As most of you know, we have been enjoying a Eurythmy block this Spring at The City School.  It is drawing to a close, and next week we will be having the Eurythmy sharing performance.  We welcome all parents and friends of parents to attend and watch your children!

When and Where:

The performance will be May 9th at 1:45PM in the Assembly Hall!

Eurythmy is a form of dance / performance art / excercise developed by Rudolf Steiner and practiced by Waldorf Students across the globe!

This year our May Faire will be held on:

May 4th from 10 to 3PM!

It will feature the Maypole dance at 11:00, with games, crafts and food available from 11:00 on!

In the afternoon around 1:00 there will be a theatrical performance!

This event is open to the public and one of the biggest festivals in the Waldorf School year!  Don’t miss it!

Tickets for food, games and crafts on sale all day.  Entry into the faire is free!

Walking through the school today is a perfect example of how Waldorf schools use the seasons in their curriculum.

The Kindergarten and Preschool are having circle time singing “Spring is coming”.

The First and Second grade are practicing their Maypole Dance for the May Faire on May 4th (open to the public).

Grades 3 and 4 just walked through the campus singing a song about grasshoppers on their way to do their Maypole practice session!

Here are some great articles / resources on celebrating spring with your kids!

1: Make a Spring Nature Table

2: Celebrate the Appearance of the Root Children

3: Spring Songs and Verses

4: Celebrating May Day

5: Make a Spring Welcoming Wreath

6: Book about Waldorf Spring

How do you celebrate Spring Time?

Friday March 22nd we will be holding our Annual Spring Assembly!

We will feature performances by each grade, and say our goodbyes for the upcoming Spring Break!

Assembly begins at 11:30, and will be followed by a Pot-lock feast!  Please remember to sign up for food on the board by the box.

Also, please note there will be a 1:00 Dismissal on that day.

My 5 year old daughter is always asking “Is it a school night?”.  I have been trying to explain days of the week, which days are “school days” and which days are weekends.  She just can’t get it without a visual, so I was inspired to make a Waldorf style “Day of the Week” calendar.  Here is how I did it.

It was a very inexpensive project for me.

Materials:

• 7 unfinished Peg People 
• A piece of rough sawn 3/4 inch Cedar Shelving wood (any wood will do, I just happened to have this in my garage)
• watercolor paint (I used my kids)
• beeswax polish (two ounces of organic beeswax and 1 cup of almond oil melted together in a double broiler) optional

Tools:

• Wood Burning pen (one of my favorite things)
• Scroll saw
• paint brush

1: I took the 7 unfinished “Peg People” and wrote the abbriviation for the day of the week at the bottom of each one.

ie. Monday = M, Tuesday = Tu, Wednesday = W etc…

Then using Rudolf Steiner’s “Planets of the Day”, I drew a little representation on each person.  On Monday the daily heavenly body is the Moon.  So I drew a small crescent moon on Monday.  Below I am listing the “Planets and Colors of the day” as laid out by Steiner:

• Sunday: Color – White, Heavenly Body: The Sun
• Monday: Color – Purple, Heavenly Body: The Moon
• Tuesday: Color – Red, Heavenly Body: Mars
• Wednesday: Color – Yellow, Heavenly Body: Mercury
• Thursday: Color – Orange, Heavenly Body: Jupiter
• Friday: Color – Green, Heavenly Body: Venus
• Saturday: Color – Blue, Heavenly Body: Saturn

note* I do not really know much about why these colors and planets are assigned to a specific day, and I wasn’t too concerned about it.  I just wanted to paint the peg people interesting colors, and have some decoration on each one.  This seemed like a good theme to follow!

My main challenge came in figuring out a way to make Tuesday’s Mars look different from Thursday’s Jupiter, Tuesday’s Mercury and Friday’s Venus.  These planets are all basically round spheres.  I made Mercury a very small circle, I made Jupiter a very big circle with a spot on it (the red spot), and lastly I made Venus with a tiny heart in the middle.  The Sun, Moon and Saturn were much easier!  Here is a picture of the rough pencil drawings:

2: Using my wood burning pen, I traced lightly over the pencil marks to make them dark and permanent.

3: Using a palate of my daughters watercolor paints I painted each person in the “color of the day” from the table above.

4: Using the beeswax polish recipe above I rubbed a generous portion of the polish into each peg person and let it sit for an hour.  Then using a wash cloth I wiped off all the excess and gave each person a little “shine”.

HERE are the finished Peg People!

You could stop at this step, but I wanted a place to put them…

Making the Base:

1: I took a piece of unfinished 3/4 inch cedar shelving wood that I had left over.  Any wood would work, in fact, the wood I chose is probably not the best choice.  I brought one of the peg people in to the garage with me.  I wanted a flowing curved shape so without much planning I freehand drew a “S” like  shape.  Then I took the peg person and spaced out 8 holes by tracing around him 8 times leaving about an inch in between each hole.  The first try I ran out of room and had to sort of elongate my drawing.  This was a very “by the seat of my pants” process.  Here is a picture of my diagram, you can see where I kind of elongated it.:

2: Using this really big drill bit I happened to have, I drilled 8 holes over the peg people holes.   I wanted to drill before I cut, in case I messed up and had to start again.  Drilling is easier than cutting.

3: Since I did a passable job drilling, I went ahead and cut out the shape on the scroll saw!

4: I happen to be lucky enough to own a belt sander, which I used to sand the bottom, top and sides of this wood.  Regular old sand paper would work just as well!  Sand away all the rough bits and try as hard as you can to sand inside the holes, although I had no luck with this part myself.

5: I took the base inside and gave it a good coat of beeswax polish and let it sit an hour.  After I wiped off the excess and polished it up, it was very pretty!

6: As you can see from the picture above, the holes look kind of unsightly!  So I took some felt left over from another project and cut out little circles, glued them into place, and voila… I was done!

Finished work!

The City School’s own 5th grade teacher Mark Lewis is proud to put on another wonderful day of Children’s Theater with his Kids Interactive Theater Ensamble AKA: KITE!

In honor of St Patricks Day KITE will present Three Irish Tales:

• The Selfish Giant
• The Hedley Coo
• How Ireland Got Its Name

There are 4 City School Children acting in these plays, so make sure you buy your tickets early!

Come join us on any one of the four performances!
Sunday March 17th at 11am or 2pm.
The 1909
1909 Topanga Canyon Road, Topanga CA 90290

Sunday March 24th at 11am or 2pm
Pasadena Waldorf School
209 E Mariposa St., Altadena CA 91001

Waldorf Inspired Kids Crafts for Easter

Easter is a month away, but everywhere we look little tutorials about dying eggs and felting bunnies seem to be popping up!  We have compiled a list of Waldorf Inspired Easter and Spring Kids Crafts and Adult / Kid combo crafts to get the bunny out of your system!  Enjoy!

1: Dying Easter Eggs using natural plant based dyes!

There are actually so many tutorials on this subject, so we are giving you links to a few different ones.

a) The Kitchn “Vibrant Eggs Dyed Naturally”

b) Lusa Organics “Natural Egg Dyes”

c) Martha Stewart: Dying Eggs Naturally”

These are all worth the read, because each tutorial has something to offer.  Find the recipes that work best for you (although no matter which you choose, you’ll need red cabbage).

2: Sewing Felt Easter Egg Pouches!

So cute,, and so Waldorf!  These adorable little felt eggs make a pouch to hold candy, treats, little toys or whatever the Easter Bunny brings!  Thank you again Lusa Organics for a great idea!

Check out the Tutorial

3: Making Beeswax Egg Candles!

No City School crafting top ten list seems to make it out of our blog without a beeswax project of some kind!  This craft is great if you have some spare beeswax and an egg  (we buy beeswax at our local farmers market for about $8-10 a pound).  Thank you to the folk at Morningsunrae for this great tutorial!

Check out the Tutorial

4: Mama Rabbit and Bunnies Tutorial

This tutorial shows you how to make a “Mama Bunny” and little baby bunnies in walnut shell cradles!  Too cute…  Thank you to Rhythm of the Home once again for making a great kids craft!

Check out the Tutorial

5: Plant Dyed Easter Eggs made out of Wool

This is a great and simple way to be introduced to needle felting!  Using different colors of naturally plant dyed wool, you can fashion beautiful eggs for easter!  Thanks to the folk at Living in the Woods and making stuff for this sweet idea!

Check out the Tutorial

6: How to make an Easter Egg Chick

Here is a lovely idea!  We need some baby chicks to go with the eggs, and Myrtle and Eunice have provided a wonderful PDF with a pattern and detailed instructions.  This link takes you to a blog with pics, scroll down and you will see a link to download the PDF.

Check out the Post

7: Make your own Easter Bunny

If you still have left over felt after the eggs and the chick, then you will love this pattern from Feeling Stitchy.  Make your own cute easter bunny using felt, wool or cotton and the pattern included!

Check out the Post

8: Knitted Easter Egg Tutorial

This tutorial includes a pattern for the egg.  Imagine 4 or 5 of these beautiful knitted eggs in a felted basket.  Thank you to the blog Natural Suburbia for sharing this pattern and idea!

Check out the tutorial

9: Wet Felted Easter Egg and Baby Chick Tutorial

This tutorial is so great for kids!  Using an old toy egg as a base, this mom and her kids wet felted a brand new egg and put an adorable felt chick inside.  Thank you to Rosy Posy for this idea!

Check out the tutorial

10: Make Pretty Spring Nest

Thank you Magic Onions for making this adorable kids craft.  Make a beautiful nest with wet felted eggs and hang it in your home.  This craft is perfect for nature tables and Easter decorations.

Check out the tutorial

So far that is our list!  If we find anything else wonderful we will do a bonus to the list, so please send us any wonderful links to your tutorials.

Happy Easter / Spring!

It was a great day for parents and children alike!  Little kids played on the playground, and big kids divided their time helping the adults, and entertaining the young ones.   Parents got a chance to get to see friends and work in the fresh air in a truly “barnbuilding party” day kind of experience!

The best part came at lunch when we gathered for a well earned pot luck feast!

Here are some pics from the day!

It will be held on February 14th at 3:00PM and will feature musical performances from the talented Faculty and Parents at The City School.

After the Concert will be Tea and snacks and an Open House for prospective parents to check out the school!

The Concert is open to the Public and we hope to see you there!

Please RSVP for the Open House here

Have you ever wondered exactly what was going on in the Waldorf Classroom?   Does your child is coming home full of knowledge and enthuasiasm every day and you feel like you are missing out on all of the academic fun?

or….

You have been learning about Waldorf, doing research, checking out schools, and you want to learn more.

or…

Maybe you don’t know all that much about Waldorf and you are wondering if it is right for your child.

This brings us to Experience Waldorf Day 2013!

On March 9th Adults will have the chance to experience a day of authentic Waldorf School by taking classes, doing hand work, learning letters using Grade 1 techniques and more!  The day will be very fun, very exciting, and you will probably go home smarter, energized and possibly covered a bit in dye from making your very own hand dyed playsilk!

This event is open to anyone on the planet Earth who wants to go.

The cost is $8 which covers the cost of all of the materials that will be used to make your experience as wonderful as possible including a playsilk and your own minimain lesson book f0r your History lesson!

Click here to see the schedule and/or register:

Registration is on now, and space is limited!