The three eldest children started eurythmy classes shortly after we returned home. As they come into their bodies, the natural balance and grace of childhood is reinforced, the awkward march towards the teens gently supported, and now the smallest is BIG enough to start classes.



The reverential awe with which she's started each class, the constant commenting afterwards, telling people she's doing real classes has all been very sweet and she can now join in with the bigger children when they're retelling a story using the movements. The children have been very firm in urging me to try some of the movements too, it seems a good fit for our family, whole songs and poems can be enacted, not that we manage that often.

Last year the 10+ years class put on an end of term play about a girl who had a dragon, a dog, a kitten and a mouse. My very tall then 12 year old chose to be the mouse, my quite tall son chose the kitten and by the time we got to the girl and the dragon that was the choice of the tinier girls in the class. It is always interesting to watch the children sort themselves into these roles.



Before the play the whole class worked through some of the movements and "formations" - no music, just movement to the rhythms of the voice.



The younger children numbered just two, my Elf and another and despite their innate shyness they were encouraged and supported by our wonderful teacher to demonstrate a little of what they could do too.



And from those movements I can see the first tentative steps towards what the older children are doing in the simple movements of the smallest children this year.



Just in case the term eurythmy is not something you're familiar with here are a couple of links to illuminate you...

The usual wikipedia explanation and

A video via youtube...

Summer descended upon us, the warmest, driest, wettest summer in history. Half the continent has drowned under repeated cyclones and monsoon cycles and half (the bit we're in) has withered, crackling brown and yellow, driving us to the water hole, to any speck of coolness we can find. To hard to find the energy to write, let alone for table time and beginning a brand new year... The sun has been fierce, unrelenting, harsh and draining.

The weather took us by surprise and we adapted slowly, adding in meals outside as the sun dipped behind the eucalypts, taking pillows to the trampoline and watching the stars twinkle out, marvelling at how busy our night sky has become, remembering at long last the delights of soda water and lime, inventing interesting fruit icy poles, refreshing ourselves in the evening at the water hole... Writing was too hot and sticky an occupation, to hold a warm, whirring laptop and coax prose from the molasses of my thoughts was impossible.

The vast expanse of tiles inside made it the perfect place to play our memory game

Our beloved water hole

Bush fires on the hottest day of the year

Face, hand, feet painting - lovely cool watercolours

Watermelon! What else?

And yes, the Vikings came to town...

Saving running around until the evenings

Waiting till the sun goes down to stargaze.

And still the heat burned on. March is often warmer than the other months as summer fights against the dying of the light but the last few days of misty mornings gives us hope for autumn and harvests, the leaves changing colour and more balance between light and dark. It's been a classic Australian summer this time around, one I think all the children will remember, for many reasons. At the end of it I am filled with relief and surprisingly already a little nostalgia. So many nudges to memories of my own childhood, watching a child learning to ride their bicycle, picking tomatoes, the ground being too hot underfoot to walk without shoes, stargazing - once upon a time with my father, now with my children... the wheel of life contains so much sweetness.

So there are parts of blog posts as yet unposted, weeks following that haven't made it to the page. Lost in the usual whirlwind of apathy that punctuated the end of 2012. A hard year for so many people, not personally for us other than the little irritations but hard, so hard, for many people we love.

We closed out the year with three friends battling cancer, others divorcing after a long marriage and quite a number of children, dear friends departing these shores and an odd uncertainty about what is to come for our little family.

I understand the human need for order from the chaos. Order within soothes the fear of the chaos that bubbles around us. It's part of the reason I was drawn to the Waldorf pedagogy for my children. It offered us simple, beautiful choices to gently bring a rhythm and harmony into our lives that can comfortably bend and flex for the conflicts and changes and character building moments that we all experience.

So I've woken this first day of the new year, before the family arises for the day, and am considering changes that will nourish and support each of us...

If I was a tiny bit computer savvy I'd prefer to present this on the screen as I have on paper with interlocking circles showing my personal changes and what I'm keeping, the ones for "school", for the children, for my relationship with my husband and for our family... but I'm not so you'll need to imagine them. I've written them in lovely Lyra pencils, in my favourite colours. I might even put it on the refrigerator to remind me of the hope I woke with on this lovely grey and cool welcome to 365 days that will not come round again. I might add, I suspect it's not quite finished anyway. I've never written out my "wants" and "hopes" and "dreams" in this way and I quite like it, the interconnections make more sense this way instead of being an extensive and downright impossible appearing list. Long lists intimidate me and feel eternal. These cheerful colour circles are much more welcoming.

Basically, I'm going to write, perhaps even start a daily journal again after a long hiatus. Before choosing an activity or a meal or a direction I'm going to ask myself "will this nourish me?" Not specifically in the conventional sense of what are the vitamins, calories, essential minerals but in a more holistic way. Hopefully I'll model something of value to my children. I will start dancing again - less ballroom and more Gabrielle Roth. I will cook with gusto again - this is a carry over from last year where, despairing of the carbohydrate laden, stereotypical, resentful meals I was churning out, I found healthy, nourishing (that word again) and delightful meals that I could prepare quickly, using far more fresh produce than I'd fallen in the habit of using. Our carbohydrate bases disappeared and we didn't eat potatoes from April till December - not out of conscious choice but because they weren't on the menu.

In a less overwhelming sense I'm also going to tackle quince cooking, artichoke preparation and I'm going to understand what the hieroglyphs that pass for crochet and knitting patterns - I'm going to make something, maybe just ONE thing, but I'll make it. If I can follow a pattern to sew a donkey, I can crochet more than a square and knit more than a truncated, overly wide scarf...

We celebrate our second week of advent by contemplating the plant kingdom, plucking the first few snow peas from our indoor garden, freshening the advent wreath with bracken ferns and heading out into the forests near our home to look for a tree that our family will bring into our home in echoes of ancient winter festivals where the greenery was a reassurance that a hard winter was a passing time, that once more the world would be fecund and warm. I guess we've never really sat down and wondered "why" we follow this Victorian tradition of tree bringing in, festooning it with lights (in lieu of candles) and decorations. It's now simply a symbol of the season of giving and gathering. You see a tree with stuff on it, you can guess what time of year it is.

Out into the plant kingdom we went.

We were a little divided about what to do for a tree this year. I discovered spruces for sale at several nurseries but at 10cm high they weren't quite what we were hoping for. I suggested a piece of driftwood draped with tinsel but this was shouted down. I wasn't quite enamoured of our final choice, a feral radiata pine, harvested from the nearby forests given we'd had a little trouble up north keeping the first one green and fresh and having to actually go and cut another down just before Christmas.

We bundled ourselves into the car and headed along little roads near our home, both the Husband and I anticipating a long evening of fruitless searching but much to our surprise, from the roadside we spotted several likely contenders. I swear this tree must have been just waiting for us.


Straight and tall, with perfectly spaced branches. The children were very pleased. The Husband and I were very pleased that a whole night of driving round wasn't on the cards.


And into the house we we went, fortified with hot chocolates and gingerbread and very thankful indeed that the hot weather had come and gone for now.


Everyone worked hard to decorate our little tree. After years of celebrating together we now have a collection of precious ornaments, made by ourselves and friends, some heirloom ones from my childhood, others carefully chosen after serious discussion by the children. One day I hope to have the most memorable decorations of all, the cow vertabrae my mother salvaged when we lived in the remote outback when I was very small. With no nearby stores and Christmas coming, she painted them orange and sprinkled glitter on them. They slid very nicely over branches. It never occurred to me growing up that most people were unlikely to have cow bones on their Christmas trees and I'm yet to find a more curious addition to the festive decorations anywhere.


And suddenly we're all feeling festive, small irritations pass us by, everyone seems to be humming or singing or crafting or dancing...

Because it's not about finding the tree but also about the gathering of community. This week as we've contemplated the nourishment springing from our little garden window (which is definitely another blog post) is the overwhelming wealth of friends and visitors. Centring round food and creating nourishment, not just for our bodies but for our souls as well. But that is another blog post entirely... (after months of not blogging I obviously have a lot to say!).

When we sit down to main lesson table time there has been often the vexed question of what will the smallest do? Quite often the older children take turns entertaining her while their siblings are focussing on their studies, but mostly she's happy to potter.

She's old enough now to initiate games and chooses to tidy up after herself too. She can play games with the older ones and follow the rules somewhat.

Her drawings have also changed, from the toddler scribbles to identifiable drawings, currently apple trees. With bird nests and apples. Many, many apple trees.

She also counts. Everything. Much to my surprise she will count objects without touching them and can keep the pattern so she's not recounting items or getting lost in a pile of things. She invariably drops the number 14 though. Every single child of mine has had a number that they forgot until they were older.

Her complete obsession though, is rocks. Since she was tiny she has collected rocks of all shapes and sizes. A few days ago I turned back on the beach to see her staggering along carrying a rock the size of a small football. The rocks have names, mostly Jack, and they are mummy and daddy rocks and baby rocks. She will arrange them on the beach and alongside streams, out in the yard and next to her dollhouse.

Joining in with main lesson time

Rock heaven

Conquering the balance beam

Feeding her rabbits

When we moved in to our new house we spent a few hours one day arranging her play space. It's just inside the front door and very near the dining table and kitchen, so she is never alone while she plays. Friends who visit are often invited to play or share her space and she takes great delight in tidying the space at the end of play. She's even asked for her very own dustpan and broom for Christmas.

This is going to be an interesting experiment. My phone (from which I take my photographs) is refusing to talk to my computer (on which I blog) so I am going to write the text and then open the draft on the phone and hopefully insert the photographs. As it's likely to be photo heavy it's going to be quite erm, character building I do believe. But that seems to be the way of our festive season celebrations these past few years... we can't seem to segue easily into it, it feels like we've transformed into the Kilkenny cats and we tumble and fumble our way into the very depths of the season and each year I blog about the ebbs and flows. It's probably getting quite tedious for anyone still reading this blog. I was reflecting as we lit the first candle on Sunday night that each Christmas over the past few years has brought us more challenges than the usual ones of finances and family but rather illness, loss and transition.

So far this year, touch wood, all is progressing smoothly but I've noticed we're all very cautious about this, our favourite season, the children musing over what "feels" like Christmas and coming to some quite individual conclusions. We put off baking our cakes until quite late in November and rejoiced when we actually got round to baking them. The faint aroma of marinading fruit cake tugs on memories and now we're into the waiting, the preparing time, into Advent.

With the death of our lovely spruce whilst we lived in the north we've been a little stumped on trees this year. But we've been taking some most promising drives, carefully sizing up unsuspecting feral radiata pines. But that is a task for next weekend...

In the meantime we are celebrating the stones, the bones, the seashells, the crystals that form the bedrock of the earth. Our path to the stable is one of small white quartz pebbles and tiny bleached seashells. The Son has donated his shell candle to illuminate the way. We spent a delighted afternoon with our favourite music playing opening the trunk, finding the treasures and then learning patience by only putting out the first week's items - the wreath (accompanied by my now traditional panicked dash to the store to purchase new red candles), the backing cloth, the straw (which this year is fragrant Huon pine shavings), the path and setting the family and donkey along their way. For the first time we have an Advent Calendar, this one from our lovely local Waldorf store. Luckily there are 24 windows and four children so everyone gets equals turns. Four windows have now been opened and each tiny image has been greeted with delight (and for some reason hand clapping and skipping and an impromptu song by the youngest).

Monday of the stone week we were visited by the Owlet family who brought beach stones, paint and varnish and the children spent a couple of hours painting all sorts of scenes. Today clay (brought out for The Son to make a set of rune stones) was appropriated by the girls and whilst I told stories of Rome and Carthage (so traditional, I know) The Eldest quietly created ornaments for the tree and the two small girls just enjoyed the feel of the clay in their fingers.

So here we are, swimming deeper into the season, watching the weather rattle its erratic way round the island, planning our feasting, writing quiet little lists and I'm getting up early to order from WAHM businesses and find treasures for my beloved children. For which they have repaid me a thousand fold. Yesterday I staggered home from a prolonged dental appointment, my head aching from the drilling, my face feeling bruised. I discovered that my children had spent the hour and half planning and starting on their gifts to me. They had any number of other options, preparing a gift for me was not one I'd canvassed. My vocabulary is sadly lacking when I attempt to articulate how my heart has swelled with gratitude for these four souls to choose me as their mother.

I hope the season goes well for each and every one of you. If my cunning multi device plan works then hopefully there will be posts for each week leading up to the 12 Days... Stay tuned.

Repairing out little donkey in preparation for his journey

Small girls carefully adding the eggs to the batter

mother and son

Learning to carefully mix the eggs

Creations that appeared while hands were keeping busy

The Eldest creating, this little wreath took her a long time to perfect.

Starting the journey

This past weekend our Waldorf Home Ed group came together for our third seasonal festival of the year... Spring!

Our lovely hostess, Karin (who runs the fabulous Lyrebird store in town) greeted us at the gate with garlands at the ready.

The may pole had been cut and carved by one of the fathers and stood ready in the field waiting for the ribbons. The Husband took care of that, followed by an eager group of children, completely fascinated by the process.


After the festival was postponed by the usual spring deluges that abounded, we were all cautious about the sky and as we guessed we celebrated our Spring season in all her capricious delight. We were rained on, the sun poured down, an icy wind nipped at us and through it all we bound the may pole with our hopes and dreams for the new year to come.


First the children skipped round, wit only a little help from a few parents. You'd think they were born to twisting bright ribbons round a carved pole! For many children this was their first time, I expected perhaps a little more bemusement at what their parents were expecting them to do now but the opportunity to dance and sing seemed to make absolute sense and the songs delighted them.