Martinmas has become very dear to me. I love the act of kindness at the heart of this festival. This year in addition to telling the story of Saint Martin I also told another story after circle time for both boys but especially for my littlest one. We also had a guest yesterday, a friend of ours who is four years old. Last time he was with us he LOVED circle time, so even though it was Friday and we normally don't do any school activities, we did circle time and story time for him. Circle time always seems to be a bit more magical when he joins us, we like the larger group dynamic & sharing the magic of Waldorf with him. The story I told is from this post at Joyful Toddlers, called "A Story of Autumn Light". Such a sweet story for little ones and a beautiful & simple way to explain the darkness this time of year. My favorite line in the story is "...we can keep ourselves and others warm by doing acts of kindness, to warm our hearts.”
We also made horseshoe Martinmas cookies from the recipe at Raising Little Shoots. The boys loved them, although they invoked the same sugar cookie cut out frustration for me, lol! (You can read about my history with cut out cookies here.)
We made our lanterns from the instructions in All Year Round. Out of all my Waldorf books, I think this one is my favorite. It has instructions for every Waldorf craft I can think of. I often wonder why I even bother with Pinterest when I have all the instructions to these projects sitting on my bookshelf! We made the lovely circular lanterns from stiff watercolor paintings they painted just for Martinmas. Then I cut out stars and moons and suns and we glued kite paper onto the cut out shapes. I couldn't help making the 5 sided lantern as well. I chose a gnome picture (pg 264) at the back of the book to decorate it with. I enlarged the image to 120% and then cut through the copy and watercolor paper with an exacto knife. If you do this make sure you have very sharp exacto blades, mine could have been sharper. I love how it came out though. We glued the blue cut out gnome to Michael's lantern and he's thrilled he has a gnome too.
I love how the lanterns brighten up our dark evenings this time of year. Tomorrow we will head out at dark for our lantern walk and hopefully be joined by our friends as well.
How will you be celebrating Martinmas?
Until next time...
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Those lanterns are precious, and thanks for the reminder to dust off my bookshelf, I need to take a look at my wonderful Waldorf craft books too.
ReplyDeleteOk, I totally need to buy All Year Round! I've been putting it off but I think I need it! For the watercolor paintings, did you just wet the whole paper and then do normal wet on wet, or something different, to get the crescent shape? I don't know if we've tried doing shapes yet.
ReplyDeleteYes, great book! We did a combination of wet on wet and wet on dry. My lantern, the blue one is all wet on wet technique. Shapes are fun, I just tell my eldest we can't really control the shapes in wet on wet, we have to let them morph as they please so he doesn't get frustrated with the process. You can also go in after it dries to add shapes wet on dry. Hope this makes sense.
DeleteI bought the book! Did you do the yellow first? I just did blue first and then yellow on top of it and of course it's green! Or do you take out some of the blue with a tissue to make space for the yellow?
ReplyDeleteI did the yellow shapes first then the blue around giving the yellow a wide girth. The colors met and mingled a little bit. Make sure the paper isn't too wet when you begin. I wet mine with a wide brush and then it sat for a few moments while I helped the boys. Glad you got the book!
DeleteThese Martinmas lanterns are beautiful, it's always such a pleasure reading your posts and I am always so delighted when you link to Seasonal Celebration! Thank you and Happy Thanksgiving! Rebecca x
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