This will be the first year we plan on celebrating. Our local Waldorf school is having a puppet show and open house in the morning that, as long as I'm not in labor with #2 (due Friday), we're planning on attending. Afterwards, we're planning on coming home and heating up apple cider and making a homemade apple cake.
I'd love to hear what other families have planned!
We celebrate Michaelmas in our home as well. My kiddos are a bit older (3 of the 4 are grades aged) so I read to them St. George and the Dragon the week leading up to Michaelmas. For the under 7 crowd, there is some great stories out there to choose from (two or three in the Kindergarten Overview book, Suzanne Down has one in her Autumn tales), but my favorite is the one in the Tiptoes book (festival of stones, the most beautiful dragon in the world). I will do a small puppet show for them and we have a simple meal accompanied by dragon bread.
Some families dye silks with golden rod and turn them into capes, some families gift wooden swords to their brave little knights, other families make "shooting stars"- wet felted balls (with a rock in the middle for a weight) with ribbon tails attached.
This year we will also have a treasure hunt in the backyard in search of dragon tears (glass vase fillers) and if the kids are up to it, an obstacle course to practice their knightly skills ;-)
Hope this helps and please don't feel like you have to do it all this year! It is perfectly fine to pick one or two elements and then add to it year after year.
I've been really tempted to purchase the Little Acorn Michaelmas Festival ebook but I just recently bought the October and November guides and have been trying to tell myself I didn't really have time between now and the 29th to finish any larger projects. Maybe next year - but if anyone HAS purchased it, I'd love to hear some feedback!
We make dragon bread each year and have a special meal. Last year we dyed capes with tumeric. My son's St. George doll comes out for the holiday as do some dragon and St. Michael pictures for our nature table. We usually also make a rolled candle with a dragon on it to burn and we have a special dinner (usually cornish hens but I think this year it's going to be a roasted chicken) with onion and sage dressing, cooked carrots and a blackberry pie for dessert. Some years we also make homemade ginger ale which is a really fun addition. We also usually try to tell some stories and decorate the house with a few dragons.
I could be having a baby any day now too, though so 'I think we're going to scale things down a tad this year and I think we'll plan on celebrating either on Sunday or Monday. I'll be lucky if we manage to make our dragon bread, special meal and candle. My son's school and playgroup seem to be taking over more of the celebration this year which is working well for me at this point. Next year we can go all out with our celebration again. I LOVE Michaelmas so I'm kinda sad I don't feel up to doing more this year.
This is our first year doing Michaelmas. We read Dragon Baked Bread tonight, and tomorrow we're going to make Dragon Bread. I'm also drawing a dragon/michaelmas scene on our blackboard for the weekend before I change it for Monday (We use the little acorn learning program).
DD1 is only 4 so a bit young for slaying the dragon talk (she's a very sensitive child) so we're going to save the real story for next year. This year, it's just a day about dragons and dragon baked bread :)
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