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.

Happy Valentine’s Day from our family to yours!

May you be filled with the love that surrounds you, take it into yourself, and let it inspire you.

May you love deeply and truly, with honesty, courage, and compassion.

May you enjoy life, take big bites, and savor small pleasures and everyday delights.

May you see and appreciate the beauty in the world and in people everywhere.

May you cultivate your creativity and capacity to love, for whomever you love, every day.

Blessed be!

These little signs make me happy. More rain next week!

Unfolding leaves

Blossoms on trees

Fattening lilac buds

Tulips coming up

Fruit tree flowers

Buds on the neighbor’s magnolia tree

Snowdrops at Lucas’s school

Buds on my plum trees

Lone primrose survivor

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.

Ian and I made some wooden toys for Asher for his birthday. We learned a lot last December when we made his wooden dragon, knight, and horse, and his rainbow gnomes—not the least of which is that sanding wooden toys takes forever. We wanted to practice these new toy-making skills some more, so we made Asher two girls, an older boy, a pig, a goose, and a gnome cave. We ran out of time and didn’t finish goose woman and the other older boy we cut out. But they’ll be along someday.

I drew these figures after looking at some old illustrations by Blanche Fisher Wright that were recently republished in a Barnes and Noble collection of Mother Goose nursery rhymes. I liked their simplicity and their old-fashioned clothing (kerchiefs and knickers and so on). Ian did a marvelous job with the scroll saw, which is the part that scares me not a little.

The gnomes in this photo were made last month, but the stacking cave pieces are new. They can be fitted together or separated out to form a gnome scene.

Now, the truth is, I don’t know if Asher will ever play with these items. Often plastic gifts grab a child’s attention quicker, and Asher got some of those for his birthday. For the most part, he prefers to play pretend and transform himself into someone new, whether human or animal. He doesn’t often sit and play with items the way they are intended by adults to be played with. A screwdriver toy becomes a sword, or a pen, or a magic wand. A firefighter’s helmet becomes a bowl or an astronaut’s gear. A stethoscope becomes a communication device or an air tube.

I will just sit back and see what he does with these wooden toys, just as I do with everything else, and be proud that we made them from scratch. They will be for him whatever he needs or wants them to be. And if nothing else, and if I’m very lucky, maybe someday I’ll see them in the hands of my grandchild.

“Not one day in anyone’s life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy, or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down’s-syndrome child. Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example. Each smallest act of kindness—even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile—reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will. All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined—those dead, those living, those generations yet to come—that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength—to the very survival of the human tapestry. Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in this momentous day.” —Dean Koontz (From the Corner of His Eye)

73 degrees on February 6? I love California! Many thanks to my favorite rock stacker and my favorite acorn planter for showing me this beautiful, local hike to Goose Flat. It was nourishing for my soul and I can’t wait to bring my family here.

All that birthday party hullabaloo I wrote about happened the day before Asher’s real birthday. So on Monday, the day he really turned 4, we celebrated some more, in small ways with just the four of us. It was easy, peaceful, and special.

In the morning, Asher’s place at the table was set out with what I’ve come to think of as the birthday place mat. His birthday crown was there waiting for him (I made it last year). And I set out a big bronze bell. He was delighted when I said, “Today is your birthday! You get to ring the bell.” Asher rung in his fifth year.

The bulk of the day was normal. He went to preschool, Lucas to school. We worked. But in the evening we had a birthday dinner; Daddy cooked him sausages, as he requested. Of course there was a little more dragon cake to be had for dessert.

We used the birthday cake candles to light up the Scandinavian “party chimes.” Ian and I have had these for years, but we ran out of the 1/2 inch diameter candles and haven’t set it up for a long time. Birthday candles worked just fine, and I thought it was perfect: 4 candles, 4 years old.

There was a sweet, spontaneous hug as Lucas read the birthday message he wrote for Asher.

Finally, we gave Asher his birthday gifts from us. We believe in letting Lucas regift his old toys that he doesn’t want or play with to Asher when the time is right and Asher’s ready for them. Lucas is always very pleased to do this. This year, Lucas gave Asher some felt story boards. These were a big hit and we all played with them awhile before we got to any other presents.

Two books (The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett and The Paper Princess Flies Again (with Her Dog) by Elisa Kleven), a rainbow bowl and scoop, four jewels, a piggy bank, a wooden car, and wooden people and animals that Ian and I made for him.

When it’s time to celebrate, our family does it right!