We had a marvelous day Saturday at the Sacramento Waldorf School’s Harvest Faire. I was delighted to be asked to shoot photos at the festival. So many amazing and talented people worked tirelessly to pull off this community event and fundraiser. Their dedication and attention to detail is visible in every scene I shot.

Welcome to the Sacramento Waldorf School Harvest Faire!

This is Asher’s dear friend S, who goes to preschool with him. They had such fun in the Kindergarten yard, running and playing follow the leader. We saw two other dear preschool friends there, too. Asher was over the moon!

Asher got to see the puppet play of George and the Dragon, performed in the Kindergarten. It was delightful.

I was so honored to be allowed to take pictures during the puppet show performance. These dedicated women (plus the narrator who is not pictured) are the Kindergarten teachers. They infuse love and light in everything they do.

The Children’s Store was full of inexpensive treasures for the little ones to buy, either for themselves or for their loved ones. Many of the items were handmade.

The Country Store was also full of lovely items, much of them handcrafted. Jams, honey, hats, decorations, toys, games, clothing, artworks, yarns and supplies—you name it. Here’s my Harvest Mother in the foreground, who sold early and for a good price, and the room’s nature table in the background.

The third grade parents offered beeswax candle dipping to Harvest Faire guests. (I got to help with setup on Friday, and Ian did two shifts on Saturday.) Candle dippers walked in a large circle, dipping their candlewicks in warm beeswax and then walking a few paces to let it cool, dipping in cool water, walking a few paces and then repeating. After a while, you have a nice candle that you can decorate. I saw one little girl pressing tiny seed beads into her fresh candle, to make a little mermaid design.

Paints for gourd painting: I’m kind of sorry I didn’t get more shots of this booth, as I’m sure some colorful gourds were made.

There was a whole room dedicated to showing off Waldorf students’ schoolwork. Every grade was represented, including high school subjects like chemistry and humanities.

The vendors were terrific this year and I’m sorry I didn’t have the funds for serious shopping. These carved Halloween gourds are the work of a friend, Miss Katy. They’re boo-tiful.

One booth was decorating a fairy scene. Children could make a little fairy doll and then glue special trinkets like shells, jewels, and tiny pumpkins onto the scene.

Basket of fairy wreaths. You could make your own!

Asher had a wonderful time! He was my little Acorn Boy that day, sporting grandma’s knits.

The ninth grade sold produce from the school farm and other local organic farms—a kind of mini farmers’ market in the Faire.

This is the Festivals Room, which was a display of all the seasons of the year and the various festivals celebrated in Waldorf schools and homes. Some loving volunteers put this together and it was magical.

Autumn scene from the Festivals Room.

Lucas and X got to play tag and be rowdy for a while. These two get along so beautifully. Later, they got to shoot a bow!

There was so much more. I might just indulge in another post.

This past Saturday I got to attend two wonderful handwork classes taught by fiber artist/teacher extraordinaire and homeschooling consultant Jennifer Tan of Syrendell. The classes were free and offered by the Friends of the Fair Oaks Library. (Thank you, Friends! Thank you, Jennifer!) The morning class was beginning crochet and the afternoon class was spinning. I had the pleasure of taking a spinning class from Jennifer earlier this year, too. Oh my, this stuff is challenging and fun! It’s supposed to become relaxing and even therapeutic once you get comfortable and good at it.

Jennifer’s display of handspun yarns, crochet hooks of many sizes, a fiber batt, niddy-noddies, and drop spindles. I think the tools are gorgeous.

My classmate R’s lovely crochet

The left photo is yarn spun by a 9-year-old girl; Jennifer Tan is in the middle; the right is yarn spun by our lovely Youth Librarian, Stephanie. It is thanks to her and the Friends of the Library that this class was offered.

My crochet! My hands made this!

Basket of colorful roving and some handspun yarns made by Jennifer and her family, all of whom are tremendous fiber artists

Drop spindles

My yarn. We started with a lovely brown wool and moved on to some colors; mine has brown, red, navy, and a dark orange.

I crocheted this wee pumpkin, which is small enough to fit in my tightly cupped hand! I finished it at home and improvised a stem of sorts. My boys think I should sew a jack-o’-lantern face on it.

And this is my attempt to apply what I learned at home without my patient teacher to correct me. I seem to have remembered how to start a circle and how to increase enough to keep it flat. This is a crummy acrylic yarn leftover from our Solstice sun project. It might become a Halloween decoration. I also practiced more on that green square—alas, it is definitely a triangle now.

The Fair Oaks Library is hosting two more handwork classes taught by Jennifer next Saturday, October 23. They are beginning crochet and Tunisian crochet, and both are free. Registration is required though. I would happily take those as well, but for the conflict with our school’s Harvest Faire.

My baby left this morning wearing Ian’s 20-year-old backpack covered in European country patches. It was stuffed with his gear and bigger than him.

“I feel like the tortoise who won the race. No wonder he went slowly!” Lucas said, staggering under its weight.

He’s off with his third-grade class for a first-ever overnight camping trip. They are going to Full Belly Farm, an organic farm in Capay (which must be really close to the farm we went to last weekend). The whole class will be sleeping in tents. It’s going to be awesome.

I am so proud of Lucas. Today, I truly feel that the time does fly by. Wasn’t it only a few months ago that I was holding his hand as we marched for the first time into the Kindergarten?

The anticipation of this class trip was hard on him. Lucas was pretty nervous and asked me more than once, “Do I have to go?” He cried and worried. It’s so hard to find the right balance between being compassionate about his emotional turmoil and being encouraging yet firm. No, I’m not going to let him skip this amazing class trip because he’s afraid of it. He is ready, even if he doesn’t know it yet. Does that make me mean? That’s mothering for you—I’m part Mom, part Sensei.

I just kept telling him how much fun he was going to have, how busy he and his classmates would be, and how it’s OK to feel nervous about things. “You’ll be fine! Lots of people will be there to take care of you,” I told him. I also know that Lucas is a wonderful caregiver, and so we role-played how he would act if he found one of his classmates was having a hard time and feeling sad and homesick. He came up with wonderful strategies for making that friend feel better. I think that made him feel empowered and competent.

I made sure Lucas has both phone numbers so he can call home if he needs to. The teachers said that would be fine. We packed a little lavender-scented pillow I made him for Valentine’s Day; something he can sleep with if he’s feeling homesick.

The worry he has been feeling the last couple of days seemed this morning to have been outstripped by his excitement. He happily trudged out the door—no tears, no bargaining, no hesitation. Just an 8 1/2-year-old boy with places to go and friends to meet.

Courage is being afraid and doing the right thing anyway. This trip seems to me to have just the right degree of challenge, the right ratio of fear to reward. And of course, it has everything to do with their third-grade curriculum, studying gardening and grains.

(These are partial-page scans from his Gardening and Grains lesson book. My scanner isn’t big enough to capture the whole page.)

I love this Waldorf curriculum. I love that my son gets to spend a day and a night on a working farm that is using sustainable practices and raising sheep for wool. I love that he knows where his food comes from. I love that part of school for him is fresh air and sunshine, digging in the mud and planting seeds, and swimming in a pond. I love that his physical and spiritual development are carefully considered in addition to his academic aptitude and achievement; that the health and unity of the class as a whole is considered. I love that he is challenged with tasks that are a trifle scary and difficult, and supported while he faces his fears and overcomes obstacles. I feel he is being nourished every day by these qualities and so many more that I can’t even put into words.

I’m just so full of gratitude, and hoping he has a wonderful time.

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.

I promise this is my last post about Michaelmas. Maybe I got carried away a bit, but I already mentioned that this festival kind of spoke to me a lot this year.

We had a special dinner on Friday night after the school’s Michaelmas festival. (We have lots of special dinners, but usually Ian cooks them. This one was a joint effort.) As far as I’m concerned, any dinner featuring homemade bread and a first course is special. Anyway, my parents joined us and it was kind of both Michaelmas and a celebration of Ian’s birthday.

I couldn’t get Asher to join in this activity, but Lucas, Daddy and I all enjoyed shaping dragon breads. The bread recipe I used ended up being so wet and sticky I had to keep adding more and more cups of flour. It turned out yummy, but we ended up with far more bread dough than we needed!

We shaped three handsome dragon loaves and were able to send an unbaked loaf home with Grandma and Papa. Here are our dragons before they were baked. They are embellished with almond slices, dried cranberries, and dried mango, which we snipped into pointy plates and scales.

Our Michaelmas table set for dinner outside in the warm autumn evening. That’s Lucas’s sword he made for Michaelmas last year in second grade.

Lucas picked my dragon bread to eat first. He was dumbstruck when I handed him the good bread knife and asked if he would do us the honor of slaying the dragon for us. He did a great job slicing the bread for everyone.

I didn’t take a picture of my red lentil soup, but here’s the main course: dragon (grilled chicken thighs, sauteed spinach scales, sour cream, almond slices for toes, and a carved red bell pepper head.) I have to admit, carving and arranging this was super fun. Seeing the kids’ faces when I brought this out was the best! Thanks for grilling the chicken, Ian!

Okay. That’s it. Now I can start thinking about Halloween.

Once again, our beautiful school celebrated Michaelmas with a beautiful festival on Friday. Ian and I both got to attend, as did many from our school community. It was inspiring and awesome.

The twelfth grade put on a play about doing the right thing and facing down evil.

Here are our vibrant third graders, who played joyful villagers and performed a country dance.

There’s my darling son in blue, dancing with a lovely classmate! All is well, until a terrible sound shakes the whole village. What evil thing could it be?

A dragon! This fearsome, three-headed beast was created by the sixth grade and their talented teacher and parents. The entire sixth grade class is manning this huge puppet.

Run villagers!

Here comes the dragon! Heroic St. George meets it on the field.

The second graders, wearing their tunics with the cross of St. George and carrying their golden swords of righteousness, subdued the great creature with some help from the brave seniors. The people and the village are saved!

Here is St. George with the tamed dragon. The people have transmuted the forces of darkness with their courage, their champion, and the inspiration of Michael.

(My first wet-on-wet watercolor painting in … many years!)

It’s Friday and our son’s school is celebrating Michaelmas today with a festival and dragon play. Lucas’s third-grade class will be the village children and will do a country dance. Tonight our family will have a modest celebratory meal with dragon bread.

This festival is speaking to me more each year. We all face our own demons every day. We strive to subdue or conquer them so we may shine our inner light into our own lives and the lives of those we love. And the world is a brighter place for it.

Saint Michael’s Harvest Song

In autumn Saint Michael with sword and with shield
Passes over meadow and orchard and field.
He’s on the path to battle ‘gainst darkness and strife.
He is the heavenly warrior, protector of life.

The harvest let us gather with Michael’s aid;
The light he sheddeth fails not, nor does it fade.
And when the corn is cut and meadows are bare
We’ll don Saint Michael’s armor and onward will fare.

We are Saint Michael’s warriors with strong heart and mind,
We forge our way through darkness Saint Michael to find.
And there he stands in glory; Saint Michael we pray,
Lead us into battle and show us thy way.

—Anonymous

Our expected high today is 103 degrees F. So, frankly, it doesn’t much feel like autumn at the moment. The trees are taking their sweet time turning colors. I’ve been having to broaden my perspective to catch the colors of the season.

This is most of our Farm Fresh to You CSA delivery on the first day of fall, September 23. We had already eaten up all the red chard.

The only color other than green on my liquidambar tree.

Bits and bobs collected from the garden for our equinox wreath project. I’m in love with the orange rose hips.

The class dragon bread the third graders at Sacramento Waldorf School created in cooking class last Friday—see its ferocious teeth? Each child also made his own individual dragon bread. A few parents were asked to come and help with the baking. It took almost no time at all (because third graders are very competent) and my job was to take pictures.

Decorations for the Harvest Moon Cafe at the Golden Valley Charter School Harvest Faire. Our friend Parnassus worked very hard on this community event! We went last Saturday to support our dear friends who have recently changed schools, and to have some lovely harvest festival fun.

This isn’t a terrific photo of children in the petting zoo, but I’m drawn to it. Sweet little bunnies; sweet little hands.

Asher thought the duck and goose (Simon—a gander?) were especially interesting. They kept quacking and honking at him.

This is pink-cheeked, proud Asher after he braved the lair of the sleeping Angry Giant and stole a jewel from his treasure box. It was hot the day of the Harvest Faire, too.

Red hanging lanterns helped suggest the fiery colors of autumn, even though our landscape doesn’t much show them yet.

We hope you are finding and enjoying the colors of autumn!

I am not sure how to start except to say I’m kind of flabbergasted. A switch in Lucas’s mind flipped this week; or perhaps someone installed new drivers overnight. I’m pretty sure that now, just about a month before his half birthday, we are seeing the first signs of the 9 year change.

This in itself isn’t unexpected. (We were given a handout by Lucas’s teacher last spring when many of his older classmates were already going through it.)

Nor is the timing particularly surprising now that I think about it further. For me, this time around the autumn equinox is always rife (fetid?) with turmoil and change. I’ve written about this before, particularly in the context of the Waldorf myth of St. Michael, whose festival we’ll be celebrating this year on October 1 at school.

So it’s the time of year to excavate and uncover, to face our dragons and look at life and ourselves with new eyes, to ask ourselves if we like what we see, or if it’s time to take our swords and cut away the elements that are no longer serving us, that keep us from feeling right in the world. These challenges are opportunities, right? They help us grow.

This year I’m reflecting on Lucas’s dragons, for I feel he has his own now. His dreamy innocence is falling off him, little by little. His mind is sharp and becoming more critical by the day. He is now becoming an individual who is finally all the way in the world and looking about. He won’t like everything he sees. He won’t like everything he is.

This change of consciousness during the ninth year is challenging for child and parent alike, I am told. The payoff is that this is how a child naturally separates himself from his parents and develops his own individual character. It’s part of his learning to think critically, make choices, and become his own person—all fantastic stuff!

Admittedly, it is somewhat alarming to hear his brand-new self-loathing: “I hate myself. I’m the dumbest! I shouldn’t even exist!” His criticism should  fall squarely on his parents before too long.

Really, this is just the beginning of a phase that we all have to get through, and who knows what will happen. I would not have guessed that one of his first declarations of independence would be to “challenge himself” to stay awake the whole night last night!

Lucas came to tell us several times (10 p.m., 11:15 p.m.) that he couldn’t sleep. We gently but firmly sent him back to bed with an extra hug and the advice that one cannot fall asleep if one doesn’t still one’s body. We went to sleep. Asher, who is sick and was barking and coughing, woke up around 2:30 needing a drink of water. When I took Asher  back to bed, I realized that Lucas wasn’t in his bed. He wasn’t in Asher’s bed either. (I’m not the sharpest at 2:30 a.m. so I was confused.) Then I started to get scared and went looking through the house for Lucas. I found him asleep in the comfy armchair in the living room. I tried to slow my pounding heart and ultimately decided to leave him asleep in the chair. I went back to bed myself but had trouble going back to sleep. I kept worrying about him, wondering what he had on his mind that had caused his insomnia. What nightmare did he have that drove him from his bed? Oh, we weren’t gentle enough with him when he told us he couldn’t sleep earlier, and he was too afraid of our wrath to come to us when he needed us!

Nope. None of that. This morning he revealed he had deliberately tried to stay awake all night. He had played while the rest of us slept. He had spent a bunch of time finger-knitting a long rope. Ian and I sipped our morning coffee and tried to figure out which part of Lucas’s story was the lie. We told him that he isn’t to do that anymore: When we put him in bed for the night, we expect him to stay there! (I guess I should be glad that he didn’t leave the house!)

Natural consequences are tough. He was TIRED today at school. And bedtime came mighty early tonight.

This little treasure of a book, Astro Bunnies, isn’t fancy, isn’t old, isn’t even hardbound. It’s a Scholastic paperback that I found in a used bookstore and snatched up years ago. We first encountered it when we checked it out from the library when Lucas was small. The author is Christine Loomis, who wrote two other delightful Bunnies books—Coyboy Bunnies (1997) and Scuba Bunnies (2004). The illustrations in Astro Bunnies are by Ora Eitan.

Loomis’s text is lilting and fun; perfect for preschoolers or early readers with an affectionate ear for rhyme. Eitan’s illustrations have a retro-futuristic feel that I find appealing. (I’m sure that kind of style has a name in the art world, but I don’t know what it is.)

My boys love the idea of space travel and the juxtaposition of cuddly white bunnies and astronauts is a successful one. The bunnies put on space suits and go for a space walk, “ride their rockets in slow motion through a silent starry ocean,” and collect data for science. Really, what could be better than that?

Their adventure doesn’t stop there, however. “Then a ship appears in space. Bunnies from another place!” Preschool Lucas used to laugh and laugh at the alien bunnies.

Today, Lucas is home sick and since I had this book on my mind anyway, I asked him to read it to me. When the tables turn like this and he reads to me, it’s simply magical, no matter the stutters or mistakes. His reading skills are developing and he’s now in need of practice, practice, practice. We talked about tricky words (spelling of motion/ocean and dial/smile; sound differences of scouting/touring) and how sometimes you just have to memorize them.

To keep him busy today and help him practice his cursive writing, he is now copying out some words from this book for me—a quick little foray into homeschooling and homework, which is something he is keen to do (for now). It’s a win-win deal, except for the sniffles and fever.