Saturday, September 25, 2010

our Michaelmas festival

Earlier today, our little festival group that has formed over the last year celebrated Michaelmas. We celebrated our God-given gift of inner strength in defeating our own personal dragons. All of our activities centered around the idea of inner strength as traditionally Michaelmas was considered the beginning of fall and much strength would be required to sustain life through the winter.

We jousted on balance logs,


balanced on planks across rolling logs,


walked across the balance logs,


and threw javelins through grapevine wreaths. What mighty warriors we have in our group!


My contribution to the festival was to help the kids make two loaves of dragon bread. Before the festival, I mixed 1 1/2 recipes of the dragon bread from the book, Baking Bread with Children. I divided the kids into two groups, one for each dragon. Each of the kids shaped the body part of their choosing. Then we added pumpkin seeds as spikes down the body and tail of the dragon.


We also had a crown making station for all of our royal/knight folk to dress up.


And, as usual, the backyard creek was quite a draw for the older kids.


The little ones stuck close to the bean bag toss. Watching those beanbags disappear into the clown is quite amusing!


After some snacks, including this dragon made from sliced veggies,


and a bit more sword-fighting,


we debuted the finished dragon bread. This really is such a lovely recipe for shaping bread. My kids are already asking if we can make other things from another batch of this bread.


Look at that fierce loaf of bread!


After an organized game of Jennie serenading us with her violin,


while the rest of the folks paired off and walked in a circle, one of each pair in each circle,


Jennie would stop playing and say something like riding a horse, and the pairs had to find each other then one had to be a horse and the other a rider as quickly as possible.


When the game was finished, we enjoyed the fruit of our bread-making labors. The pumpkin in the bread paired nicely with both honey butter and apple butter. Delicious!


What a wonderful treat it was to spend an amazing afternoon with friends celebrating Michaelmas!


18 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing this! I always love to see how other families/groups celebrate Michaelmas.

    LOVE that veggie dragon!

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  2. I am so jealous of the group you have there. We'll be making dragon bread (all on our own -- sniff sniff). And we've been reading LOTS of dragon books this week. Thank you for sharing your inspiring day Joy!

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  3. What a fun celebration! There are so many good ideas in this post that I want to copy.

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  4. Inspirational is the word that comes to mind when I read your blog, Joy. What a great little celebration for the group to do together, just lovely.

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  5. Dear Joy,
    What an amazing celebration! How I wish we could have joined you! The games, the sword fighting, the dragon bread...
    Wonderful...
    xo
    Linda

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  6. what a beautiful celebration, it is indeed lovely to see all the different ways to make the same celebration special...
    warmly,
    christina

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  7. Joy! Thank you for all the great photos. I love them and love all that you do. Thanks for your hard work! Jenni said the dragon bread baking was so great for the kids and that they LOVED it. You're awesome:) xoxo amy

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  8. Thank you so much for sharing this Joy! I've been really at a loss as to how to celebrate Michaelmas and love seeing what you and your family did!

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  9. so lovely! our program was a part of the celebration that christina posted about (moment to moment). this is our third michaelmas as a community and they have all looked a little different....but all have had the press. love it! autumnal blessings to you!

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  10. This is amazing. What a great festival! I love how you organised challenges and all. And of course, the dragon bread!

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  11. how wonderful to see all these celebrations! I think next year I might have to organize a community celebration!
    xo maureen

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  12. Oh, how fun! Thanks so much for such a lovely post! My son will love to include these activities in his birthday celebration too (he turns 10 0n the 30th).

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  13. WOW! What a great day. You did some amazing things. Thanks for sharing.

    Blessings, Elizabeth

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  14. Looks like such a fun day! Seeing the happiness on the faces of the children is wonderful. Your dragon bread looks YuMMY!
    Blessings and magic,
    Donni

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  15. Aw...cute dragon bread. Ours always turns out looking like anything but a dragon, lol!

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  16. Looking so cool information and I really love your blog.

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  17. Wow! nice post. I like this bread. Thanks for sharing this wonderful post.
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