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.

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.

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?

Today is one of those glorious pea-soup foggy days. I told Asher that some cloud up in the sky was curious about people, and came down to visit. “Look, mama, I can’t see the school!”

I have 35 minutes to myself to get my heart pounding and revel in the quiet. Normally I would hear many birds singing and squirrels barking whenever I passed too closely to their trees. Not today. In the hush of the low-lying mist, even the birds seem to whisper, as though they’re in church.

Perhaps the hundreds of squirrels are all still abed, sleeping in. Perhaps today is a day of rest, even though it’s not marked as such on my calendar. Spiderwebs on hedges are so wet with dew, they are sagging.

I pass a neighbor’s yard. Tiny droplets of water sparkle at the end of pine needle sprays. The closest trees are black against the fog, distant ones are erased in mist. The trees are laid bare, arthritic bones are revealed. And yet, they look lacy against the gray-white sky, as though they’ve put on crocheted gloves over their bony fingertips. Some still sport seed pods or random leaves that forgot to fall. Some are already swelling with buds, as if to proclaim to King Winter, “I am not finished! You will not conquer me.”

No dogs bark at me, even at the home where five of them jealously guard their little patch of Fair Oaks. Their fence sign boasts, “I can make it to the gate in 3 minutes. Can you?” I assume they’re all vying for space near the heating vents and fireside indoors.

I walk down a long straight hill, noticing the deep green of a redwood, the rosy blush of a heavenly bamboo bush. Tiny signs of the coming spring are revealed a bit here, a bit there. I have to look closely for them, and they make me smile. There’s a flowering quince! It’s coral buds are getting fat. Some early blooms are opening nearest the base of the twigs, and they’ll bloom upward like that in a kind of wave. I spy rosemary bushes covered in lavender blossoms. But they’re lonely. No bees serenade them yet. One front yard is graced with a thick ruffle of petite, buttery jonquils.

I notice the squish of my feet as I pass some yards, where the messy autumn leaves are being left to rot. Leaf litter is ground into black muck on the pavement. Some leaves are disintegrating into doilies.

A small flock of Canada geese flies low, making two passes and honking. They are clownish phantoms except when directly overhead. Their monochrome blends into the sky.

I trudge up the hill and come close enough that the garish green fence finally reveals itself. It blinks out of the fog as if someone just turned on the electricity. It is the greenest fence I have ever seen. It is, frankly, impossibly green, and moreover, frankly, I adore it. If it had only stayed plain, showing its natural wood tones, it could have graced a traditional Japanese garden. Happily, its goofy coloring is nowhere near so demure. Happily, it shouts hello to me into the quiet morning.

I round the corner, passing the empty playground. Sometimes little ones with parents are here playing. Not today. Even the beehive in the base of the tree is quiet, seemingly deserted. I hope the bees are inside keeping warm.

There’s something rather Victorian about my neighborhood today. Somehow the fog lends these familiar sights a romance, a mystery. I imagine cobblestones and hoop skirts, and the watery glow of London streetlamps. Where is that piper when I need him?

Houses are storytellers, if you bother to notice the tales they share. Some are old-old, falling mournfully into disrepair or melting into their overgrown yards. Some tell you they are rentals; they seem to say they aren’t one-family homes, but rather they entertain a series of lonely guests year after year. Some homes are elderly men and women, who quite clearly and purposefully look after their health. They take their vitamins and their fiber. They are kept up, wearing nice clothes and dapper roofs. Their neatly trimmed trees and bushes tell you they see the manicurist regularly. Few homes around here are new; they glow with youth like the fresh-faced teens of the neighborhood. Some proudly sport both laugh lines and boob jobs at the same time. These have shiny SUVs in their driveways.

It’s all kind of magical. It’s all ordinary. And since I alone am here to witness it, it’s all mine.

This is the third part in a three-part article about what Waldorf school looks like compared to public school. If you’re just coming to this, I encourage you to read Part 1, which can be found here, and Part 2, which is here. This is, of course, our experience and others will have different takes on Waldorf education. Please keep in mind that Ian and I are parents, not teachers, so our perspective on Waldorf is a parents’ perspective.

11. The School Day. A typical day at Waldorf school for the third grade consists of main lesson (subjects of language arts and math are taught in six-week blocks), snack time, specialty class, lunch, and then two specialty classes. There are several recesses too. Spanish, German, handwork, music, and gardening are each taught twice a week. Movement, Eurhythmy, painting, and form drawing are taught once per week. Two or three periods a week are devoted to reading practice and groups. My son loves all of his subjects.

Right now in main lesson, they are working on math, with specific emphasis on measurement and reviewing carrying and introducing borrowing. Next month they will move into a “shelter and housing” block. They will study housing around the world and the history of life skills. The children will choose a particular type of house or home and then fashion a realistic 3-D shelter diorama and present a report to the class. I have seen the most amazing shelter dioramas—igloos, geodesic domes, longhouses, log cabins—pass by me at school, lovingly carried (with difficulty) by their third-grade creators. This shelter block harkens back to autumn blocks of gardening and farming and building. In the spring, the third grade will have a social studies and life sciences block that covers clothing and textiles. Students will complete a clothing and weaving project, which handsomely dovetails with their handwork classes covering crochet and spinning.That’s a lot of information about our grade specifically, but it gives a picture of what school is like and shows how many teaching modalities are present, as art, movement, and music are interwoven throughout. All grades have some variation on this kind of day, with subjects becoming more advanced as the children grow.

Overall, the Waldorf curriculum is highly geared to meet the needs of the growing child, whose development can be divided into three main phases. Birth to age 7 is considered to be the imitation/will years; 7 to age 14 are considered to be the imagination/feeling years; and ages 14 to 21 make up the truth-seeking/thinking years. Subjects are introduced with these developmental stages in mind, for example eighth graders study world revolutions.

12. Parent Involvement. Our school is not, strictly speaking,  a “parent-participation” school. Parents do not volunteer regularly in the classroom. However, parents support and help with many tasks, and are asked to get involved in everything from festival committees and boosters clubs to the parent guild and the board of directors. There are celebrations and festivals all year long that require a great deal of parent involvement, and many fundraisers. Each family is asked to volunteer in numerous ways and to let the school know their particular talents and hobbies. There are hundreds of ways to be involved in our child’s education. I was thrilled when I was asked to help with baking dragon breads, to take photographs of the Harvest Faire, and to paint wings for the third grade’s Firebird Eurhythmy performance last fall.

13. Festivals. So what are these festivals anyway? Waldorf schools celebrate a plethora of festivals that might be unfamiliar to many, or perhaps may be familiar only because they once were (or still are) a part of the yearly liturgical rhythm of European cultures. These festivals are closely connected to the seasons and occur almost once per month. Michaelmas occurs at the end of September. Harvest Faire happens in October. Martinmas and Thanksgiving are in November. The season of Advent is celebrated as the contemplative days leading up to the winter solstice and Christmas. May Day is a big school-wide festival that happens in the first week of May.

School festivals are opportunities for celebration, for contemplation and inner revelation, and for community building. By celebrating holidays and holding festivals, we celebrate the bounty and beauty of life. We stand up, take a deep breath, and collectively say, “We are human and humans together.” Because they are unique to Waldorf schools, these festivals are a kind of icing on the Waldorf cake and most families love to partake.

14. Nourishment. From the moment we set foot on our Waldorf school campus we have been nourished in every way. Every sense* is considered in every moment: sight, sound, taste, touch. Lighting is beautiful. Materials used in school are superb and of the best possible quality so that they may please and inspire. Wood, wool, sunlight, silk, paints of the purest colors, and nourishing foods are the delights that surround my son during his school day. Every item is both functional and beautiful, from the desks to the doorjambs, from the spectacular woods and river surrounding the campus to the school farm. And let me talk about that farm a moment. Fruits and vegetables are grown organically and biodynamically all year. Some (very lucky) animals make their homes there: a sweet old cow, a flock of chickens who produce lovely eggs, several sheep, and an old man llama named Balboa. Children participate in working this farm throughout grades 1–8 in their gardening classes. They learn where food comes from, and through their labors in the sun and open air get an inkling of the time, effort, and knowledge required to produce and harvest food. In the Waldorf Kindergarten, snack is provided by the school and the little ones are fed nourishing grains, vegetables, and soups. I assert that whenever 24 5- and 6-year-olds eat organic vegetable and barley soup together as a class, a small miracle has occurred. And I think any parent with a picky eater will agree.

15. Nature, Reverence, and Respect. This is perhaps the aspect of Waldorf education that most appeals to me. Wonderment and reverence for nature and humanity are part of my personal morality, and this is something I truly hope my children will learn. And I see these principles in practice every day at school. Rudolf Steiner said, “Receive the children in reverence; educate them in love; let them go forth in freedom.” We believe that our son is being taught as and treated as an individual with worth. We believe he is loved and valued and that his contributions to the class and the lives of the students and teacher are valued. We think this is a pretty good case for Waldorf education, since it is in feeling loved and wanted and respected that people are able to open up to learning and new experiences, and make lasting relationships. We do not want our son to burn out on school. We don’t want him to hate school and hate learning. We do not want him simply to survive his schooling, but rather to thrive in it and because of it. We feel that our private school is an investment in his future success and may help stave off some of the problems that teens and young adults face. We might be wrong, of course. Nothing is guaranteed. No school will raise him for us. We still have the toughest job of parenting. I wouldn’t have it any other way. (I welcome your comments.)

* Steiner described and explored twelve senses of the human being. I am not qualified to explain these.

This is the second post in a three-part article about what Waldorf school looks like compared to public school. If you’re just coming to this, I encourage you to read Part 1, which can be found here. Please keep in mind that Ian and I are parents, not teachers, so our perspective on Waldorf is a parents’ perspective.

What does Waldorf school look like?

6. Curriculum. Reading, writing, and math are taught systematically, but probably not with the same system that you are familiar with if you come from public education. The Waldorf curriculum is not up to individual teachers, as it is long established, although teachers can mold things to their liking by choosing stories as teaching vehicles. They are not teaching out of an instructor’s manual and the students do not have textbooks of any kind. Rather, the teacher brings the lesson and the students make their own “lesson books.” Thus, they are constantly developing and using their reading, writing, math, and art skills no matter the subject. Students definitely are not doing whatever they want, as some people seem to assume about Waldorf education. Rather, students follow the lessons set before them by their teachers. More about the Waldorf curriculum can be found here.

7. Class Size and Student/Teacher Ratio. My son’s class has 28 students. It is up to the teacher and the administration to determine how many students he/she can take. They try to hover around 28 to 29 children. In first grade, there was a wonderful classroom aide to help the teacher, but probably more to help the young students adjust to being in a classroom for lessons and sitting in desks. Starting in second grade there is no classroom aide, but the students have the other specialty teachers I mentioned above. In third grade, which I discussed in more detail here, students do lots of cooking, and our dear Spanish teacher also helps with cooking to ensure appropriate supervision of the children while they are working in the in-classroom kitchen.

8. Media Use. The children have no access to computers or computer-assisted learning at school until they reach 8th grade or maybe even high school, I’m not sure. Waldorf is sometimes accused of being of technophobic in that way, but Waldorf teachers have very clear reasons why computers have no place in the lower grades. They strongly discourage the use of TV, movies, computers, and video games for young children, and they can be very adamant about it. There is a plethora of research to support the Waldorf ideal of no or minimal screen time. (I urge you to search the internet for research.) The use of media for the young child effectively drugs children. It robs them of their ability to use their imaginations to form the kind of detailed mental pictures that they need to form while reading, learning history, learning about cultures, learning abstract concepts of math and science, empathizing with others, and eventually in high level problem solving. Some might scoff and say imagination isn’t important. But Waldorf and industry leaders agree: If you cannot imagine that something can be done a different way, then you cannot innovate. The whole goal of Waldorf eduction is to teach children to think for themselves.

Now, to address computers and technology specifically I will admit that some children are using computers at home. My children mostly do not, although they are around us when we use our computers. Some people have asked me, “Don’t you worry about your kids not learning computers? However will they compete in a high-tech world if they don’t study computers in school?” Personally, I have no worries about my kids’ ability to pick up technology skills when the time is right; technology is part of our culture and children learn fast. Our kids will not be able to get away from technology in their lives—so I don’t mind at all staving that off for a later date. I want my kids playing when they’re young, using their hands and their bodies to explore and navigate the world, not sitting glued to a monitor. With that said, my 8-year-old has a pretty darn clear understanding of the Internet just through observing us use it over time, and my younger son has a great affinity for technology. In our home, it is not taboo but rather a useful tool that they do not yet need.

9. Clothing and Warmth. We do not have school uniforms, though there is a dress code: no logos, no pictures, no words on clothing, no camouflage, NO TV or movie characters. Ideal play clothes are warm and comfortable, layered to regulate temperature, and designed in such a way that the clothing does not take the wearer or the wearer’s classmates out of the here and now and into some other space. What I mean is, if a child puts on an outfit and wears it like a costume, letting the outfit dictate their attitude, personality, and receptivity, then that clothing is not conducive to learning. For example, a young child might wear army-green camouflage and then run around playing army and guns, which is discouraged at school. On the other hand, a girl dressed up in fancy princess clothes that make her put on airs or decline to run and play and hang upside-down is missing out on the learning opportunities of the school day. Teachers and administrators don’t want the children to be conscious of their clothing. The rules about clothing, jewelry, and hair color change somewhat as the children get older.

10. Student Evaluation. Waldorf students do not get report cards or letter grades. We get a skills evaluation at the midyear parent-teacher conference and we get an evaluation letter at the end of the school year. The letter is specifically about our child: who he is, what his is learning, what his strengths and weaknesses are, what he brings to the class, etc. There is also a long letter about what the class as a whole studied during the year, and it is broken into predictable chunks, such as Language Arts and Arithmetic, and also Music, Form Drawing, Drawing and Painting, Movement, Performances, and Books Read to the Class. I have to admit, I am thrilled to my core when I read my son’s evaluation letter, even the parts that explain where he needs more practice. Here’s an excerpt.

“Lucas has continued to be such a loving and joyful presence in our class this year. Whether he was creating rocket ships, organizing elaborate games full of imagery, or building great cities in the sand, Lucas was where the action was. Never at a loss for ideas, his eyes would twinkle with excitement when he had the opportunity to boldly create something he hadn’t before. Early in the year I introduced ‘free rendering’ to the children, whereby they could create in any form something from the story they had previously heard. While most drew or painted pictures, Lucas quickly asked, ‘Can it be 3D?’ In no time he was constructing a large castle made out of many pieces of paper rolled and taped together. As others joined in with Lucas at the helm, an amazing castle with drawbridges and towers was formed.”

Such a written evaluation allows us to know our child in his school environment, where we cannot and do not observe him directly. This teacher’s perspective is valuable; it is the observations of the adult who spends all those many hours in our son’s presence among his peers. It gives us a much better window into his growth and development (socially, academically, physically, intellectually) than any series of A’s, B’s, C’s, or D’s ever could.

This article will be continued in Part 3. Please join me there for more information on Waldorf schooling. As always, I welcome your comments!

I am not usually one to wax on about science. Don’t get me wrong. I love science and I think it’s perfectly marvelous. People who do science (wait, that’s everyone!) are amazing and clever and inspiring. But usually, I don’t consider myself a science geek …

Except sometimes, when science and beauty intersect. There! Right there is where my interest is captured fully and profoundly.

Enter my latest scientific fascination: W.A. (Wilson Alwyn) Bentley. Mr. Bentley was 17 years old in 1885 when he first paired his love of snowflakes with this newfangled gizmo called the photographic camera. He created on his Vermont family farm the very first photo-micrograph of a snow crystal and thus launched his career. In 1931, the year he died, he published Snow Crystals, in which he published 2,500 of his some 5,000 photographs of snow crystals.

I checked out Bentley’s book (Dover, 1962) from my local library.

And it is AWESOME.

That’s it. Page after page after page of white snow crystals on a black background. Perfect and fragile and exquisite. Fascinating and mind-blowing. Two hundred and one such pages, depicting unique crystals, including snowflakes, ice flowers, windowpane frost, rime, glaze, and graupel. There are only eight pages of text in this miracle of a book.

My dear Mr. Bentley, I think I love you.

This is a stuff post. The holidays have a way of flooding our home with new stuff, and that’s quite exciting no matter how old you are. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the wonderful gifts we received this Christmas.

I’ll start with some backstory. Last fall, the boys and I hit on the perfect remedy for Transition Blues, that awkward and cantankerous time between school or preschool and home. Companions change, place changes, even some rules change and all that uncomfortable adjustment must be made. Transitions tend to be hard on Lucas, especially, so when I started making After-School Smoothies of Love immediately on our arrival at home in the afternoon, things improved—for all of us! We had several smooth, sweet weeks’ worth of healthy, yummy afternoon drinks until the unthinkable happened—my blender gave up the ghost.

We were bereft. Until now. Thanks to my mama and daddy and their gift of this gorgeous lady, my magical smoothie tradition is back ON!

My mama also gave me this handmade wool sweater, which is soft and almost too warm to wear inside, but perfect outside. (That quilt in the photo is the wedding quilt she made for Ian and me in 1995.)

I also received this amazing scarf, knitted by some friends’ daughter, Snow, who is 10—almost 11—years old. Frankly, her knitting is amazing. Waldorf kids rock!

And speaking of competent Waldorf kids and handwork, this is the handwork basket that Ian and I gave to Lucas for Christmas. It contains two rainbow yarns handspun by our friends at Syrendell (already balled) and a new wood crochet hook. I also added a couple of store-bought yarns and a bit of yarn from my own stash. Since Christmas, Lucas has added in his knitting needles that he made in first grade at school. Now he can go to this basket whenever he’s feeling creative.

Grandma VoVo gave our boys these customized shelf organizers to hold their notebooks and papers. They were filled with notebooks, folders, pens, pencils, erasers and all that good stuff. Open-ended gifts like this are so nice!

Finally, since I began this stuff post with a sexy red kitchen gadget, I’ll end with another. Ian’s dad and Mimi gave us this awesome Sodastream gizmo that carbonates your tap water and makes soda or flavored water, too. We go through a lot of bubbly water around here, and we are loving this thing!

We are grateful for all these goodies and many, many more!

I’d just like to pop in and say Happy New Year! It’s been a lovely winter break around here these last several days, even though I’ve been working quite a bit this week—more than in most years, actually. I’m glad to have the work, and yet still yearn for the downtime, especially while everyone is at home.

There has been lovely block play,

some reading of How to Train Your Dragon, and quite a bit of cozy “Avatar: The Last Airbender” viewing.

Ian tackled some home renovation projects, including fixing a gate and finishing the Hearth Project (which was started and abandoned half finished more than eight years ago). Here is the beautiful result:

Lucas has practiced on his new skateboard from uncle Jon.

And Asher has worn his new chaps and vest (a precious family heirloom of our friends, loaned to us while they fit) in a most creative way.

So, that’s pretty normal right, for the last days of a year: continuing on, finishing, fixing, solving, resting, mulling, embracing new challenges, learning new skills, reinventing old stuff to be new again?

Relax. Review. Renovate. Remember. Reinvent.

Well, it’s normal around here.

Wishing you all the best in the New Year!