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!

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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.

A New Friend for Dragon -- Review & Giveaway Plus Dragon and Knight Craft Round-Up

 

Disclosure: I was sent a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. I am working with The Children's Book Review to bring you this post.

With back to school there have been some great books coming out about differences. Let's face it when kids go back to school, they see people who are different from them in some way. It is important for kids to realizes that differences can be a good thing and that it is ok to be friends with people who are different. The book I'm sharing today is about just this. It is A New Friend for Dragon by Bianca Schulze and illustrated by Samara Hardy. 

Michaelmas

Felt dragon we brought to school for the classroom

Today is Michaelmas. This is the day of celebrating of St. Michael and to celebrate the harvest, change of seasons, etc. It is the first year we are celebrating. Last week I knew nothing of the holiday, so this is all new for me. My first question of course was what is Michaelmas? I did some web research and came across a few good sites to help. In general terms wisegeek explains some of the history behind Michaelmas. We of course are looking at the Waldorf side of celebrating. For this I found some great blogs giving information, recipes, etc. to help with the celebration. The first blog is Lady I Swear By All Flowers. She gives details of her celebration (her first time) last year including the story of St. George defeating the dragon which she shortened to be one page. Our Little Nature Nest has a slightly longer version of the story/legend. She also offers a link to a similar story where a little girl slays the dragon, Li Chi Slays The Serpent. Needless to say we will be reading this version as well.

So what is Michaelmas and why am I celebrating it? Michaelmas is the day of celebrating St. Michael the archangel and St. George, St. Michael's earthly form. St. George came to earth and slayed the dragons to save the people. This is the legend in the United Kingdom. So Waldorf education celebrates this day to celebrate the harvest and the start of autumn as well as using the dragon stories as a way of celebrating courage, strength and fighting our own inner demons. What a strong message to send to children. I think it is always positive for children to see that we struggle with our own inner demons and can reflect on it, but also to show them that each one of them has strength and courage to fight them.

Bread before the oven

Bread after baking

From what I have learned on line, it seems a must for celebrating is dragon bread, or bread shaped like a dragon. I found a couple of recipes for this. The first doesn't seem to let the dough rise, so I'm a little suspicious. However, if you are in a rush that would seem like a good thing. The second comes from Our Little Nature Nest (which is one of my main resources today) and lets the dough rise 30 minutes--not a long time, but at least it rises. This is the recipe we are going to use. I used whole almonds for the spikes and almond slivers for the teeth. I found candied sunflower seeds for the eye and the wing.

Dinner tonight will be our main celebration. We are going to have Carrot-Tomato Soup from Soule Mama's blog. (I did find a recipe for dragon soup on Uncommon Grace, but I didn't think my family would actually eat it. However this entry is also a good reference for Michaelmas.) And of course our dragon bread will be served with the soup. Then for dessert I am going to make a Michaelmas Pie (scroll down for this recipe on the link).

Carrot Tomato Soup

Michaelmas Pie

Well, I enjoyed the soup, but no one else seemed to, but that is not a big surprise in my family. The bread was ok, but not great. Next year I will make a better more complex recipe.  We have not cut into the pie yet, but I cheated on that. I used a store bought pie crust and sprinkled cinnamon on it. I'll give you a report on it tomorrow.

Another view of the dragon

And of course I found some dragon crafts for us to try. The first thing I made was the felt dragon. I found the pattern and the instructions on Rhythm of the Home. I promised Hazel I would make her another one if she gave this one to the teachers.

Next we made toilet paper roll dragons. I found this at DLTK. It is of one of the dragons from PBS's Dragon Tales, so it is not too scary of a picture. Hazel had fun coloring and gluing. I did the cutting out. We forgot to glue the tail on mine. Oops!

The last dragon craft we did was a handprint dragon. Ok, really I just traced Hazel's handprint and had her pick out the colors. She was feeling off today, so I did this craft while she rested. I got these instructions from Activity Village. They have many dragon crafts on their site.

Handprint Dragon

Some other dragon crafts can be found on:
Babycenter has one with a 16 ounce cup
Family Fun has a dragon hat and a dragon kite
Activity Village has a sock puppet, Egg box dragon, Wooden Spoon and a You Tube video on making an origami dragon head and many coloring pages
And of course traditionally Waldorf classes focus on autumn crafts for Michaelmas, so you can see any of the days this week for ideas.

Finally I was told today that Michaelmas festivals are for four weeks. I have not found that supported on line, but thought it was interesting. Well enough of our celebration. Happy Michaelmas and Happy Autumn!!

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!!

Roar-Choo! -- Book Review & Giveaway

 

Disclosure: I was sent a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I am working with The Children's Book Review and Charlotte Cheng to bring you this review and giveaway.

Have you ever felt like you were getting sick but needed to keep getting things done? Or perhaps you have a child who doesn't slow down even though he/she is obviously getting sick? Today's book is perfect for this situation. It is a fun picture book about a dragon who is getting sick but doesn't want to quit. The book is Roar-Choo! by Charlotte Cheng and illustrated by Dan Santat.

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures--Cinderlad

With it being St. Patrick's Day, I wanted to share another Irish Cinderella. If you missed my post last week sharing Fair, Brown and Trembling, you can check it out and on it I shared some information about Ireland. Since I already shared the information there, I'm going to skip that part of this post. So this week's story is a bit different. It is called Cinderlad. The book we read is by Shirley Climo. The first major difference is the Cinderella character is male. And he saves a princess from death, but that is getting ahead of ourselves.

This book begins with the birth of a baby boy. His mother names him Becan, which means "little one" in Irish. Becan's feet grew unusually large, but he remained relatively short. His mother died while he was young. His father who was a peddler was away often and would bring back what was needed. One day he came back with a new wife and her three almost grown daughters. Then he went off to work again. The stepmother and her daughters watched Becan and always blamed everything on him. The daughters called him Little Big Foot. Eventually the stepmother got sick of having him around and sent him off to be a herdboy for the cows. Becan was fine with this however he was afraid of the tales he heard about the large speckled bull who could kill a man by kicking him. 

One day the bull arrived at the field where Becan took his father's cows. Becan scratched him in the same place the cows liked to be scratched and they became friends. Becan would tell the bull about his problems and one day the bull talked back. He told Becan he would not starve while he was around and told him to pull out what was in his ear. This was an amazing meal wrapped in a table cloth. After that every day the bull would come at lunch time to feed Becan. He stopped accepting the scraps his stepmother offered for dinner and she became suspicious. She sent her eldest daughter to spy on him to see who was feeding him. The daughter came home and reported to the mother. The mother told her they would kill the bull and have a nice stew. Becan heard everything although they thought he was asleep. 

At day break Becan ran off to warn his friend. The bull told him to jump on his back and they would escape. The traveled a long way until the bull stopped and told Becan that this is where they would say goodbye. He told him a grey bull would come to fight him and the grey bull would kill him. When he died he told Becan to twist off his extra long tail and wear it as a belt. Becan should use it whenever he needed the bull the most. Becan was horrified at this thought, but the bull insisted. All happened as the speckled bull said. The grey bull arrived and they fought all day. At days end the speckled bull was dead and the grey bull had disappeared. Becan cried all night by his friend then remembering what he said he easily twisted off his tail and wrapped it around his body twice as a belt. Then he reached in his ear one more time and pulled out the white table cloth and covered the bull with it. Then he wandered off on his own. 

While walking on his own, his feet hurt (he was barefoot) and eventually a gentleman offered him a ride on his horse. When Becan told him he was going anywhere he offered Becan a job as a herdboy. The gentleman warned him that his next door neighbor was an arhach (a giant) and told him to stay on his side of the fence. Becan always wanted to see a giant, so he did not listen. When the horse, cows, sheep and donkey had eaten all the grass on the gentleman's side of the fence, Becan climbed up and saw that the giant had lots of grass and apple trees. He knocked down some of the stones of the fence so the animals could pass over it and then they all went to where there was food. The giant arrived and almost killed Becan until he remembered his bull tail belt.

The bull tail wrapped itself around the giant's neck. The giant begged for him to remove it and Becan said he only would if the giant gave him his boots and disappeared forever. The giant gave Becan his boots which fit him perfectly and also dropped his sword which Becan picked up and wore in his belt.

One day the gentleman warned Becan to stay close to home because it was Dragon Day in Kinsale. He explained that every year the dragon came out of the ocean and ate the most fair maiden. If the fairest maiden was not tied to the post to be eaten the dragon would make the water swell over the entire town. This year the fairest maiden was the king's own daughter, Princess Finola. Well of course, Becan went off to see what was going to happen. He rode the man's donkey to town and saw the princess tied to a post. Everyone around her ignored her cries for help and would not look at her. Then he said he would fight for her. And the dragon appeared.

He and the dragon fought for a long time. His arm got tired of swinging the giant's sword. When he pricked the dragon with it, the dragon acted like it was a minor pinprick. Then Becan remembered the bull's tail and pulled it off. It magically wrapped itself around the dragon's jaws and the dragon returned to the sea with the tail.

Princess Finola wanted to thank him, but at the same time he heard his three stepsisters call out "Little Big Foot" and he wanted to escape. Princess Finola reached out for him and grabbed his boot. He rode the donkey away having lost one boot. Princess Finola announced she would only marry the man who fit the boot since he was the only one who had helped her. The king sent a messenger out looking for the man who fit the boot. It was a year before the messenger arrived at the gentleman's house. The gentleman tried it on and it slid right off. Then he told the messenger to let the boy try it on. The messenger didn't think a herdboy would be the one, but let him do it anyway. Of course it fit and Becan told them he had its mate in the cowshed. Becan rode the gentleman's horse to the castle where Princess Finola waited for him. She commented on how they were the same height so they would see eye-to-eye on things and told him he would now be Prince Becan. They got married and lived happily ever after.

Our crafts for this book were of course our peg dolls and then we used DLTK toilet paper roll crafts for the bull and the dragon. We used a paper towel roll for the giant and just made it ourselves. 

Later this week we will be sharing more Irish cooking and hope you will join us. Tomorrow we will feature the first of this month's Virtual Book Club for Kids posts and it will include a giveaway. Please come see and enter!!

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Michaelmas

Hazel dressed at St. George ready to slay the dragon

September 29th is Michaelmas. If you haven't been following I posted some information about our preparations with dragons and harvest. Last year was the first time we celebrated this holiday, but it is a traditional holiday in the Waldorf education as well as the Catholic Church (though my Catholic husband didn't know about it).

To celebrate we dressed Hazel as St. George with her yellow cape, crown and sword. Traditionally it would be a wooden sword, but we have inflatable ones from a birthday party so we used one of those. I dressed up as the dragon using Hazel's dinosaur costume mask. It was definitely more dinosaur than dragon than I remembered so next year we will make a mask. I also held up the dragon I made her. Steve wanted nothing to do with our re-enactment, but I did get him to take a picture.

We also read the short story of St. George and the dragon from A Book of Dragons by Hosie and Leonard Baskin (Steve did listen to this). Then at bed time I read Sunflower Swords by Mark Sperring and Miriam Latimer and Dragon Tooth by Cathryn Falwell.

Our other big activity was making salt dough dragons and fall decorations. We made three colors of salt dough: green, red, and orange. Then we went outside to get some things to make texture on our ornaments. We used cookie cutters (leaves, acorn, Halloween, and dinosaurs--to be dragons and circle for the textured ornaments). Then in the circle ones we pressed leaves, branches, flowers, acorns, pine cones, etc. to leave texture. Hazel used her own rolling pin and really had a blast doing this. They are still in the oven or should I say the first two trays are, but will come out soon. Oh, and we poked holes in all of them with a straw.

Then we had a lovely dinner. We made huckabuck bread using the recipe from our Parent/Child Waldorf class last year. I shaped it into a dragon bread and sword rolls. This was our favorite part of dinner. We also had Harvest Apple Soup, but I changed the recipe slightly. Then for dessert we had a raspberry tarte from Trader Joe's. It should have been defrosted a bit more, but we enjoyed it. I will share more details about our family dinner on Tuesday for Happy Family Times!

As for today, I am thinking about what inner dragons I can slay. Enjoy!! Happy Michaelmas!

Halloween, Dressing Up, Pretend Play, & Friend Picture Books

Disclsoure: I was sent these books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

It is hard to believe it is already October. That means we need to think about Halloween. Now I have posted in the past how Halloween is not our favorite holiday and how Hazel hates October because of the gory and scary decorations in yards and stores. When Hazel was young we found some Halloween books she loved, but not too many. Today we are going to share two more Halloween books that are fun and two books that involve dressing up, being yourself and being kind and making friends. All of these books are for kids in the age range of 3 to 8. We will start with Skelly's Halloween by David Martin and illustrated by Lori Richmond. 

Room on the Broom Movie and Book Review

Book

Today I get to review one of our favorite books and the DVD made based on the book. Now NCircle Entertainment sent me a copy of the book and DVD for me to review. All opinions are my own. The book is Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson. Now Room on the Broom was one of Julia Donaldson's books we shared in March. We really loved her books and learning about her through the Virtual Book Club for Kids. Now one of the things we love about Donaldson's books is they usually rhyme. Rhyming makes books fun to read and hear.

In this wonderful story, the witch and cat go for a ride on the broomstick. The wind picks up and carries off the witch's black hat. They go to the ground and look for it, but cannot find it. Then a dog comes out carrying it. He asks if there is room on the broomstick for him. The witch says yes, and the three are off again. This time the witch holds onto her hat, but she loses the bow in her hair.

The witch keeps losing things until she has gained two more animals who want to ride the broomstick.

The frog who is the last addition is so excited he hops and the broomstick breaks in two. At this point the witch is riding in the front of the broomstick and all four animals are in the back. The animals half drops down and the witch continues to fly on her half.

The witch is followed by a dragon who loves to eat witch with french fries. The dragon catches her.

Just as the dragon is about to eat the witch, a four-headed creatures comes out of the lagoon. The creature scares the dragon and tells him that the witch is its.

The dragon leaves the witch alone and escapes the scary creature as fast as he can. Then the four-headed creature becomes the four animals and they clean the mud off themselves. The witch pulls out her cauldron to make a new broom and tells all the animals to find something to put in. Then the new broom comes out with a perfect spot for all of them.

I got all the characters and cut-out props from Making Learning Fun. They were patterns for felt board pieces to tell the story. We cut out the pattern pieces and put them on popsicle sticks, so Hazel can do it as a puppet show. The cauldron with the netting (filled with some candy) was sent by NCircle DVDs. Making Learning Fun also has headbands to have a class act out the rhyming story and play dough mats to learn letters! You can also get other activities at the NCircle Website.  And you can get even more activities at the Room on the Broom Website. (See picture below for samples.)

DVD

Now for the film!! The Room on the Broom film sticks pretty close to the book. It fills in some places so the story flows better on the screen and it shows the dragon hunting the witch. This part scared Hazel a bit even though she knew the story, but she is easily frightened and does not like to see scary things on television (in books she usually covers scary pictures with her hands or asks me to). We however loved the film. We watched it as soon as it came. She was so excited to get it.

The characters in the film look very much like the ones in the book and it is a wonderful way to see the story in action. We really enjoyed it!!

Now the nice part of this story is the witch is nice and cares about the animals. Hazel is not afraid of witches since her exposure to them for the most part has been this book and the book Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman. In both the witch is very nice.

Now NCircle has allowed me to offer a copy of the Room on the Broom DVD to one of you, my fabulous readers!!  The suggested retail price is $9.99 and came out on DVD August 6th.  You can also check out the trailer and more information about the film here. And their Facebook page! To enter the giveaway, just do the Rafflecopter! Good luck!! And if you do not want to wait for the 26th to find out if you are the winner, you can go buy your won copy here (including a downloadable version) or here (as well as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Virtual Book Club for Kids--Don and Audrey Wood Month

Today is the day the link party for the Virtual Book Club for Kids opens for July. Our July authors are Don and Audrey Wood. I am so excited to share with you today a wonderful book by Audrey Wood that still let's me have my Multicultural Monday theme. But first, let me explain about the Virtual Book Club for Kids. 

Happy Chinese New Year!!

Gung hay fat choy. (I wish you good luck and happiness.) Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year. 2013 is the year of the snake. Here are some ideas that we are doing to celebrate.

Dragon Parade by Steven A. Chin is a wonderful picture book about a Chinese man who moves to San Francisco and opens a grocery store. It is based on a true story about how he brought San Francisco a large celebration for the Chinese New Year including the first dragon parade in the Land of the Golden Mountain (America).

I posted earlier in the week about the Chinese instruments we made. With these instruments we will make some noise to scare away the evil spirits and parade around the house. There is also a link to Daria's giveaway of beautiful tingsha hand bells.

We will also have a dragon parade and lion dancers at our parade with our homemade puppets. The top one is the dragon and the bottom three are the lion dancer (each view).  The dragon puppet idea came from Enchanted Learning. The lion dancer puppet came from Activity Village. I wish I had used larger pieces of construction paper for the middle part of this one. Hazel loves them. She gave the lion dancer orange eyes, so they are a bit hard to see on the front.

Then we decorated the dining room. I saw the snake cut-out at Activity Village (the snake coloring page next to it is from there as well since it was the model of the snake for the cut-out). The dragon is also from that page since they used it as a pattern for a paper cut craft. I decided after doing my snake, to stop there with the cut crafts. The other snake coloring page is also from Activity Village but a different page. The snake mobile which we used as a decoration for our chandelier instead of being a mobile also came from Activity Village.

Then we made a Chinese themed dinner. We used the two Chinese recipes from The Kids Multicultural Cookbook. We made a ginger honey chicken wings recipe and a peanut noodle recipe. Then of course we ate them with some green beans with soy sauce on them and ate with chopsticks. We are hoping to make some fortune cookies later today or this week. The snow removal has taken up much of our time so we have not gotten to as much as we hoped.

Finally, I made Hazel some simple felt dumplings and felt fortune cookies. I found some simple fortunes on-line and printed them out and then followed the tutorials on Kaboose. I did not use hot glue for either and did not find they took long. In fact I'm hoping to have Hazel make a few herself. For the dumplings I gathered them up for a minute or two to make the fluted edge. I used a clothespin for the fortune cookies to get their shape. If we make more, I'll take some pictures and provide you a bit of a tutorial on how we did it.

How are you celebrating the Chinese New Year?