Balancing Everything

A month of Thanksgiving

November 9, 2009 filed in: around the house, children's books, home education, seasons

When I first started researching the possibility of homeschooling my children, I read a lot about the Waldorf method. I read some weird things about the pedagogy, but as with many other educational approaches, I just took what I liked and disregarded anything I didn’t. One facet that really resounded with me was the principle of daily rhythms. It’s not an idea exclusive to Waldorf, of course, but I liked the way it was discussed in Beyond the Rainbow Bridge. I read that book during a hectic pregnancy and loved the idea of gentle daily, weekly, and seasonal routines.

Truthfully, I’ve always been absolutely terrible at making much of holidays and even birthdays. We’d have the cake and the candles and the presents, and of course celebrate things like Easter and Thanksgiving, but I didn’t do much in the weeks leading up to the holiday to make it special. I always wanted to, but didn’t really know where to begin. A few years ago I made more of an effort for Christmas, really investing in some decorations and my children loved it; just ate it right up. I’ve been better at birthdays too, but the other holidays and even the changing seasons have just sort of slipped by without a lot of fanfare.

It was the week before Halloween when my oldest child came home from an afternoon of playing with friends. He breathlessly related all the decorations he’d seen, I listened attentively and then unexpectedly at the end of our conversation, he sighed, looked around our house and said, “Couldn’t we hang up some orange lights or something? Maybe make some ghosts?”

Well. If he’s old enough to notice my lackadaisical ways, it was high time I got my butt in gear. We made the jack-o-lantern jars, I hung up Halloween orange lights on the porch, I found a few decorations on sale at Robert’s Craft Store, and made some cookies for friends. I swore I’d do better in November.

Now that the hustle and bustle of last week is behind me, I set out to do just that. I remembered the Waldorf inspired nature tables I’d read about and admired on Flickr and figured we could do something like that to start. I have an entry way table that exists just to take up some space, really. I cleaned off the photographs and figured I could make a little fall table runner out of the wool felt I had in my stash.

I drew up some ideas for other table toppers I could make for every month of the year and started planning out how much wool felt I’d need to purchase. I enjoyed a relaxing Sunday evening by the fire hand stitching on all my little leaves. To make the leaves, I just printed Photoshop leaf shapes on a sheet of paper and used those as my pattern. I stitched them on to a single layer of cream wool felt, cut to fit my entry table. When that was finished, I layered a bit of muslin behind and bound it in some harvesty colored fabric I had in my sewing area. I bound it quilt style.

Today I told the kids my plans for the table. They ran downstairs and found the wooden acorns in our play kitchen, picked a little basket for them, and scattered them about. We made the paper-cup turkeys as a school project (modified from these instructions – thanks for the link, mom!), and they went out on their own accord to hunt for fall leaves (we haven’t any, it’s sad, really), and they came back in with a few from our Quaking Aspen trees. I’ll have to see what I can do about that.

Finally, we sat on the rug in the front room facing the table and read The Story of the Pilgrims, during which I got completely choked up.

Now I’m browsing Etsy and planning out more holiday decorations for this month — none of which I have the budget for, but maybe I can sort out how to make some myself. How cute are these?

Blessed Banner – I absolutely love this! She’s got an adorable “rejoice” one for Christmas too.
Be Thankful stacked blocks.
Give Thanks Blocks – I’m sure I could make these somehow.
Wool Acorns – I’ve bookmarked tutorials on how to make these, but we don’t have any acorns around here to use.

Some other Fall / Thanksgiving stuff I’ve found online:

Fall Pillow Tutorial. Oh this is so cute. I have to make it.
Thankful Tree – I’ve done this before on a much smaller scale. I love the hugeness of this one.
Thankful Jar – The jar graphics are kind of ug, but the little scroll/tickets themselves are cute enough.

I also ordered a couple more Thanksgiving books on Amazon. My mom recommended these two — she enjoyed them when she was homeschooling my younger siblings: The First Thanksgiving & N.C. Wyeth’s Pilgrims. The later of which, she says has gorgeous paintings — Amazon doesn’t have any pictures up of the book, you can see it here (but I got mine on Amazon for $0.31).

If I had comments enabled, I’d ask you what your Thanksgiving traditions are, I mean, in addition to the feast. Email me if you’ve got any fabulous activities or ideas. Insert pun about how we’ll just gobble them up. (Groan!)

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A month of Thanksgiving

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