Michaelmas

We celebrated Michaelmas this year with stories, songs, baking and crafts.

For stories we read "Dragon Baked Bread" by Warren Lee Cohen - a wonderful Waldorf inspired story about a dragon and how he saves the town's bread festival.  Very cute and appropriate for our making of dragon bread.

We also told an African folktale of how sunflowers came to be, which involved the courage of a young boy to conquer a dragon, which was nice to accompany the story of St. George and the dragon which so often accompanies Waldorf Michaelmas festivals.

We also made felt balls.  This took a couple of Fridays to complete, but the balls were the "falling stars" that imbue strength to humanity on the earth during this time of year.  So taking washed wool, warm water and soap we wrapped stones in wool and felted away.  Even the wee little ones were able to participate.  The following week  we harvested marigolds and boiled them in a gallon pot to use for dyeing.  While the water boiled, we sewed on stars, buttons and ribbons to our balls.  Once the dye was ready we dipped away!