Our Advent

Alice and I started off this week making our version of Speculaas adapting a recipe that we have been using for years to ensure that our gluten free and dairy free friends could share them.  The resulting biscuit dough was far too moist to be rolled out but Alice was adamant that she still wanted them to be star shaped.  We managed to find an entirely unconventional way to cut them and get them onto a baking tray without squishing them too much.  Making these biscuits have been part of our Advent for years, a tradition that I am sure I will continue long after the children have left home, they are so delicious and don't last long.  I am hopeless at remembering to take photos of food when I have cooked it, when I went to the tin to take a photo there was one small star remaining, one of a couple we made at the end when we were running out of dough.

This time of year can become crazy busy with invitations, things to do, places to be, presents to buy.  There is so much more going on and it can be so easy to say yes to everything without thinking about how we can fit everything in.  Last year we did things differently, I did no planning beforehand and just went with the flow and it worked well, we did not get overwhelmed with 'too much'.  I have planned things this year but with plenty of space for pauses and rest which will not get filled up, it is all too easy to fill in the spaces isn't it, so you end up dashing from one thing to another.

A few weeks I got out my collection of Christmas books and stories, along with previous years plans which I always keep to make planning each year easier.  I love the stories that we read and share each year, last week we read The Glass Angels by Susan Hill a delightful story set in the 1940s shortly after WWII, I still remember the first time I read this story but even after several years of reading it has not lost it's charm.  We have a focus for each of the four weeks of Advent, following an idea that I read on the internet years ago.  I am sure what I do, what we do, is nothing like that original idea but it is important to make these things are own to make them work.  If we try and follow what other folks are doing we are setting ourselves up to fail which is never a good start for things.

Advent for me is a time of moving through the darkness to the return of the light, a time to seek out the light in everything and keep it gently glowing.  It's a time of inner searching, of anticipation, of inner quiet through all the busyness of life and all that this time of year brings.  It is a path to finding balance and peacefulness in my life, not just at this time of year but at all times.

In week one of Advent, for us this was last week, we focus on the mineral kingdom the physical foundation of life, the ground we stand on and the basis of our ever changing existence.  We think about our connection to the earth and what that means to us.  It is a time for us to think about any changes we should be making over the coming year to be ever mindful of our effect on our beautiful earth.  We live in a geology rich area so we took a walk locally to investigate the rocks, this has kindle an interest in Alice to learn more.  I did a geology project with Cameron at a similar age so I already have some notes which I can use again, I am looking forward to repeating some of the wonderful geology walks we did back then.

This week we have been focusing on the plant kingdom, a kingdom that like us, but unlike the mineral kingdom has life.  We have been thinking about all that we receive from this kingdom, the nourishment, the beauty, how it is life sustaining for us and it in turn is sustained by the earth, wind, rain, light and warmth from which it creates a balance of growth and decay.  We have been celebrating the bounty of this kingdom, showing gratitude towards the growers who invest their time and resources in providing food to sustain us.

Next week we will be focussing on the Animal kingdom with which we share our capacity for movement, will be reminding ourselves of our relationship with this kingdom, of our appreciation all that they do for us and our need for continued compassion to all animals.  In the last week of Advent we will be focusing on Humankind and our relationship with each other and the world around us.  We will be giving thanks to the friendships and people who have nourished and supported us this year.  We will be thinking about those who are struggling at this time.

Amongst all the stories and poems we are sharing we will be observing St Lucia day next week making Lussekater buns, making wreaths and sharing food with friends, celebrating the Winter Solstice by hosting a small ceremony and watching the sun setting, making some small gifts and decorations, spending time with extended family celebrating a significant birthday, baking and eating mince pies, and putting out extra treats for the birds as we have very cold weather forecast.  I managed to get all my cards made last week but have only sent out the International ones and those that I am hand delivering so far.  I hope to write and send all the others by early next week, we are currently experiencing lots of postal strikes so if I don't send them soon they won't make it in time.  

We have pared back our focused learning time for this month, focusing instead on the time of year and all that it holds for us.  Some of things we were due to have been doing with others have been cancelled, or we have not attended as Alice was not well at the beginning of last week.  My plans may not always come to be but they are only a plan, something we hoped to do if we could, if they don't happen it is not the end of the world, whatever we do will be good enough.

I hope whatever your plans look like for this time of year they are good enough and that you have space to pause and rest somewhere in there too.

A different kind of Advent

Last Wednesday was a very full day for me, it was intentional and planned  When you have to drive to most places you need to be, whilst also allowing for all the extra layers you need to put on at this time of year, a half an hour to an hour activity can take up over two hours of time.  So rather than going out every day of the week for a short while, I opted for a day which was full to the brim, I could then have two full days at home.  I do love my days at home.

I would never have considered planning to intentionally have a very full day, not so long ago.  That would have been a recipe for me thinking about it a lot on the days leading up to it, I would have been awake for most of the previous night worrying about how I was going to fit everything in.   A wakeful night would mean that I was really tired during my busy day, I would forget things or become anxious that I would be late to where I needed to be.   I would be a bag full of worries and anxieties for days.

I know that the last, nearly two, years have been hard for all of us.  I know that the future is and always will be an uncertain place but the added uncertainties of late have been very unsettling.  The enforced slowing down of my life has had unexpected consequences which I have been really grateful for, one of those is that when I focus only on the day ahead and what I need or want to do and how to make it all work, I am totally present.  That doesn't mean that I am not thinking about the bigger picture at all but rather that I am not focusing on the detail of the days ahead which are often the bits that bring in the worries with them and doesn't leave us with much headspace to think about much else.

When the first of December rolled around I had not thought about Advent at all.  In the past I have prepared four weeks of stories, poems and activities based around a different theme each week, usually starting my preparation way back in November.   It would have to be different this year with Cameron at college but I still wanted to do things with Alice.  I have amassed a lovely collection of Christmas storybooks for older children and although we would not have the time to read all these ,as we have in the past, there were some that simply had to be read.  I made some loose plans, a list of possibilities for each week, it gave us all a simpler heartfelt Advent this year.  Rethinking things in this way meant that when I had to make an early tea before Alice went out to Scouts I used the evening to make all the Christmas cards that I was sending this year in one evening and felt a real sense of accomplishment.  I have been making my own cards for years and years and I don't ever remember getting them made in such a short time.  I know that making them is only one part of the process, they did all get written and posted in time even the handful of international ones.  Leaving it late to plan things turned out ok, I had to reduce what we could do but that is no bad thing at this time of year which can get really busy.  Choosing the things that really mattered is something we should probably be doing all the time anyway.

When I write something down to be done on a particular day it psychologically adds a pressure for me to complete it on that day and when circumstances do not allow for that I feel that I have failed in some way.  That last sentence should really have been written in the past tense, another consequence of the last couple of years is that I am learning to let go of this.  I am slowly learning that it is ok when things that I have planned will not be able to happen, it is not a failure.  Even those loose plans I had made did not quite come to fruition as life got in the way.  We read very few of the stories that I had intentions to share this year, prioritising the ones that we love and Advent really would not feel right without sharing them,  The Glass Angels by Susan Hill being one of them.

It is also about trusting that all will be well when it feels like your plans are a little too fluid than you might have usually chosen them to be.  I knew that I wanted to make a few small gifts to give this year, when my Mother in Law was visiting us for a long weekend at the beginning of the month it was forecast to rain for most of her stay, a chance remark by her that she would love to do more crafting led to us doing just that on each day of her stay.  We did needle felting, quilling and wood burning together and I used the time to make several small gifts.

Advent and Christmas is now over for another year.  It has felt relaxed and calm this year, I will try to remember this for future years, that it is possible to have a loose plan and it is ok to let go when things don't pan out quite how we envisaged they would, it does work!  

I hope whatever you celebrate at this time of year has been restful and restoring for you and yours too.

The gift of light

We are now in the early days of the busiest time of the year, or what feels like it.  I don't know about you but I suspect that I am busier in the summer months but because it is warmer and the daylight is around for much longer you don't feel busy in the quite the same way.  This time of year is not supposed to be a time for being busy, it is a time for slowing down, for quiet time and going gently, perhaps that is why we can feel frazzled when we try and do so much, it is difficult to say no when there are so many wonderful things going on around us.

The past two years we have avoided all this hustle and bustle by going away, last year for the whole of December and the year before the week leading up to Christmas.  Both these trips were to places where we were hidden from the crazy, busy of this season.  We are not going away this year so I have been thinking about ways of doing the same whilst being at home, while I ponder how this will work I do not want to be paralysed by the thoughts that we need to hide a home to find the peace and quiet.  It is a difficult balance.

I spend a lot of my life planning, making sure that each week is a balance of time at home and time out and about, a balance of quiet and busy, all the time I am holding that space making sure it works for us.  I have learnt the hard way how important it is to include the quiet time, the peace, the time for breathing out.  As I head into this time, with a month of many illnesses behind me, my planning has become drawn towards the quiet, being at home more, interspersed with time with friends or going to events - but as always only one thing a day.

If I am going to celebrate or observe an event or festival in some way I need to feel a connection to it.  Over my years as a parent I have searched for a way to observe the weeks in December that were more than a build up to a day of eating large amounts of food and giving and receiving gifts.  I found what I was looking for a few years ago and have continued to use this, changing it slightly each year to reflect the changes in the children.  We use this time to think about our connection to the world around us, focusing on one aspect each week.  The first week we consider the mineral kingdom, our connection to the Earth the physical foundation of a life, the ground we stand on.  The second week we consider the plant kingdom celebrating the bounty and nourishment we receive, the growers who make this possible for us, the rain and sun that creates a balance of growth and decay,  the life of this kingdom unlike the still, solid mineral world.  The third week we consider the animal kingdom, we remind ourselves of our relationship with animals, how we share our capacity of movement with them, consider their traits and how we might be like particular animals.  The final week we consider Humans, how all the other three kingdoms contribute to our existence, our place in the universe, how we are with other people, how we can support each other and look after each other.  We explore these themes, ideas and thoughts through stories, poems, songs and now that the children are older we have been talking about what they mean to us.  It is not a time to be critical, it is a time of thinking,

The four weeks of December is also a time of moving through the darkness to the return of the light, the last few weeks of the days shortening.  It can be hard time especially if you live somewhere like me where the sun is rarely seen, with heavy grey clouds filling the sky day after day.  Staying positive is hard.  Somehow the chinks of positivity can be found, by being grateful, for thinking about all the wonderful things we have done this year,  spending time with those we love, what we could do in the future, the possibilities, maybe sowing the seeds of a new beginning.

The gift of light 

I thankfully hold

And pass to my neighbour

Its shining gold

That everyone may

Feel its glow,

Receiving and giving

May love and grow

How do you celebrate and stay positive at this time or year?

Festivals

Back in November, that seems a long time ago now, I shared some of the festivals we had learned about and observed in the Autumn.  As the Winter draws to a close and Spring is slowly beckoning us with its bloom it is time to share those we have learned about, celebrated or observed over the Winter.  I shared a list at the end of my post about Autumn Festivals which seemed very long at the time, I didn't think we would have time for them all but we did and added some more!

Advent

I was a bit late with my planning of how we would observe/celebrate Advent, only doing my research a few days before it started.  In the end it didn't matter as the research I did will now stand us in good stead for future years.  My hesitation, I am sure, was down to the fact that I was unsure of how Advent should fit into our family.  I read as much as I could, mostly on blogs, about how others observe and celebrate this time of year, finally settling on a lovely festival attributed to Rudolph Steiner although there seems to be some dispute as to whether he did create it or not.  Anyway each week of Advent has a theme, a festival, which we used as the focus of our learning each week.  We created a star path as a visible sign of time passing.  A large star for each of the Sundays and a smaller star for the other days.  We kept these in a small bowl on our seasonal table laying out a new one each morning when we also lit a candle.  The path wove its way from the bowl round the candle to our wee tree.  We read about Advent and learnt a song which we added a verse to each week.

Week One - Festival of Stones

During the week we read stories nine and ten from The Festival of Stones.  We placed rocks and minerals from our own collections on our seasonal table and identified them during the week (or tried to) we also learnt about how they were formed.  We live in a mineral rich part of our country so we look at some geology maps of our county, including what was mined and where.  We visited a local museum which has an excellent exhibition of local rocks and minerals which includes a time line.

Week Two - Festival of Plants

We read stories 11 and 12 from The Festival of Stones.  I decided to focus our learning on trees for the weeks as this would enable us to take out learning outside.   We read a few pages from the Earth section of this beautiful book learning about what the Earth Kingdom has meant to our ancient ancestors.  We read the Norse myth about Yggdrassil.  We learnt about the Holly Tree, writing up facts about the tree to share at Forest School.  We went for a walk in a local wood to learn to identify trees in Winter.  We added plant finds to our seasonal table, replacing the rocks.

Week Three - Festival of Animals

We read stories 13 - 16 from The Festival of Stones during the week.  We changed our seasonal table replacing the plant finds with animals (not real ones!) and some of the things we get from animals such as wool, silk and honey.  We leant about animals that hibernate and why they do it.  We made bird food which we hung out for the birds and went birdwatching at a local nature reserve.

Week Four - Festival of Humankind

Over the course of the week we read stories 16 - 28 from The Festival of Stones.  The rest of the week was slightly different to previous weeks as we were away from home.  Our festival was about being with family, sharing food together and enjoying their company.  In the years that we spend Christmas at home I will think about how to embrace this.

During the four week of Advent we also learnt about and observed some other festivals:

St Nicholas Day - 06 December

St Nicholas was a gift giver and is celebrated in many forms around the world so we discovered when  we read about who and how this day is celebrated.  We found a story to share and made some spicy biscuits which we shared with friends.

St Lucia Day - 13 December 

St Lucia is the patron saint of Light.  This Swedish festival which I remember celebrating as a child.  We read about how Children celebrate this day, a story behind the celebrations and made some Lussekatt using the recipe from this book.

Hanukah - 18 December

This is a Jewish Festival of Lights that is celebrated on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kisler.  We read a story about why this is an important time for Jewish people.  We learnt a simple song and made potato latkes.

Winter Solstice - 21 December 

The shortest day of the year, a day worthy of celebrating in my book as the days get longer thereafter!  For the past few years we have celebrated this at a friends house but she was not well enough to host this year we missed the lovely party.  We put up our Christmas decorations on this day, we watched the sun rise and set and we burnt our worries on a fire we had in the garden.

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Mawlid an Nabi - 03 January

The birth day of the Prophet Muhammad which is an important day for Muslims.  We read and found about the Prophet and Islam, which was new religion to the children.  We read some lovely stories which promoted some interesting discussion.  We also learnt a traditional prayer, sung to the Prophet on this day.

Twelfth Night - 06 January  

The twelfth night after Christmas Day, we talked about the Story of the Three Kings and read the Baboushka story and a delightful short story in this book.  I made a Gallette de Rois, a delicious pie which is traditionally made in many countries on this day.  My recipe was a Nigella Lawson one from   this book.

Plough Monday - 12 January

This is an old tradition which I discovered when I was researching the next festival.  In many ways the two traditions are interlinked and I can't help thinking that they are really one and the same but took place in different parts of the country depending on the nature of the agriculture.  On Plough Monday farm labourers would tour their local villages raising money and work, often in disguise as they could be mischievous in their endeavours.  If you would like to know more you can read about it here and here.

Wassailing - 17 January

There are, it seems, two versions of wassailing.  One that involves singing to raise money when work was scarce and has evolved into our tradition of carol singing, this took place prior to Christmas.  The other involved the blessing of the apple trees to ensure a good harvest.  We had a small ceremony to bless the apple trees in the the small wood were we meet for Forest School.  We sang a song, blessed the tree and shared some hot apple punch together.

Imbolc - 01 February

Our Imbolc celebrations were a little subdued this year as we were all feeling rather sick.  I made a seed cake using the recipe here (scroll down it is at the bottom of the page) which was lovely.  We also made some Brigid crosses using reeds, not our usual jolly celebration.

Candlemas - 02 February

A day for blessing candles, for noticing that candles are needed less as the days are lengthening.  We read a story about the slow return of the warmth and light.  I would like to make candles in future years but I need to make sure I order the bits in time.......

Valentines Day - 14 February

I have never looked into the history of day and was unsurpassed to learn that there is much conflicting information as to its origins.  I made a few lavender hearts which I gave to friends along with sachets of Love tea.  I have year to divide fi this is a festival/tradition for our family, it has always been one that has long lost its true meaning and seems to have been taken over by commercialism.

Shrove Tuesday - 17 February

This is another festival that has lost its meaning to many, taken over and renamed, in the UK anyway, as Pancake Day.  However in discussing its origins it sparked off an interesting discussion about the food we eat..........we did make and enjoy eating pancakes!  Next year I am tempted to make these as suggested by Camilla.

Chinese New Year - 19 February

A very important time of year for Chinese people as we discovered when we read about this festival.  The festivities last for two weeks ending with a Lantern Festival.  It is a time for family and sharing of food.  We read a fun story about how the animals came to each be given a year, 2015 is the year of the sheep.  We had a stir fry for tea and made some almond biscuits which are traditionally made at New Year.

I know that Lent started this week but it has been too busy to fit it in.  We are going to learn about this next week, when there are no other festivals, this will complete our Winter Festivals.

I acquired some wonderful books to help us celebrate these festivals, some this year and others in previous years:

The Winter Book by Rotraut Susanne Berner (I didn't pay that much for my copy!)

While the Bear Sleeps by Caitlin Matthews

The Festival of Stones by Reg Down

The Winter Solstice by Ellen Jackson

Spring

As Spring approaches we will be considering the following festivals that take place in the season:

St David's Day - 01 March

Hina Maturi - 03 March

Purim - 04 March

Chinese Lantern Festival - 05 March

Holi/Hola Mahalla - 06 March

Mothering Sunday - 15 March

Spring Equinox - 20 March (along with an solar eclipse)

Palm Sunday - 22 March

April Fools Day - 01 April

Easter Sunday - 05 April

Passover - 06 April

Songkran Baisaki - 13 April

St George's Day - 23 April

Beltain - 01 May

Wesak - 04 May

St Michael's Day - 08 May

Rogation Sunday - 10 May
Whitsun - 24 May
Oak Apple Day - 29 May

As always seems like rather a lot, we will fit what we can or what takes our interest.........