As we journey further into Waldorf Homeschooling, we've found that one of the essentials is a sound knowledge of Festivals. What are they about? What do our children learn from them? And in some cases...what are we celebrating?

As we've gone from one festival to another I've keep all the links that have been useful or in some cases, free books that are needed to fully understand the festival. And it hit me the other day, when I got an email thanking me for sharing my work on my blog, I have all these resources and it's daft them just sitting on my notebook. So that's when the idea of sharing them on a webpage happened.

And if there are any that you find that you think are worth adding then please share them. There are a lot of Waldorf families, like ours, that have to homeschool on a shoestring budget, so the more we share with each other the easier our journey becomes and the wider our knowledge is shared!

The Festivals are listed below with the resources I've found useful underneath. I hope this makes your life a little easier. In some cases I spent days on the web trying to research specfic festivals. Hopefully you won't have to go through the same thing! Blessed be your celebrations.

Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures called....Signs and Symbols of the Christmas Festival. It is imperative to read this in order to understand the reasons surrounding the festival. This is one of a number of lectures and they can be read by clicking this link...

Once you've read the lectures you'll be wanting an advent spiral, so the first thing to look at is the best advent story around. I loved this one and this is the one I use time and again. It's on a blog, you can go straight to it by clicking...

Now you have a stunning story, you'll want to know how to make an advent spiral, why make an advent spiral and what do you do with it once it's made?! The first link will also explain the advent nature table for you.

The advent spiral can be made in a clockwise or counter clockwise pattern. The gist of it being...

This is important as you need to decide which would be best for your family to be more inward looking, more centred or to open up and be more outward looking.There is no right or wrong way, it's just a matter of what is right for your family.

Now would any festival be complete without a Festival Song? I know we all use the traditional Christmas Carols, but I found a lovely song to use during the Advent Spiral Walk. You can read about when you click this link...

I'd like to finish the Advent Section with a poem written by Rudolf Steiner. We introduce one new verse for each week of advent.Until during the last week of advent we say the whole poem together as a family, during the day at various times. It is a personal choice and one of the reasons I do it is because it is a perfect time to not only celebrate but to help the children understand the 4 kingdoms. To the best of my knowledge this poem was meant to be used for lighting the advent wreath...