New Season

Gifts of Time and Love

The last class of this year on December 9 was about gift giving. Nadia explained how and when that tradition came into being, where Santa Clause is originated from and how gifts are related to Christmas and New Year season.

Practical part of the gathering was concentrated on gift wrapping ideas - making all sorts of ribbon flowers and gift boxes.

The joy of making at least wrapping if not the gifts itself with our own hands straight from the heart made our class shine with real spirit of the season.

Shining tree

At the beginning of December 2 class the history of Christmas tree were unfolded from the very beginning when people believed that spirits lived in the trees, and trees, especially evergreens were sacred. Then we followed the 7th century Devonshire monk, teaching in Thuringia, Germany and bringing the tradition to revere the Fir tree. We stopped in in 1510 Riga, Latvia, where Christmas tree was first decorated.
From Germany to England, to Lithuania, to America following the tree and the change of decorations from apples, flowers, barley sugar,paper and straw to silver tinsel, glass beads, balls and toys; from simple forest branch to overdecorated Victorian tree, to artificial goose feathers, brush and plastic trees.

Our hands on part we started from admiring shining golden straw and colorful seeds on dark green fir in our nature corner.

So we had two groups working either on seed or straw decorations.
Seed group was busy making lovely patterns form dozen kinds of seeds - lentils, beans, peas,
corn, sunflower, pumpkin seeds, rose hips.



Straw group was creating from the whole and split, ironed straw.

November 25 " Deck the halls"

We talked a little in our circle about the new season - winter - which started according some calendars on November 11, about nature changes and adaptations, about different customs, traditions and festivals.
We learned how to change our nature corner together with nature changes, how to house there some creations wede made in previous classes and create a new ones. Winter dark is lightened by birch bark moon and stars in our corner and white jack rabbit together with gnomes are guarding seed babies sleeping in the wooden shed.


Couple of other projects we made would be used for decorating other areas of our holiday homes.

Holiday Session

Merry the Season

November 25 - “Deck the halls…” - nature corner and home decoration.

December 2 - “A shining tree” – holiday ornaments.

December 9 - “Gifts of time and love” - holiday cards and gifts

November 11- "Glowing memory"

November 11 - “ Glowing memory” class was a way of remembering and celebrating the Remembrance Day and Martinmas by making the symbols of light – candles.

We started our circle with lighting the candles – the same ones we would make later, and talking about both celebrations.

Martinmas feast coincides with the end of the period of All Souls when the souls of ancestors were worshiped, and with the end of harvest-time, and winter preparations, including the butchering of animals. (An old English saying is "His Martinmas will come as it does to every hog”, it means "everyone must die".)

So Martinmas in the agricultural calendar marks the beginning of the natural winter, but in the economic calendar it is seen as the end of autumn.

In some parts of Europe, children make their own lantern and go door to door with the lantern, and sing St. Martin songs, in exchange for sweets.

Remembrance Day (also known as Poppy Day, Armistice Day and Veterans Day) is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth countries since the end of World War I to remember the members of their armed forces who have died in the line of duty.

Remembrance Day is observed on 11 November to recall the official end of World War I on that date in 1918.

The red remembrance poppy has become a familiar emblem of Remembrance Day due to the poem "In Flanders Fields” which we recited in class.

First candle project was dipped candles. The hall was full of honey fragrance with wax melting on the stove. We had four dipping cans on the table and a long line of kids with wicks in their hands going around that table in a slow stately motion.

Candles were decorated with small shells when still warm.

Other two projects were examples of molded candles. One was a sand candle – we made some toy molds in a bowls with sand and poured hot wax in.

For the last one we put crushed ice in small juice cartons, placing in the middle thin dipped candle as a base. This project would show at home, when the ice totally melts.

And those are all three almost finished projects:

Holding The Light

Nadia started November 4 session with a short history of lanterns and candle holders. She mentioned the earliest ones - holes in the cave walls filled with animal fat, the Chinese glow worms paper lanterns and later lard, wax, kerosene, oil lanterns and candles. She talked a little bit about today's light holders and their use.
We discovered together that the main difference between candle holder and lantern is that the latter is mostly used outside and therefore designed to protect both the light and the light carrier.

Violeta has prepared three projects. Two of them were candle holders:
1. Wooden disk base, decorated with cones, leaves, seeds and dried flowers.




2. Stick star with the glass holder in the middle, decorated with the same natural materials.





The third project was tin can lantern. We used some ideas from The Crafter's Pattern Sourcebook to create our own pattern and hammer it on the can (everybody brought their own cans with a frozen solid water inside) walls, using different size of nails and chisel.


Our finished projects is such a delightful sight for the eyes: