas made his from garden twigs. He built the shelter on the deck of the kabang and thatched it with more twigs.

Lucas modeled two Moken people out of beeswax. (Whole families live on these kabang, and the boats travel in groups of six or more.)

Then Lucas wove a sail from raffia. The Moken use pandanus leaves to fashion their sails.

Here is the finished kabang shelter. Mr. Moken is standing in the sea, fishing with a spear. The kabang flies the Thai flag. The Moken people spend much of their time in the sea diving for shellfish, and studies show they’ve developed better underwater eyesight. “The sad thing is that there’s only about 1,000 Moken living on the sea today because the Burmese and Thai governments are trying to get them on land.”

“I want to go there and help them out. I also want to build a kabang with a Moken,” Lucas concluded.

This was a tough project, but one that was very rewarding, I think. Making something with his hands helped Lucas engage with the material, much more so than simply writing a report would have done.  It was also great to see Lucas work so hard over so many days, with his dad’s careful support and supervision.

Lucas and his classmates will also present their shelters to their class and talk about them. They will answer questions from the teacher and classmates as well. I’m proud of all of these kids for accomplishing something that took two weeks or so to make; perseverance is an important trait to develop.

We have a class set of valentines to make this weekend for third grade, in addition to a big school project. (Lucas has to build a traditional shelter diorama and write a report—his first major homework assignment ever.) We have opted to make some kitchen valentines for his classmates this year. I’ll tell you about those after we’ve made them. This is what we did last year and it was super fun.

In the meantime, Asher and I had some fun painting coffee filters with watercolor paints (above). The filters really soak up the paint, and the hearts are equally beautiful on both sides. We haven’t decided exactly how to use these yet: window decorations, cards, mobiles … there are so many possibilities! I spent a few moments the other day hacking up a shiny red gift bag into hearts. You can never really have too many of these, just in case.

At preschool, Asher and his classmates have been making valentines for a couple of weeks now. It’s hard work for a 3- or 4-year-old to make enough valentines for all of his friends!

This Valentine Tree is on the third grade nature table at Lucas’s school. The hanging hearts are all made by the students from modeling beeswax.

I still want to come up with some kind of gift for the children, as I do every year. We always have a small breakfast-time celebration on holidays and I like having a wee something to surprise them with. I have loads of paper hearts that I keep year to year, and one thing I always do is to make a pathway of paper hearts leading from their bedroom door to the holiday breakfast table.

Just might have to make these again! How do you celebrate Valentine’s Day with your family?

Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

We held a small ceremony last night to celebrate Imbolc, or Candlemas. It was just the four of us and it was perfect, I think. In my research, Imbolc and Candlemas led me to Saint Brigid, who led me to Brigid, the Celtic triple goddess, who whispered in my ear how very alike she is to Hestia, the Greek goddess of hearth and home. Now, Hestia and I go way back, and at that moment I was instantly comfortable, on familiar turf,  “at home.” I can work with this!

When I create a ceremony or celebration, I have this little tendency to go overboard. When the intention is to celebrate with my small children, I have learned that the key  is to keep it simple. I usually let my imagination run wild for a while, come up with lots of complicated and meaningful ideas, and then I consciously scale it back, make it shorter, and let the symbols speak for themselves.

After dinner, we sat by the fire on our sheepskin rug. I had purchased a 3-inch beeswax pillar candle and we softened some modeling beeswax in warm water. We each fashioned a design or symbol to attach to our “FamilyCandle.” As we did so, I shared a poem about Candlemas Day.

“If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, Winter will take another flight. If Candlemas Day be cloud and rain, Winter is gone and will not come again.”

Then this, which I wrote:

“Round the hearth, with our fire burning bright, we speak from our hearts. With kind words we kindle our hearts’ light.”

We then talked about Imbolc being the midpoint of winter and that after that night, we’d be moving toward the spring. We talked about family and home.

The boys mostly played with the colorful wax and stuck chunks of it on our Family Candle. Asher called his chunk of blue the “rainbow bridge.” Daddy made a beautiful interlocking rings design, with four rings representing the four of us. I made a star with a rainbow and a little blazing fire (because stars and fires mean winter to me, and a rainbow gives me hope for the spring).

Here is our Family Candle in this morning’s light.

Here you can see the boys’ additions to it.

While we modeled our beeswax and added it to our candle, we thought of with words that mean “family” and “home” to us, things we associate with our home and being a family together. We wrote these words in crayon on a watercolor painting I made earlier in the day. Lucas wrote words for himself. Not to be outdone by his older brother, Asher followed suit, with his own version of writing.

Here is our family artwork hanging above our kitchen table. Love, peace, joy, family, us, tribe, prosperity, health, warmth, luck(e), respect, happiness, hope, laughter, help, rest, safety, boys, hearth—and contributions from Asher, such as “squirrel family in the snow!”

Especially for 4-year-old Asher, we did a small motion play from A Child’s Seasonal Treasury by Betty Jones called Groundhog Day.

Bears hug in their caves so snug.    (Hug self with eyes closed; smile.)

Squirrels are restless in their hollow tree.    (Make a hole with one hand, wiggle fingers of other hand through hole.)

Fox family yawns and stretches in their lair.    (Yawn and stretch limbs.)

Groundhog pokes his head from the ground.    (Make large ring with arms and poke head through.)

Whiffs and sniffs and looks around.    (Sniff, look around through hole.)

Will or won’t his shadow be found?     (Nod “yes,” then “no,” shrug shoulders.)

If it is, we all will know     (Nod “yes” and rise to squat position.)

Spring is getting ready to go!     (Spring up in place with outstretched limbs.)

Finally, while we all held our decorated Family Candle together, we finished with this verse by Marsha Johnson.

Bless this candle in our hands.

Bless this flame as here we stand.

Bless the faces ’round this light.

Bless all people on this night.

We’ll be burning this Family Candle during dinner and on weekends when we are home for the rest of winter.

We had several glorious, sparkly days in a row last week. (I love California!) For me they culminated in this perfect walk we took last Saturday. Ian, the boys, and I visited a small section of the American River Parkway called the San Juan Rapids trail.

It’s a great, short walk (for little legs), which are compelled to follow brother wherever he may roam.

Even out on a limb, so to speak.

This photo was taken from the top of Crystal Mountain, a giant hill of rocks left over from the days of industrial gold mining. This trail is familiar to Lucas because it’s right near his Waldorf school and he hikes here with his class often—this is good because he gets to be the authority on the area. He likes that very much.

If all goes well, it won’t be too long before Asher is hiking here with his Kindergarten class, hoping to find quartz crystals of his own.

May I present my almost-4-year-old? Isn’t he mighty?

Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.