Seasons of Joy Looking for a way to bring peace and joy to your day?
Seasons of Joy is my 10-week seasonal guidebook to add rhythm and fun to your daily routine. Each guidebook has ten weeks' worth of circle times, stories, arts, crafts, and handwork, painting, playtime activities and more!
Seasons of Joy seeks to empower families to create peaceful rhythms and routines and joyful celebrations that follow the circle of the year. The blog also chronicles our adventures in living simply, loving exuberantly, and Waldorf inspired homeschooling.
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We’re having so much fun with Spring Seasons of Joy this year! One of the things I really do love about my e-guides is seeing the gleam of recognition in my children’s eyes as we bring back songs we sang at the same time last year. There’s something so comforting and familiar in singing certain songs at the same time each year. We may add some new things as well, but the foundation of the circle is the same
Right now we’ve been enjoying the flower fairy circle. I’ve even caught my younger ones searching yard for hidden fairies! Read more...
For our first circle of Daniel’s kindergarten year we’ll be saying goodbye to summer and revisiting our year-long theme story, Through the Magic Door, which you can read here (scroll down).
We usually start our circle time with a song, alerting anyone who wants to join in to come into the living room.
Everybody come join hands.
Dance and sing and sing some more.
Everybody come join hands,
Through the magic door.
Everybody come join hands.
Come and join us in the ring.
Everybody come join hands,
Dancing as we sing. Read more...
I’ve been seeing lots of posts on various message boards, email loops, and blogs about circle time and I figured what the heck, I would give my unsolicited opinion as well.
First, I’ll engage in the ultimate form of hubris, self quotation. From Seasons of Joy: Read more...
I confess, this is my absolutely most favorite circle time that we do all year. And the children love it as well! We always bring this gem out around this time. In early Autumn we like to celebrate the practicalities of the seasons– the changing leaves, picking apples and pumpkins, the blacksmith helping the horses. And in late November we like to celebrate the harvest and the work of the farmer with thanksgiving and gratitude. But in between, in that sliver of time after Halloween when we’re still ripe for the possibilities of imagination, we like to celebrate our little pointed-capped friends underground, the gnomes. Read more...
We have been having so much fun in our circle time these past two weeks. We’ve been going apple picking. First we ride our ponies to the apple orchard, then we find the apples and pick them and put them in our baskets. After riding back home, we tell the story of how to find a cozy little room that houses five seed babies inside the apple. Then we wash our apples and make apple cake! What a wonderful thing to experience in our imaginations, day after day after day. Read more...
Here’s a little “mini treasury” with just a few of the lovely candles available on Etsy. These would be a beautiful addition to your autumn circle!
Treasury tool by Red Row Studio. Read more...
In a slight departure from our Little League week, I wanted to share some ideas for those of you with itty bitties as well as preschoolers. Sometimes it seems difficult to have circle time with little babies crawling about. And yet I feel that circle time is one of the most important, sweetest times of the day. Here are some ideas to add your littlest family members to your circle. Read more...
We’re still doing our summer sunshine circle found here, but have changed things up a little.
We took out Over in the Meadow and substituted Casey at the Bat. And we added lots of fun baseball songs as well. Besides Take Me Out to the Ballgame (natch) here are some other songs and rhymes we’ve added:
A Baseball
(sung to a Tisket, a Tasket)
Words by Joe Stover
A baseball, a baseball, a brand new shiny baseball,
I hit it with my wooden bat
And saw it hit the left wall. Read more...
In August, Daniel will be starting our “Nursery Rhyme Nursery School” year. I believe that nursery rhymes are a very important part of every small child’s development, as well as essential for cultural literacy. This circle will change during the month, but here is how we’re beginning.
I begin with a “Gathering Song”. I wrote it myself and sing the first stanza until everyone is there (everyone being Daniel, the babies, and I and sometimes Nicholas) and then sing the second verse while we light the candle. I am still using a homemade beeswax candle we made at the beginning of the summer.
 Read more...
In my garden there is a seed,
I am the one who put it there.
Who will help it now to grow?
Earth and sun and rain and air.
In my garden there is a flower,
From a seed it came to birth.
Who helped it to grow so tall?
Air and rain and sun and earth.
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Our Current Read Aloud: When You Reach Me
In the car we’re listening to… The Mysterious Benedict Society and Prisoner’s Dilemma
Character Counts! This month’s character trait is: Courage!!
"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." ~C S Lewis Blessed Mother Teresa, Pray for Us! 
Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.
~Mother Teresa |
