We’ve been busy this season, oh, so busy!  So busy, in fact, that I’ve not had time to share any of our celebrations, so here is a quick little “catch up” post.

With a third grader in the house again this year, we’ve been working with some of the Jewish holidays.  I always feel like I’d like to be Jewish in the autumn time.  Those festivals are all so beautiful.  We did mark the High Holy Days, and had some really moving conversations about forgiveness, atonement, and personal growth.  I don’t really have any pictures to show for that time and much of our celebration was of a very personal nature, but I can share some of our Sukkot celebration!

~drawing of a sukkah from Elijah’s main lesson book~

The building of a sukkah was a special project for Steve and Elijah to work on together, but the decorating was a group effort.  They used instructions found in The Family Treasury of Jewish Holidays to build the frame, which unfortunately, had some serious design flaws (it actually collapsed.  twice.).  That book does have some nice stories in it though and really nice explanations of the different holidays.

The sukkah was very pretty once it was all decorated.

For Michaelmas we baked dragon bread.  We used our own acorn flour and they turned out….well….pretty gross.  But they had a lot of fun making them.

The boys took these two pictures.  The one above hasn’t been baked yet and the one below had recently come out of the oven.  I served them with “fire jam” (I took raspberry and peach jam and mixed them in a swirl in a bowl), which redeemed them a little.  But just a little.

One of the wonderful things about our new house is that it came with a piano, which we are greatly enjoying.  We’ve been learning seasonal songs.  At Michaelmas we learned the song “Michaelmas” found in Pentatonic Songs for Nursery, Kindergarten, and Grades 1 and 2by Elisabeth Lebret.  We learned the words, we learned to play it on the recorder and we learned to play it on the piano.  And now we’ve done the same with the song “November”, from the same book, for Martinmas (that song was actually a part of the Martinmas play that they were in last year).

We also made felted “shooting stars” with our homeschooling group.  I think this is a lovely little project.  Instructions can be found here.

When they were finished (over the course of two weeks), we took the kids up to a magical spot, at the top of a big hill in a wide open field, to throw them.

Martinmas has been a simple family affair.  There has been a lot of singing.  A couple of days ago we carved turnip lanterns.  And tonight we’ll have our lantern walk with paper lanterns made in years past.

And next week we’ll have our harvest celebration with friends.  Here’s to many more joyous celebrations yet to come!