Springtime has our focus on the feminine... on new life, crafting, creating, and rejuvenating. We've enjoyed making garlands with hand painted blown eggs and learning about eggs as a symbol of fertility... We made a pretty little star with sticks and the lavender growing rampant in our yard and hung it over the seedlings in our kitchen for blessings from Mother Earth...
We learned about the origins of spring holidays and honored the goddess Ostara with offerings of rice, flowers, stone eggs in a raffia nest, feathers, and stone towers representing the vernal equinox and return of balanced days and nights....
We planted seeds in egg crates and enjoyed combining two powerful images of new life. Most of all, we've been honoring the earth's rebirth by simply spending family time together.
Our academic adventures are turned to the letter T with sixteen new words: take, that, the, their, them, they, this, three, tree, to, two, tell, than, these, thing, and tiger.
We're spelling in song:
t-h-r-e-e, t-h-r-e-e, t-h-r-e-e, that's how we spell three!
We're writing new sentences:
Three tall trees sway.
Two tigers tapdance.
Tell them they're late!
We're working on sister sums for math... matching doubles with equations of the same sum (4+4 with 5+3 and 6+2, etc.)
We've fallen in love with a wonderful book about loving-kindness, Tenzin's Deer: A Tibetan Tale by Barbara Soros,"a tale of compassion, healing, and the guiding power of dreams..." that "urges us to listen to our intuition and be courageous in the face of loss."
Last but not least, we're working on a new yoga sequence and accompanying verse. The first two lines came from our Oak Meadow Kindergarten syllabus. I've expanded it and added asanas intended to help develop a strong, feminine sense of self. The sequence is illustrated by my little yogini below.
I can be as small
as a small, small seed
I can be as tall
as a tall, tall tree
As strong as a mountain
As brave as can be
Because I'm a goddess
can't you see!
Our new sequence, from left to right: Seed Pose, Tree Pose (Vrksasana), Mountain Pose (Tadasana), Warrior I (Virabhadrasana I), Goddess Pose (Utkata Konasana), Prayer Pose (Pranamasana).
Spring is a time of balance and renewal but it also feels like a feminine season to me. It's a time for planting, growing, and bringing forth new life from the earth and from within. In a world that seems to have forgotten it's feminine history, this feels like the perfect season for remembering.
