Preparing for Michaelmas

Yesterday I shared a bit about the story of St. George and the dragon Now Michaelmas is viewed as a celebration of the harvest as well as the slaying of the dragon. Waldorf Schools like to focus on slaying your inner dragon. I will share a few more dragon books with you and also go check the posts at Seasons of Joy on Taming the Inner Dragons, so far she has done Guilt and Responsibility,  Fear of Failure, Fear of Success and Anger.

• Saint George and the Dragon retold by Margaret Hodges is the story of St. George and the dragon. I found it a little above the level for Hazel's understanding and will not read it to her. However for older children it would be great.
• A Book of Dragons by Hosie and Leonard Baskin gives summaries and a picture of various dragons throughout history including St. George and his dragon. I will read this summary to Hazel.
• The Knight and the Dragon by Tomie dePaola is a cute tale about a knight and a dragon who go to fight one another and have a few issues. In the end they open a restaurant together.

I'm still waiting for three more dragon books from the library. Hopefully I will get them by Saturday. I will let you know if they are any good if I do.

I also have Hazel's things ready to reenact fighting the dragon. We have her sword (inflatable, but traditional Waldorf would be wooden), a yellow cape, a crown and of course a dragon. I just told Steve maybe we would make him a dragon costume and have him dress up as the dragon. Hmmm, come to think of it we have a dinosaur/dragon costume in Hazel's dress ups. I wonder if it will fit him. We'll see if he will go along with it.
Michaelmas is also about the harvest and food is very important. Blackberries are often served due to an old Irish folk tale of Satan landing on blackberry brambles when he fell from heaven and he returns each 29th of September to spit on the fruit of the plants he landed on and of course his spit makes the fruit inedible after that date. (Source)

Source

I think I will try this recipe for Harvest Apple Soup. I'm not sure Steve will like it but it sounds like something Hazel and i will love. We will also make dragon bread as I described yesterday. Our plan is to make it with our huckabuck bread recipe from our parent/child class last year. Then since none of us really like blackberries, I think I will serve either a raspberry tart (I have one in my freezer that we need to use up) or an apple pie.

A Simple Fall Craft Hazel Made from Mostly Natural Things from Walks

There are many recipes available on line for bread, stew/soup, goose, and pie. The tradition of goose has to do with paying quarterly rents in England and for Michaelmas you gave a goose with your rent. (Source) Here are a few:

• Michaelmas Harvest Bread on Copywriter's Kitchen
• Michaelmas Pie on Irish Culture and Customs (Michaelmas Pie always involves blackberries)
• Michaelmas Dumplings on The English Kitchen
• Potato Soup on April's Homemaking
• St. Michael's Oatmeal Waffles on Catholic Culture.org
• Curried Vegetable Soup from the Earth Mom on Lancaster Online

I also plan to make some salt dough to make some dragon and autumn decorations.  Last year I shared a pretty good round-up of dragon crafts if you are interested. Depending on how Hazel is feeling, we will see what we get done. You could also do a harvest or fall craft. Above I shared a simple natural (or mostly--we used fake leaves) autumn wreath. Hazel just glued some things onto a paper plate that I had cut out the center. Most of the things were found on nature walks.

Well, I hope that gives you some ideas on celebrating Michaelmas! Enjoy!!

Michaelmas & Fighting Your Inner Dragon

I almost forgot to announce the winner of the Show Me a Story Giveaway! The winner is Rondah. Rondah, you have 48 hours to email me back to claim your prize. Congratulations!! Thank you to everyone who entered!

Source

Last year I learned about Michaelmas. It is a Christian Festival celebrated at the Waldorf Schools. It is on September 29th each year. In the Catholic Church it is known as the Feast of St. Michael or All Angels Day. For more information on the Catholic Feast visit here.

Welcome Autumn Acorn Garland

Ok, so I flipped through the Paper Source catalog this weekend and was inspired by this garland. Now I love Paper Source!! And I love their products, but I cannot always spend the money and some of them are easy enough to figure out how to make on my own.

This was one I thought I definitely could do. First I googled for an acorn image. I found this great coloring page at Free Printable Coloring Pages. I printed it full page. Well actually I copied it into Word because I had trouble printing from their site, but then printed it full page onto cardstock. I printed/copied it onto fall colored cardstock for the tops and cut them out. I took my pattern piece and cut the bottom higher than the squiggle and cut them out of handmade papers that I had on hand. I glued these to the tops. Then I printed out the words "Welcome Autumn" from Word at 250 for size. I really liked 300 but wanted to save on how many of the clear sticker sheets I used. Then I hung them off yarn by our front door. How are you welcoming autumn this year? (And for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, how are you welcoming spring?)

Happy Family Times #27--Meeting Cinderella

Just a reminder that today is the last day to enter my current giveaway!!

Have you done anything new with your family? Anything fun? Kelly from Happy Whimsical Hearts and I would love to hear about it. Please share below!! Or look below for inspiration for some fun family activities (and read about mine and Kelly's as well).

This week we had a lot of relax and cuddle time since we have a sick little one. However before she got her cold (or at least before she showed signs of it) we went to our local McDonalds for dinner and to meet Cinderella. For some reason our local McDonalds has characters and different events all the time. The only reason we go to McDonalds is to see the characters. Usually if we go we just get french fries and drinks since that is about all I can usually get Hazel to eat. However since Cinderella was going to be there from 4-6, we had to eat there. We ordered a cheeseburger Happy Meal since Steve wanted a cheeseburger (and it got Hazel the small fries and apple slices plus the toy) and I got their premium chicken strips which we actually liked. Hazel and I split it and Steve helped out too. Plus Steve and I split some fries.

When we arrived Cinderella was painting the girls' nails. When it was Hazel's turn she got blue nails. (Have I mentioned how I really hate blue nail polish?) Next Cinderella put eye shadow on the girls, but I talked Hazel out of this. She was going to do blush as well, but for some reason did not. Next Cinderella blew up blue balloons for the kids and autographed them and drew different pictures on them. Hazel got a crown.

She also put pink metallic ribbons/streamers on the end of them. Cinderella then noticed that several kids were eating their dinners so she had the ones not eating dance to Bippity Boppity Boo. She passed out lyrics to the parents sitting near by to help sing.

Then she had the kids play keep the balloons in the air. If your balloon popped you were out, but she gave the ones whose popped stickers that said something about getting popped.

 Next Cinderella made them streamer wands to dance with. All she did was rip a piece of crepe paper streamer (blue or pink) and roll one end to be thin enough to stick in a straw. However the streamers kept falling out so one of the mothers went to her car and got some scotch tape and taped them in so we weren't all fixing them every two seconds.  (We are definitely going to use this idea for Hazel's birthday party since she wants a princess party.)

By this point it was getting close to six, and since that usually is around the time we start going to bed, we headed home. Hazel gave Cinderella a hug goodbye!

Now I have to say, Hazel and I went to see several of the princesses at McDonalds over the summer. It amazes me that almost all of them have been the same actress (she owns the business) and the kids who are almost always the same group don't seem to notice. Or maybe they just don't care. The princess always gives a gift to each child with a business card attached, so they get good advertising and McDonalds definitely gets more business. I guess it is a win-win for them. During the summer it was at lunch time so Hazel and I would walk over after having an early lunch at home. This time she was very excited that Mommy and Daddy were with her. I can only imagine what it will be like when we go to Disney. It amazes me how much she loves the princesses when the first time she saw anything Disney on television or (movie wise) was this past weekend. We let her watch Cinderella on tape. I figured it would not scare her and we gave in on the television when she was barely moving from the couch. Now we will have to break that again. Oh, well. She does know she is only getting to watch it because she is sick.


Now it is your turn to share how your family has spent some quality time lately.

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Cuckoo by Lois Ehlert Virtual Book Club for Kids and Multicultural Monday

Just a reminder, Tuesday is the last day to enter my giveaway!! I hope you have entered!

Sharing Saturday is still open!! Please come share your child-oriented crafts and activities!

Last week I shared Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert for the Virtual Book Club for Kids. This week we did some activities with her Cuckoo or Cucu in Spanish. This book is written in both English and Spanish on each page. Therefore, we are continuing our celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month.

Cuckoo is a wonderful book about a cuckoo bird who is very vain. She knows she is beautiful and she knows she has a lovely voice. The other birds are sick of her especially since she is lazy and does not help gather the food. All the birds go to sleep including the bird leader, Owl, so they will be well rested for the next morning's work of gathering all the seeds so they could plant them the following spring for their food source (and the other animals around). 

Cuckoo becomes bored singing to herself and then she sees a red flash and fears it is another beautiful, flashy bird. She goes to investigate and discovers the meadows are on fire. Mole is out of his hole and tells her to bring the seeds to his hole to save them. It is too late to get help from the other sleeping birds, so she spends the entire night flying to the meadow to the woods bringing all the seeds to mole's hole. She gets very close to the fire and her beautiful wings turn black and her eyes turn red from the smoke. When the birds awake they see the burnt fields and are upset about having lost their seeds and thus their food source until the black Cuckoo comes to tell them what she has done.

One of the things I love about Lois Ehlert's books is you can often see how she made the pictures. This one was a very easy collage of papers joined by brass fasteners. Well Hazel and I made our own Cuckoo. Hazel made a colorful one and I made a black one. I did all the cutting and Hazel helped with the gluing and the hole punching as well as putting it together.

Hazel loved making them. Now she is enjoying playing with them as well. Another thing I loved about this book was that the animal community worked together to save their food source. All the birds participated in saving the seeds each year to feed not just themselves but the other animals as well. Then in this story the mole provided his home as a place to store them safely from the fire. Now that we are entering our last week of National Hunger Month, I hope you will take up my challenge from last week and donate a can to your local food pantry or soup kitchen. Let us help end hunger in our own areas!! Or you can make a donation to the No Kid Hungry Campaign (run by Share Our Strength). They are fighting to make sure no child in the United States is hungry!!
 
Now it is your turn to share!! If you have a new or old post about an activity to do with a Lois Ehlert book, please share below and grab the button and code if you would like to help us advertise! (FYI, the blog hop goes live at midnight!!) Also please make sure you visit the other blogs that are hosting to see what they have created with the various Lois Ehlert books! (Plus next Monday we will share another project to go with a different book!)

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