Creating a Magical Advent Garden!

There is so much wonder and magic associated with these days of Advent.
Traditionally, the four weeks of Advent lead us through the four Kingdoms of Nature; the Mineral Kingdom, the Plant Kingdom, the Animal Kingdom, and the Kingdom of Humankind. There are several ways that each of the kingdoms can be celebrated. One of my favorite is by creating a magical Advent garden.
I start by placing a large, waterproof tray or planter where I will want my garden. In the past I have had it under the Christmas tree, or on a low table in a corner of the room. You will want to put a waterproof cover under this to protect the floor or furniture. In the planter, assemble several large interesting rocks, stacking some into a high mound towards the back. Then I build a miniature mountain with foothills, by adding and shaping soil around the rocks. Each night of the first week you can add to this foundation. Perhaps you will add some more rocks to make a cave area, or create a stream and pond area with pebbles and sand. (If you are clever you can make these areas so that they can hold water, or perhaps put a small mirror in place of the pond.) You might wish to designate a path area that climbs up your mountain. Little crystals and tumbled stones will add a magic touch to this landscape as well. I like to burn a little tea light, placed in the garden, each night as we stand or sit near the garden for story and song.
By the second week of Advent you will start to introduce plants. If you are fortunate to have moss growing out of doors, you can carefully gather it in sheets and replant it on the soil of your garden. Be sure to spray the garden frequently from now on. If you don't have access to living moss, you can buy packages of peat moss in craft stores to spread over the soil as you wish. You can also try planting some seeds, or re-pot some potted plants in your garden. Perhaps you will wish to plant several tiny potted live Christmas trees around your little mountain. You can also stick little fir branches into the soil (and replace them when they get dry). This week there will be 2 tea lights burning each night.
The third week of Advent is when the world's animal life is celebrated. Now is the time to introduce any miniature animals you wish to include in your garden. If you don't have any animals, you can make some from clay, beeswax, felt, wood.... Do try to keep the scale of the animals consistent. My garden always had deer, birds, rabbits, squirrels and sheep! This week there are 3 tea lights burning each night.
The fourth week of Advent is when we celebrate Humankind. I have often created a story around my Advent garden, and so this is when I would introduce the characters: a shepherd, a traveller, the Holy Family... I like the characters to move around from day to day. The Holy Family may be climbing the path up the mountain. This week there will be 4 tea lights burning each night.
On Christmas Eve I construct a little shelter at the top of the path, on the mountain, of twigs and bark. Then I place Mary and Joseph inside. I have a tiny angel who hovers over the shelter (the angel can hang from the tree above). You could also hang a shining star.
On Christmas morning the Baby will be added to the Family. You may think of something else special to do to the scene. Perhaps all of the animals will be circling the Family, or you could add little flowers, or maybe a special candle.
This garden stayed up until after Little Christmas, on January 6.

Best wishes to you all in this Magic Season!

This book will make a great Holiday gift!

A Donsy of Gnomes will make a wonderful Holiday gift! Bring this donsy (gathering) of gnomes into the lives of your loved ones.

My good friend, Nancy Parsons, of Waldorfbooks.com, has just listed A Donsy of Gnomes in her bookstore. Please visit http://www.waldorfbooks.com/new_arrivals.htm to see what she has to say. Also, to look over her other wonderful products.

A Donsy of Gnomes in your home

As more and more of you are receiving your copies of this fun gnome book, we would love to hear what your little ones have to say about it. Please write to Sigi with your comments and anecdotes and we will post them here.
Mossy sends his greetings!

Announcing the arrival of A Donsy of Gnomes

A Donsy of Gnomes

Here are 7 gentle stories to read to your children. In them you will meet 8 charming gnomes, and their friends. Gnomes who teach gnome-sized lessons in generosity, selflessness, resourcefulness, courage and friendship. Travel through the seasons as you share these charming gnome tales with your children. Then act out or perform the stories as puppet shows to further deepen their experience of Gnome.

Cross the threshold into Limindoor Woods to enter into the delightful world of gnomes!

“These are wonderful gnome tales, filled with magical motifs and lovingly crafted by a gifted teacher and storyteller. And not just stories are told, practical ideas and encouragement are given for you to create your own World of Faerie with your children through plays, puppetry, costumes, nature tables, even cooking!
A definite buy for parents (and teachers!) who bring Mother Nature, visible and invisible, to their children.“
---Reg Down, author of The Tales of Tiptoes Lightly series

“This grouping of magical stories is one for every bookshelf. These gnomes will surprise and delight you. I have read many gnome story books, but this one is simply the best!” - Melisa Nielsen, Waldorf curriculum author, co-owner of A Little Garden Flower

"I loved all the stories my mom told me from a Donsy of Gnomes. In our house, we love gnomes and fairies. My favorite part was about when Ms. Sigi was a girl. In the book she talked about seeing gnomes and that makes me excited to find my own. -Elleanor Nicol Tow, 8 years old, lover of gnomes

“What a perfect little book for young children! Take your child on a charming and jaunty journey through the worlds of the wee folk. It’s just the thing for sweet dreams at night, or a pause in the midst of a busy day. I predict that this will be one of the books that will remain alive in your children’s hearts long after they have grown and have children of their own.”
- Nancy Parsons, www. waldorfbooks.com

This small volume of 186 pages, illustrated with black and white drawings, will be a little treasure for children 5 to 105 years old. This book selling for $14.75 (Also available at wholesale prices), will be available by the end of October, 2009. Please contact Sigi for more information.
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An interview with Alesander Sajé and Sieglinde De Francesca

Alesander Sajé, the author of Climbing Down the Mountain, recently interviewed Sieglinde De Francesca about her new book, A Donsy of Gnomes.

AS: Sieglinde, I have just finished reading your delightful book, A Donsy of Gnomes. Tell me. Why gnomes?

SDF: I don’t have a simple answer for you, Alesander. Actually, I had started writing a totally different book, a curriculum book, but these gnomes would not let me be. When I relented and finally let them tell their stories I came to understand that this book was to be a portal into their world. I also realized that this book was not just for children.

AS: Tell me more.

SDF: I went to great length to write about gnomes as elementals in the introduction of my book. The elementals are expressions of the forces, the energies, of nature. Perhaps my “pen” was used as a tool to bring forth some of those energies in order to counteract what is happening in the world today. To remind us not to lose touch with the purity of nature.

AS: You say these stories are not just for children.

SDF: I could say these are stories for families, meant to knit the magic that happens when a parent shares a story with a child. But, that would be too limiting. These stories are for anyone who wishes to cross the threshold into the realm of the elementals.
I read and reread the stories myself and the gnomes continue to work their magic on me. I find that I am actually transported to Limindoor Woods, and this reality, this everyday world I live in, becomes obscured by a mist.

AS: Where is Limindoor Woods?

SDF: As a young child I lived in a true colonial house in Westport, Connecticut, the house where the children in the book live. There was a hill and a stream and meadow and woods, the same as in the book. Curiously, the area of my childhood world that is designated in the book as Limindoor Woods was blank in my memory. Yet, when the stories came to me, those woods came into focus.
The woods name is interesting. Limin, or liminal, has to do with a threshold between two different existential planes. That world of gnome is only accessible by passing through a limin door, thus the name.

AS: What do you think these gnomes have taught you, Sieglinde?

SDF: Ah! Thank you for asking.
Alesander, in your book, Climbing Down the Mountain, I learned that life is not just about reaching the pinnacles, it’s about climbing back down and bringing the experience of the ascent into ones future. These gnomes have taken me to a new place in my life and my work.
You know that I am a teacher. There are, if one is lucky, when teaching children, moments that are enchanted. You never know when those moments will come, but you cherish them. I have found that when writing, those moments of enchantment turn into hours.
And more than that. It is more than the enchantment. Maybe my ascent has been really a search for the alchemical solution to my life’s purpose, a sort of crystallization of the gifts that have been given to me so that I could focus them on one intention. I felt I had been climbing my own “Mt. Analogue” until I reached the summit. I am now happily on my descent.

AS: Well, welcome back down the mountain. Tell me, how does imagination play into the experience of these stories?

SDF: As a teacher, I constantly strive to develop my student’s imagination. It begins with opening them to a sense of wonderment.
All that is new and wondrous we first experience through our head, heart and hand, the balance of our being. To imagine something we must resort to what our senses have taught us. We imagine what something looks like, feels like, sounds, smells, tastes like. We remember past sensory experiences and with our imagination we can synthesize a whole new one.
It is well over 50 years since I lived in Westport; many of my memories of the place are vivid. When writing the stories I wanted to immerse myself in the experience of the place as much as possible, short of going there. Remembering a sound that I often heard, the song of a wood thrush, I found a sound bite online at http://www.learnbirdsongs.com/birdsong.php?id=32 and listened to a loop of the song as I wrote. In a way, that sound became my “limin door” to that imaginary place.
It is my desire, my intention, that these stories will awaken a whole world in the imaginations of the readers and listeners. The enlivenment of their imaginations will then serve them in some unimagined way in their lives, as they ascend to their summits.

AS: Thank you so much for the gift of this book, Sieglinde. And thank you for sharing these thoughts. It has been a pleasure talking with you.

Sieglinde De Francesca’s book, A Donsy of Gnomes, 7 gentle gnome stories, is now available through her website, teachwonderment.com, and in fine bookstores everywhere.

two Wonderment websites

Please open to http://www.teachwonderment.com/ to learn more about teaching with wonderment.

And to open to "Leon & Lucy's Garden of Wonders" for stories that enliven the imagination & awaken a sense of wonderment, and crafts that teach skills & result in delightful toys and activities, please visit http://www.kitntales.com/kitntales.html

an invitation to share experiences of wonderment

I would like to invite you to share those moments when you have experienced true wonderment in your life. Those moments that have taken your breath away. Sights seen, sounds heard... moments of magic and awe.
Do you recall an experience of wonderment as a child?
Have you seen your own children experience it?
What caused it?
What was the response?
How has it changed you (or your child)?

I believe that we must keep these wonder experiencing faculties alive and tuned, or else a veil will cover our senses and our world will become gray.
One exercise to do to keep open is to remember one moment of magic. Remember it with all of your senses. What were the colors, sounds, smells, tastes. How was the light? How did you feel? What were you doing when you experienced it? How did you respond? Hold that experience in your mind and savor it. Then try to put it into words.

I recall once driving across the country, I think I was in Wyoming, I had driven through a thick dark storm when the sky suddenly opened into a cathedral of apricot colored light. Then there appeared an almost audible rainbow; the height, brightness and clarity of which I could not believe was possible. As if with a "close encounter" I was powerless to drive any further. I pulled over, got out of the car, and was totally consumed in awe with this apparition. When, after a 'lifetime' of bathing in its beauty, I turned to get into my car, I saw that, there on this vast open deserted highway, were several cars stopped, presumably for the same reason I stopped mine. One by one we drove away, much changed by the experience.