Our Waldorf Homeschool Journey

Hi Everyone

Last night we celebrated the Festival of St Martin. The story very briefly goes like this….

St Martin was a soldier in the Roman army, who out on patrol one cold winters night, came upon a beggar and took his cloak off and cut it clean in half. In those days the cloak of a Roman Soldier was treasured as it was only given once you became an officer. Needless to say that night St Martin had a dream that he saw God wearing half a cloak, his cloak and from then on wouldn’t fight and led a life of giving, a holy life of kindness and love.
This is the briefest summary, I told the kids the full long story last night, but lets start at the beginning. On Saturday we made Waldorf-Inspired Martinmas Lanterns (see earlier post, if you want to make them), then on Sunday we put the handles on our lanterns and again discussed StMartin - briefly.

Then yesterday, Monday was the Eve of Martinmas. We spoke about St Martin in the morning and learnt a verse which I’ll share with you….

Sharing, Caring

Kind and True

StMartin we Honour you.

It seemed to say it all, the children learnt it easily as we were painting, and chatting about honouring St Martin this day.

StJohn painted a beautiful picture of St Martin with his Red Cloak and Sword…

Juliette decided not to paint StMartin, she just painted a flat blue sky…..on an A1 sheet of paper. She often gets huffy when she thinks she may have to part with some of her possessions, and at this point she smelt a rat…..

Then we spoke about sharing and sharing our possessions, with people who have less than us, or are in need in some way. John came in from his study, and we each found a few things to donate to charity. John gave clothes, I gave clothes and shoes, StJohn gave shoes, clothes and a mountain of toys (it was a great time to move those plastic toys out the door ;o)) and Juliette…well she gave a few little old toys with difficulty. But that said, when we drove down to the charity shop and delivered our gifts she said she felt so good. She just is like that, it’s not that she’s selfish, she constantly thinks….what if one day I need that?!

Anyway, that done we started to prepare food for the evening, I tried to make something everyone would like, so there were (vegetarian) hotdogs, chickpea burgers, salads, we baked bread in the shape of an M, leek and potato soup and then made pancakes for dessert.

We then had dinner as we were waiting for darkness to fall. Then as dinner was ending I told them the story of StMartin, how cold it was, and how much his cloak must have meant to him. As the story came to an end I gave each of them a small StMartin Gnome that I’d made….

They absolutely loved them, and this morning, I noticed StJohns’ gnome had developed super powers and used his cloak to fly!

Anyway, after the gifts we said our verse again, and lit our lanterns, went on a short lantern walk, and then came back to the front garden, where a bonfire had been prepared by John. I spoke to them about each of our small lights of goodness and when we put them all together, whoosh! (John lit the Bonfire) Look how much light we have.

Each of us has one small light, but put it together and we have a raging fire of Light!

Then we shared pancakes next to the fire, and then it was bedtime. I got a million hugs and kisses as they made their way to bed. So I guess they had a good time.

Hope your Martinmas was full of love and laughter as well.

Sue. xx

Filed under: Festivals, Verses, Handwork & Crafting, Waldorf Homeschooling on November 11th, 2008