May day!

We arranged to have both the preschool class and Tali's homeschool program come to our house for May Day, this year. Both events (yes; in one day; it was busy but fabulous!) were wonderful!!

Of course, as usual, I can't show you much because all my photos contain children whose parents I've not asked for photo-posting permission. Nevertheless, here is some of what we did:

The maypole! It had 20 ribbons, this year: an outer circle of 10 arranged to represent the solar year (red for the solstices, pale-green/deep-purple paired for the equinoxes, and rich yellow for the cross-quarter days) and 10 more inside in an array of various colours. We danced and undanced the pole with the 3-year-olds in the morning, and then danced it in a more complicated pattern and weaving with the older kids in the afternoon.


My Mum brought the preschool children's fish windsocks and they ran around with them on the extremely blustery day in the field. This is my Mum, who follows childrens inspirations to create a beautiful, adventurous, developmentally appropriate and yet uninhibited child-led preschool experience. See the joy and beauty in my Mum? That is my opinion of what learning should be. Thank you for making it a reality, Mum!! Afterward you see Annie running with her lovely windsock creation.



With Tali's learning group we also sang some circle songs, did a spiral dance, and made a mandala with lovely bits of plants and stones they'd found on their walk, here. To the right (the south stone of our circle) you see oven mitts atop the cauldron of hot apple cider, freshly off the May fire.