Ways to Celebrate May Day!

May Day is May 1st and people all over our Earth celebrate it.
I've put together a collection of ways to celebrate with your children:

• Lie in the grass under a flowering tree and look up at the sky through the blossoms
• Dress all in green
• Braid your hair and your daughters hair, weaving flowers into it, or make a wreath of flowers for your head.
• Make a lei to were around your neck. Then make another to give away.
• Take an early morning nature walk and collect dew from plants (ask a 3rd grader the way to do this, they are very inventive)
• Dance with family/friends around a Maypole!
• Take turns reading poems about Spring before each meal on this special day.
• Have lunch outdoors, picnic style!
• Make offerings to the garden animals (birds, rabbits, squirrels) quietly sit together and enjoy watching the animals take part in your gifts.
• If possible take your child outside, sit quietly together and listen to the birds.
  
• Involve your children in the 'Spring Cleaning' of your home! Remember even small hands can contribute to caring for the home.
• Join hands and walk the perimeter around your home, giving thanks for the yard, the trees, or even a tiny bit of grass.
• Understand and express to your children that no piece of Earth can really belong to you. You belong to the Earth.
• Weed, mulch, mow. Admire
• Plant a hawthorn or May bush.
• Create a wreath of greenery for the door.
• Read a book about caring for our Earth.
  
• Plant flowers in a window box for someone who can't get outside to enjoy them.
• Prepare May baskets for friends and relatives or even a stranger! Fill it with special treats. Hang it on the doorknob, ring the bell, then run away! Better still, deliver it in person and stay for a visit.
• Press flowers onto cards and send them in the mail to friends.
• Read the biography of Rachel Carson.
  
• Face paint your children as the animals the enjoy most.
• Learn a new song together and sing, sing, sing!

*some ideas inspired by Patricia Montley's In Nature's Honor
~~Happy soon-to-be MAY DAY to all!
*MM's notes: It's important to remember when hiking or walking in nature with young children that the child is not trying to 'get there'. All he or she wants to do is to walk, to stop and pick dandelions or to splash in a puddle.
PEACE
~~MM