Celebrate Halloween?
Be A Ghost Buster
With Halloween just around the corner, many local farm markets and businesses are offering haunted hayrides and haunted houses, complete with eyeball brew stirred by wicked witches and headless horsemen thundering past. These may sound intriguing to you, but they are not appropriate activities for your young child!
Children at this young age are not able to distinguish the real from the make-believe. Evil witches, shrieking goblins, gruesome monsters — all these dress-up characters can seem all too real to your child.
According to brain specialists, the brainwave pattern of children while they're awake resembles the brainwave pattern of adults in the hypnagagic state — that period between consciousness and sleep, a time when dreams and reality mix * . Thus your child is constantly in that state of mind that you experience only in the dreamlike moments before you drift off to sleep.
Would you like one of the fear-inspiring creatures that inhabit haunted houses to visit your bedroom as you drift off to sleep? If not, then think again about exposing your child to the more spooky, gory, and terrifying aspects of Halloween.
Even when you don't go out of your way to encounter the scary, demons and vampires may come right to your door on Halloween eve. Directress Mrs. Vanvechten relates an event from her own family's past. .When my younger daughter was two, I didn't think to warn her before I opened the door to trick-or-treaters." She blames the unexpected sight of the frightening costumes at her door for the sleeping problems that started that very night and continued for over two years for her daughter.
I never visited a haunted house as a child, yet my sister and I often checked under each other's beds before turning out the lights. We believed that a ghost inhabited the family garage, and didn't dare go into a certain area of my grandparents' basement for fear we'd encounter the evil witch that we were convinced lived there. Had we experienced some of the horrors of the haunted houses, I can't begin to imagine how many more terrifying creatures would have inhabited our worlds.
"A child's waking awareness is more open to fresh perceptions and wild ideas," write the authors of The Creative Spirit. Experts speculate that the child's brainwave pattern - and thus his or her state of mind - may be the reason that a child's reality embraces the bizarre, the silly, and the terrifying.
With the onset of puberty around the age of 12, the brainwaves of the child begin to resemble an adult's. The wildly creative flair of the child begins to fade; his or her perception of the world will more closely correspond to yours. The adolescent can distinguish the real from the make-believe and the costumed monster of Halloween loses his frightfulness and becomes a person dressed in a mask and odd clothing.
Autumn is the harvest season and the time of year when Nature puts on her most brilliant colors. It's a lovely time for outdoor activities and excursions to share with your child. Enjoy what the season has to offer. Its treasure is not the ghosts and goblins, but the crunchy leaves, the plentiful harvest, and the small miracles that surround you everywhere - the brilliant leaf on the ground, the smell of hot cider, the honking of geese overhead. Take a child by the hand and let the child be your guide.
^ Goleman, Daniel, Kaufman, Paul, and Ray, Michael. The Creative Spirit. New York: Dutton, 1992. p. 59.
Wondrous Lantern Walk in Costume
Several years ago I was involved with a small Waldorf preschool in Canton, Ohio. We were bothered by the influence of mainstream celebrations of Halloween, but realized the wonder of dressing in costumes and walking around in the dark with lanterns on a sort of quest. We came up with the idea of integrating the Martinmas Lantern Walk with Halloween, celebrating it a little earlier than the traditional November 11, so that the children would not feel so different from their trick-or-treating friends.
We made lanterns ahead of time of heavy legal sized cardstock, cutting holes in leaf or other shapes and then covering the holes with tissue or kite paper. The cardstock, thus decorated, was curled around into a cylinder and stapled or glued tightly in that shape. Then we drew around the shape to get a circle the right size for a bottom. Eight tabs were added to this shape and the bottom was glued tightly to the bottom sides of the lantern. A tall handle of string was connected to two holes punched in the sides of the top of the lantern. A safety candle was then glued to the center of the bottom. This lantern could also be made from an oatmeal box and decorated similarly. Older children can make lanterns out of a number 5 or 10 tin can by punching nail holes in the sides.
Costumes should be planned to suit the mood. Fairies, gnomes, elves, knights, ladies, etc, not skeletons or monsters!
The children had been told the story of St. Martin (see below) several times.
We went to a local farm with a nice grove of trees, where we gathered in the barn to hear the story once again. We had two or three stations scattered throughout the woods with adults dressed up, one as the Knight Martin, who gave each child a little gift (could be a small scarf made by each parent to symbolize the half cloak). Another adult dressed as St. Martin, the monk, who was stirring a pot of hot cider over an open fire, gave a cup to each child. Other stations could include a poor old woman giving out cookies or doughnuts. There could also be a station where the children give something to a poor or hungry person. Maybe each child could get two cookies, one of which they give away to the poor person.
While walking we sang the following song:
After the walk, the children can play traditional non-scary Halloween games, depending on the weather: ducking for apples, apple on a string, etc. Alternatively, in cold weather, singing around a campfire may be more appropriate.
Saint Martin of Tours Bishop, Confessor — 316-400
Feast: November 11 — taken from http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/MARTIN.htm where you will find the story of the rest of his life.
St. Martin, called "the glory of Gaul," was born about the year 316 of pagan parents in Sabaria, Upper Pannonia, a province comprising northern Yugoslavia and western Hungary. His father was an officer in the Roman army who had risen from the ranks. While Martin was still a child, his father was transferred to a new station in Pavia, north Italy. Here the boy learned of Christianity, felt drawn to it, and became a catechumen. As the son of a veteran, at the age of fifteen he was required to begin service in the army. Though never shirking his military duty, he is said to have lived more like a monk than a soldier.
Young Martin was stationed at Amiens, in Gaul, when the incident occurred which tradition and art have rendered so famous. As he rode towards the town one winter day, he noticed near the gates a poor man, thinly clad, shivering with cold, and begging alms. Martin saw that none who passed stopped to help the miserable fellow. He had nothing with him but the clothes he wore, but, drawing his sword from its scabbard, he cut his great woolen cloak in two pieces, gave one half to the beggar, and wrapped himself in the other. The following night, the story continues, Martin in his sleep saw Jesus Christ, surrounded by angels, and dressed in the half of the cloak he had given away. A voice bade him look at it well and say whether he knew it. He then heard Jesus say to the angels, "Martin, as yet only a catechumen, has covered me with his cloak."
Martin became the patron saint of beggars and outcasts. He was known for his gentleness, and his ability to bring light to those in darkness. He is remembered in many French households with a festival of lanterns.
Fall Tour of Taproot Farm and Woodlot
On Sunday evening, September 24, Alison Manzer and her sons, James, 10, and Jack 12, arrrived in the late afternoon in time to have a quick tour of the homes at Taproot and meet Misty Vredenburg and her daughter Emma Vreler, 11, who live in the converted barn, and have a lovely supper made by Misty. The Manzers stayed overnight in the old farmhouse.
On Monday morning we all had a breakfast of German pancakes at my solar house, and then went on a tractor tour of the rest of the farm and a long walking exploration of the wood lot and creek, led by my partner Jim Swansboro. The Thechildren delighted in their discovery of deer prints, a deer skull, complete with teeth, catching crawdads to examine and then return to the creek, swinging on grapevines, exploring the old barn we are going to move, and learning about trees and their care.
Emma, James, Jack examine wildlife
Misty and Emma
Reader Comment
A comment, just as a reader, about the Prayer Before Birth which I also found moving and thought provoking. However, as I reread and then reread it again, what I realized is that the prayer is spoken strictly from a victim's perspective: i.e., everything is a prayer asking for protection against what the world will do to the incoming human; nowhere does the prayer ask for forgiveness for the harmful tendencies brought by the child into the world, no prayer asking for protection of the world from the soon-to-be-born. Without that element, it is really just a bleak blaming of the world for infecting the child. In that regard, I ultimately have to conclude that it is a very unbalanced and ultimately false portrait of reality. My 2 cents worth. fwiw.
On the other hand, your violence/test scores article was fascinating — thanks for including it.
Warmest wishes,
Nancy Parsons of http://www.waldorfworld.net
My Grandson, Travis, Cover Child!
The November–December issue of Life Learning contains an article by my daughter Karen Whitescarver about Democratic Education and her son, my grandson, Travis is on the cover. Check it out at http://www.lifelearningmagazine.com/0612/index.html
Upcoming Conferences and Lectures
Workshops are currently being planned in Boulder, Breckenridge and Vail, Colorado. More information is available on the Seminars page. If you'd like to get a group together for a workshop, please contact Barbara