Two more weeks of classes left

Dear Families,

       Thank you for coming to the festival yesterday, and thank you for bringing friends along.  Along with the school, I hope to host four festivals for young children a year (with children being invited to other festivals such as the Lantern Walk):

1)  An Autumn Festival, in which children take a walk and meet Mother Earth and other imaginative characters who give them gifts to prepare for winter.

2)  An Advent Spiral in the morning for young children.

3)  A Spring Festival, with Mother Wind, Sister Rain, Father Sun, and Brother Wind.

4)  A May/Summer Festival, much as what we experienced yesterday.

Although yesterday felt conclusive, we do still have two more weeks of parent & child classes.  I look forward to seeing you and your family in the weeks ahead.

With warmth and light,

William Dolde

Further Preview of Thursday's Festival

Dear Families,

       The forecast is for sunnier and warmer weather on Thursday.  Our festival is outside, and I am setting the Butterfly Room up for a summer puppet show (to which I'll invite everyone at 9:30am).  To preserve a sense of wonder and magic, the Butterfly Room will remain closed until the time for the puppet show; if you come as an 8:30am earlybird, be prepared that the weather may be cool. 

Whenever you arrive, feel free to start dyeing silks right away.  Because Brazilwood sawdust was unavailable, I am offering 3 dyes:

Osage Orange sawdust -- which generally produces yellow

Madder Root -- which produces orangey red or reddish orange

Annato -- another reddish dye in case the Madder is acting particularly orange

A challenge and blessing of plant dyes is that they produce slightly different results on different occasions.

Because I want the process to be more tangible, I choose not to use dye sacks or strainers; the sawdust or bits of roots are floating in the pots, and you may have to pick them off once you take your silk out.  Although someone seeking a "perfect" silk may find minor flaws with this method (idyes and rit dyes and other synthetics do a much better job of producing absolute uniformity if that is what you seek), parents and children in past years have found the process and results very satisfying.

Although the dye pots themselves are hot, I will have tubs for rinsing.  Once the silk has entered the cool water, children tend to love to help with rinsing.

Brief process description

1)  Put your silk in the first color for 5 seconds to 5 minutes (observe how others are coming out).

2)  As best you can, allow the liquid to drip back into the pot as you take out your silk.

3)  Rinse in cold water.

4)  Hang to dry (and keep track of your silks' location).

5)  If you want to dye in more than one color (stripes, tie dye, yellow sun in the middle with a red exterior, and soforth), please start with the osage orange yellow and rinse between colors.  This will keep the colors as true as possible for others.

If you preordered extra silks, I will have them set aside for you.  Because I have not submitted an invoice yet for reimbursement, it is easiest for you to pay me directly with cash or a check to William Dolde, and I will deduct this from what I ask back from the school (rather than flooding our business office with a bunch of checks).

It is probable that we will have extra silks even if you did not preorder.  After I get a sense of how many visitors we have, I will release extra silks.

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde

Pirates, Metaphor, Festival

Dear Families,

      We have class as usual this coming week (May 14 & 15).  From 8:30 to 10:30am on May 21, all families, friends, and alums are invited to our May and Summer Festival for young children and parents.  Thank you to parents who have let me know they intend to buy extra silks on that day.  You still have a chance to let me know--I will place the order this Monday.

There is no class on Friday, May 22.  School is closed.

We had a discussion about pirates, fairy tales, and metaphor yesterday.  Here are some thoughts about images I wrote for my nursery families that you may also find useful. 

In my most recent nursery blog post, I wrote at length about fairy tales, violence, and gender roles.  If this subject is of interest to you, you may wish to visit my nursery blog to read the latest entry (or anything that interests you).

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde

Helpful Article on Toddler Conflict

Dear Families,

      At Mayfaire I had a helpful and appreciative conversation with a parent about conflict and the permission to sometimes allow conflicts to evolve with children taking the lead toward the solution (while remaining close enough to provide security and physical safety if it comes to that).  When I took my RIE training in Los Angeles, one of my instructors, Bev Kovach, shared her article on assisting toddlers in conflict situations with us.  It is written for caregivers working with groups of children with one or two or three adults, not necessarily for parents or for teachers of parent & child classes.  As such, I have the following thoughts (some of which I shared with this parent on Sunday, or she shared with me).

1)  You will likely find Kovach's ideas consistent with ideas from Vanessa's presentation at WIWS last spring.

2)  When children are of different ages (toddlers and infants together; older and younger toddlers), we may have to intervene, defend, redirect more.  When children are hungry or tired, we need to intervene or redirect more.

3)  RIE's wisdom comes from Loczy in Hungary, which is shown to have fostered excellent child development (not just in light of being an orphanage).  In Loczy, the caregivers are incredibly consistent (same group of carers with children their whole first 3 years; same caregivers stay with Loczy for decades and decades), and their ability to refrain from intervening too soon leads to a more harmonious social network among the toddlers over time.  As parents, we may be in a variety of places all the time, and we don't know how other parents will react to a conflict at a playground or birthday party.  If we feel things might not work out for the best, sometimes our best option may be to come up with a creative redirection (excuse, pretend coughing fit) and decide that there will be other chances for our own to child to learn from conflict later.

4)  As Kim Payne quotes from one of my friends in Baltimore, "Don't just do something.  Stand there!"  Sometimes our calm presence is enough to help.  Sometimes our objective reporting ("both children are pulling on the rope") is enough to help children feel recognized so that they can find their own direction.  It is very helpful at these times if we can project confidence, calmness, grace, stability rather than fear and worry.

5)  The following imaginative picture (which I've written about before) works for me.  Use it if it works for you.  As you may know, Rudolf Steiner provided us with elaborate pictures of the spiritual.  Brian Gray, a teacher at Rudolf Steiner college (and rock musician in the house band), had a gift for translating Steiner to make his insights accessible.  Brian summed up a complex discussion with the following:  "So in essence, when we take care of pets or farm animals, we are practicing to become angels."  As angels tend to each of us, the quiet and removed and strong archangels tend to interactions amongst us.  It helps me, during tense times of conflict, to practice being an archangel--confident, strong, removed.

6)  This image may not work for you.  I've heard others use the term shadowing for being close to children to ensure safety and broadcasting or narrating for the factual, nonjudgmental reporting of what is happening.  Andrea Gambardella, Waldorf teacher of teachers, recommended that as teachers and parents we find our own metaphor to help during turbulent times.  When teaching the nursery class, Andrea meditated upon being a heavy stone in a river.  Water and currents might rush and dash and bubble and gurgle about, but the stone remains strong, steady, and consistent.  Whatever metaphor you use. I recommend finding one.  Our children learn a great deal not just from our words, but from our thoughts (or thoughts expressed by body language, gesture, and intentions).

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde