December in Our Room

Nature Table

St. Nicholas Morning

Preparations for Santa Lucia & Multiplication

More Math

Lantern Walk Paintings

Winter Spiral Paintings

En la Cocina con Senora Vanessa

On Monday, December 12, the Second Grade 

made tortillas during Spanish class 

with Señora Vanessa and several helping mothers...

A Day with the Sharks

On Wednesday, November 9, our class took a field trip to Birch Aquarium in La Jolla. It was magical to watch their faces, glowing with eerie, underwater light, drink in the fascinating mysteries of the sea. They grabbed their sketchbooks with the excitement and seriousness of a new mission, and set off with crayons and colored pencils to record the visions floating before them. I've never seen children in an aquarium so intent and focussed as this group with their sketches. With tools in hand, they were given the opportunity to slow down and be still in the moment. To reach through the glass with their silent, observing eyes so that they might more faithfully impress their papers with the truth of what they saw. How to get the shapes of those many fluid legs right. How to show the constant dancing movement of the fins. How to capture neon colors and translucent skins... They went from one window to the next, never tiring. 


And then they learned about sharks. About fusiform, cartilage-filled bodies. About teeth that continuously fall out, the 6th sense that helps with hunting, and the persistence of millions of years of existence. They enacted a 6th-sense game where one played shark and another played prey. They pet a born-in-captivity baby. And they learned the long fancy name for those freckles on the shark responsible for their "6th" sense -- but I can't tell you what that is; I only remembered it for about 20 seconds. 

Afterward, they thought it very sad that people would catch sharks just to cut off their fins for soup and then throw them back into the ocean. They understood that sharks do not seek out humans for lunch -- they don't even like the taste of us, actually. It's just too bad we look like seals sometimes. They had a much better idea of what's going on under the shimmering surface of our expansive back yard. And a feeling to take care of it, as it takes care of us in so many ways. 

Santa Lucia Angels: Bringing Hope, Light, & Song (& Buns)

Santa Lucia Dough: If You Mix It, It Will Rise

Second Grade parents must bake a lot. And just as soon as you think you've got it down, along comes a recipe of a different color (saffron, to be precise) to keep you in a healthy panic. It wasn't the saffron that caused any trouble. It was the fact that 6 tablespoons of yeast doesn't seem to want to foam in a pot of lukewarm butter and milk. At least two of us ran out for more ingredients to try again. But I -- at this point in the year being okay with flat buns and loathe to waste the gold that is called saffron threads -- went ahead anyway with the first batch. And lo, when I mixed it, the dough did rise. Like gangbusters. 


So the only point of this post is to let you know, in case you are using one of the recipes posted earlier to this blog, that even though it doesn't look like the heaps of yeast will do its job -- it will. 


Another tip from a second-grade mom (unrelated to bread): if your daughter happens to be Santa Lucia, may be a good idea to send her to school with wet hair...

Dragonbread Tips for 2nd Grade Moms to Come

Before the details slide irretrievably from my consciousness, I thought it might be a good idea to make note of how we tackled the Dragonbread for the Michalmas Festival for those who might need a point of reference in the future. 


- Bread of choice: Challah, for its malleable quality, and the braiding that nicely mimics scales.
- How much?: We ended up using 8 loaves (4 batches) for all but the tail (which was made separately for our Gluten-free guests, and I believe was made up of 1 loaf -- so, 9 loaves total).
- Proportions: 
        * Head - 1 loaf
        * Neck - 1 loaf
        * Body - 3 loaves
        * Wings - 1 loaf
        * Hind legs - 1 1/2 loaves
        * Front legs & ears - 1/2 loaf
        * Tail - 1 Gluten-free loaf
- Assembly: We ended up assembling the beast directly on the counter and let it rise before cutting it so it would fit on the baking sheets. The cutting-transferring process was by far the most challenging. If I had to do it again (!), I would probably assemble it directly onto the baking sheets (the slim kind with only two edges) and let rise. You can tell from the photo where we needed to make the cuts. Wings, midsection, leg & lower body. The head and upper body needed 2 baking sheets, overlapping, on one rack in the oven.
- Baking: We managed to get the whole thing in 2 ovens at the same time -- 4 racks. Having a double oven is a great boon. How it all turned out fully baked and not burned anywhere was one of St. Michael's miracles, I suppose. 
- Embellishments: Poppy seeds sprinkled on wings (after rising, before baking, with egg-wash), blanched almost shards for claws and teeth (before baking), slice of dried persimmon for the eye (baked with one in the eye but it turned out pretty gnarly, so just replaced it with a fresh one), raisins for nostril and ears (before baking), and dried mango slices for fire (after baking).


So now, take courage... and have fun! 

Dragonbread, & Other Things Our Mothers Couldn't Teach Us

Since I was 5 years old, my mother has always lived in another state. I would visit some holidays and parts of the summer, but there was distance, and there were naturally those things of day-to-day living that she could not pass on to me. When, finally, after college I followed her permanently to California where she eventually settled, our states of difference had transferred from the physical plane to the spiritual. Once I asked her, as I watched her cook her famous pot roast with gravy the way my German grandfather had taught her, if she wasn't just a bit disappointed that she couldn't pass on her knowledge of traditions to her Hindu, vegetarian daughter. She smiled a bit as she said with just a hint of hesitation, "Yes." All I could do in response was to nod. The loss is felt both ways, I suppose. My mother couldn't teach me the things I wish I could have learned from her. Nor can I learn from her now the things she wishes she could teach me.


Suddenly, Chandra, Maria, and I are standing in my kitchen with the colossal task before us of making something none of us had ever made before. Doesn't it seem like the making of bread should be one of the most fundamental skills a human could know? The word bread is used symbolically to represent all that sustains us -- both physically as well as spiritually. And here we stood, intimidated by the most natural undertaking. The irony of it taking the form of a dragon did not elude me -- we were confronting the dragon of our yeasty fears. I suspect what rescued us was the inner wisdom we have that comes to our aid when we plunge forward with confidence and valor. With the attitude, "I can." Though we may tremble before the fiery breath of the oven that threatens to char our feeble attempts, there is the calm self -- the universal Mother in us that truly is passed down through the generations -- that knows the rhythms of the earth, and knows how to tame the wild, dark things of the world. By acting as though we knew what we were doing, though our biological mothers never taught us these things, we played "make-believe" in the unknown abilities in us, and quietly tamed the unruly dragon of doubt. 

One thing that drew me so strongly to Waldorf education from the beginning was its rich celebration of rites of passage. I covered a lot of ground in my life searching here and there for some kind of rite of passage for all of the disjointed parts of myself; also, probably, searching for the "mother" who could guide me through them. At one time, my journey took me to the Navajo reservation for several months, where I befriended a woman who became for me, temporarily, the mother figure I was looking for. She told me stories of how Navajo girls are welcomed into womanhood by the community. In the pre-dawn of her special day, the child rises in the dark and runs as long as she can in the direction of the rising sun. And when she returns, all of the women elders gather around her in a circle and massage her limbs to help her grow strong -- and, I imagine, to pass on to her their own maternal energies, their great spirit. And later, her mother takes a special brush, and brushes blessings into her long hair. 



She told me these stories just before I left the reservation. I had intended to return, and she promised that, if I brought back with me a special brush, she would gladly brush my hair. It hasn't happened yet, and more than ten years have passed. But I feel that I no longer need it. This was before I became a mother, and now I can't imagine any rite of passage more convincing than this. And, I am learning by being a part of this community. Watching how our children are nourished and nurtured. How they are taught to weave ritual into their daily rhythms. How rites of passage are woven naturally into the passages of the seasons so tied to our human struggles and emotions. Their lives are rich with the wisdom of the ages, whispered in song, in play, in the struggles to gain control over their still-new bodies to paint, knit, bake, play flute, dance, write, sculpt, and draw. I am proud, and amazed, that my daughter can do things that I cannot do. And if, somewhere and somehow, our traditions have been lost, or have come too late and become too incompatible, if I feel I have nothing to pass on to my daughter from generations past, I can now join her on this path toward remembrance of all that we already have within us. And I can know that in this way we are not walking astray, but are turning back to the source -- to the wisdom and wholeness that has been scattered from so much disassociation with the earth and with our "mothers". Opening to the wisdom within, which is my own -- and my daughter's -- birth right, I feel more and more the connection I had been seeking with my own mother... with all mothers.