I love the beautiful apple blossoms of April, the budding of the blueberry bushes, the greening of the farm. It’s my husband’s absolute favorite time of year, and I love it too. I half expect to see ducklings wandering across our farm or some other baby animal!
We already celebrated Easter on April 5 and now we are in Eastertide, enjoying fifty days of Eastertide until Pentecost. Eastertide also has its own little festivals such as Thomas Sunday as I wrote this last Sunday, and so on. So many wonderful things to contemplate this Eastertide. The world is a difficult place for many right now, and I am often in a place of doubt as to how things will turn out for our children and their children. Yet, we persist on and draw from our inner strength and the creation of stability for our families and ourselves.
This month, here are a few favorites to ponder:
These are a few of my favorite things for small children:
- Ramping up all kinds of physical activity since the weather is generally nice…hiking, kayaking, roller blading, walking.
- Incorporating more and more loose parts play and re-arranging indoor and outdoor play areas. If you freshen things up, children are likely to want to play with those things and in those new areas of your home!
- Need more ideas? Try this back post! https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/03/03/celebrations-of-spring-in-the-waldorf-home/
- Stories galore: https://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/03/17/favorite-spring-tales-for-the-waldorf-kindergarten/
These are a few of my favorite things for grades-age children:
- Spring handwork – wet felting, making beautiful spring crafts
- Movement outside and exploring nature
- Adjusting rhythm to the seasons, but sticking to strong awake, rest and bedtimes, along with regular nourishing whole foods mealtimes.
These are a few of my favorite things for teens:
**Exploring new interests and possibilities for summer. There are many wonderful camps for the summer. Sometimes by age thirteen or fourteen, the appeal of going to camp dissipates and sometimes it doesn’t, so you can carefully observe your child. It can be hard to know how hard to push.
** Sleep! A lot of teens really need sleep over the summer as they tend to grow over the summer a lot!
Our teen is looking at being away part of the summer working at a scouting camp. This should be a lot of fun and a great way to spread his wings.
These are a few of my favorite things for my own inner work:
- In the past I had created a Sacred Hour – half to be spent in personal study, and half to be spent with our children in sharing the Saints, the Bible and Anglican traditions. This Eastertide, I plan to devote some time to Anglican Studies and also using the Venite App for daily readings. I am feeling very happy about this. I am interested in reading this book if I could find it cheaper than Amazon: https://a.co/d/0bmsWOou
- (This is one way we incorporated Spiritual Studies into our homeschooling. https://theparentingpassageway.com/2016/04/17/spiritual-studies-in-the-episcopalanglican-homeschool/)
- There are a lot of changes happening right now in my career life, and I have been contemplating the imagery of the mustard seed. What mountains am I facing, what small seeds am I being asked to grow and nuture? It seems like a good thing to contemplate in the spring.
- I have been thinking a lot about this time in general. I will be 56 in August, and biography and development is still at work in my life. https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/04/27/more-inspirations-from-tapestries-ages-49-56/. I did back posts on all the different biographical stages, and you might enjoy those. Happy to link them in the comments if anyone is interested!
What are you celebrating this month, creating space for, planning?
Warmly,
Carrie
The Parenting Passageway 