Lakeside School at Black Kettle Farm offers birth –3rd grade education and Farm and Forest Summer Camp based on the Waldorf philosophy on a working farm in Essex, NY.

Nourishing the Senses through the Festivals of the Year

By Robin Gucker

We are all familiar with the well-known senses of touch, sight, hearing, and taste, but with most things in Waldorf Education there is a deeper inquiry into the senses. Waldorf Teachers work with twelve senses in total – the sense of balance, sense of motion, sense of warmth, just to mention a few. The most important of all is the “Life Sense.” This is a sense of one’s own inner wellbeing – a feeling of harmony and contentment within oneself. All other senses have an impact on the Life Sense. Most often one does not recognize the “Sense of Life” unless there is a disruption or lack of harmony such as an illness, otherwise it ticks along quite well. Our goal in the Kindergarten is to support and nourish all the senses keeping them in a harmonious and healthy state, but especially the “Sense of Life”. One of the wonderful ways in which to achieve this goal is through the experience of the Festivals through out the school year.

We begin the school year first with the separation from the family unit, when the children first come to school.  This could easily disrupt the sense of life. The courage needed for this first big hurdle is mirrored in the Festival of Michaelmas. St. Michael mustered his courage to battle the dragon and conquer his fear, even transforming the dragon into service of the good. The activities we take up during this festival season nourish many senses as we work to bring in the harvest.

When we harvest the apples we work on the sense of balance climbing the trees, and the sense of taste and touch as we

take our first crisp bite of the juicy tart apples. The children exercise the senses of balance and motion by pulling the heavily laden wagons up the hill full of apples. The children also experience the sense of warmth as they are working and when they sit to eat their warm snack at Mossy Rock after the harvest. The children also gain a sense of the other as we offer applesauce to our grade school friends and farmer Josh. The children are bathed in the colors of golden light from the silks dyed in marigolds sewn into capes of courage and light, nourishing them with warm natural colors. The calm voice we use to tell stories and the circle songs of this season are soothing to the sense of hearing, and cultivate the sense of warmth.

In November we are entering the time of year when the light is fading and the nights grow longer. The Festival of St. Martin and our Lantern Walk is a time to kindle the light. The element of fire in our lanterns satiates the senses, through warmth and light. One of the verses of the Lantern songs signifies the inclusive nature of this festival and the supports the Sense of Life, Motion, Warmth, Sight, Hearing, Balance, etc.

“Clear and Dark the night, lanterns burning bright, lanterns burning seem so small, see in single file we walk along, singing joyfully our lantern songs. We go through the land like a wild goose band, sisters of one light are we.”

The bundled children carrying colorful lanterns aglow and the warm buns and cider shared with the whole community, is a perfect example of nourishing the senses. We also work with the image of the gnomes and fairies entering mother earths cave to do their work below. The gnomes carry their light to illuminate the “underworld” and help Mother Earth. The children are given a task by mother earth as well to plant the bulbs in their garden beds. This ability to tend to the earth and care for the things around them translates to the care of themselves, and ultimately strengthens their “Life Sense”!

Before we know it we will be gathering for the last time in the year of 2015. Though it will be cold the scent of the evergreens will infuse the barn and the clear music of Taylor’s instruments will accent the space, as the children come to walk the Winter Spiral. The silence of voices, the dim light of candles slowly filling the space, and the bodies huddled together in the cold, offer a reverent and calming mood. The subtle objects from the different kingdoms of nature; crystals, fossils, feathers, skulls, and shells, are there to offer another place to call home for the children. There is a feast for the senses, and this gathering of the whole community to witness the light amongst the darkness is yet another way the children’s senses are protected and nourished by the festivals in these first years of life.