COMMUNITY

Peggy O'Mara
Keynote: Finding & Creating Community

As new parents and at each new stage of parenting, we need information, inspiration and supportive communities, including schools and childcare programs. It’s not enough to read books and magazines; we need to see one another. Why is community so important? What can we do when it’s hard to find? Where can we discover community locally, globally and virtually? Innovative ideas for finding your tribe.

Workshop 1: Sunday Dinner

Family friendly natural meals on a budget. Meal planning to save your life. Magic ingredients to always have on hand. Eating with the seasons. Creating lasting family rituals around food. Please bring your favorite recipes and ideas to share.

Workshop 2: Soulful Writing

We will provide a supportive environment for writing mothering monologues. Short, timed writing. Positive feedback. Safe process for beginning or experienced writers

Profile: Peggy O’Mara is the mother of four grown children. She has gained international celebrity as publisher, editor and owner of Mothering Magazine. She is also the author of four books: Having a Baby Naturally: The Mothering Magazine Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth, Natural Family Living: The Mothering Magazine Guide to Parenting, The Way Back Home: Essays on Life and Family, and A Quiet Place: Essays on Life and Family. A dynamic speaker, she has lectured and conducted workshops in conjunction with organizations such as the Omega Institute, Esalen, La Leche International, and Bioneers. She has appeared on numerous television and radio programs and has been featured in national publications including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Mother Earth News, and Utne Reader

HOME LIFE

Cynthia Aldinger

Keynote: The Activities of Home Life as the Foundation for Learning

In early childhood, daily life is the curriculum.  The environment we create and the meaningful, purposeful work we engage in are the textbooks for young children. In this presentation Cynthia will reveal how young children are like scientists and how the typical activities found in an active, healthy home provide them the best laboratory. We can create such environments for the children whether at home, in a child care setting or even moments at school.

Workshop 1: Setting the Mood While Setting the Table

How do we find joy, enthusiasm and ‘yes’ to the seemingly mundane tasks of everyday life?  Let’s push up our sleeves and find out!  In this workshop we will consider how to shift an activity from feeling like a chore to being a spirit lifter.  We will also create a welcoming environment for our fellow conference participants to enjoy their lunch break.

Workshop 2: Twizzling Yarn and May Baskets

The Living Arts of LifeWays include the domestic, nurturing, social and creative arts.   In this workshop, we will do a bit of nurturing and a bit of creating!  We will learn a very simple skill for creating yarn cords and make a basket for spring or May Day.  We will also take a little time to consider all that our hands do to serve others and give our hands a little TLC

Profile: Cynthia Aldinger is founder and Executive Director of LifeWays North America, an organization dedicated to the development of healthy childcare and parenting practices.  She has lectured and presented internationally, directs trainings and seminars across the United States, and is an Adjunct Faculty member at Rudolf Steiner College in California.  She served fourteen years on the board of the Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America, is a member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and a supporter of the Alliance for Childhood.  A mother of two grown sons, Cynthia’s passion is the preservation of the playful spirit of childhood and helping to create home-like environments that provide the comfort, security and activities found in a healthy home. 

NURTURING

Shea Darian

Keynote: Working Wonders: Cultivating Reverence and Gratitude with Our Children

In our busy, complex electronic age, it's easy for gratitude and reverence to become buried under schedules that leave little time for awe and wonder. In this keynote talk, Shea explores how parents, teachers and caregivers may prepare the fields of daily life to yield a bounty of wonder for children and adults alike. Through cultivating reverence for life and relationships, creating meaningful daily rhythms and honoring rites of passage, we create curative environments for our children to build community, celebrate the present, heal the past, and inspire courage for the future.

Workshop 1: Finding the Rhythm: Creating Daily Rhythms that Nurture and Educate the Child

Creating a home, care-giving or at school environment that nurtures the soul in simple day-to-day moments is the topic of this workshop. Through presentation, conversation, story, poetry, song and simple ritual, we will explore how rhythmic daily patterns and such arts as singing, poetry and storytelling can serve as natural sanctuaries for a child throughout the day. It is possible in our fast-paced, electronic age to create a home or care-giving environment in which children and adults may cultivate balance, rhythm, joy, peace and genuine reverence for life and relationships.

Workshop 2: Singing Through the Day: Songs to Support Daily Rhythms and Transitions

Singing simple a cappella songs with children is a curative to heal and nurture a child’s senses in our often over-stimulating, electronic culture. Singing together builds intimate community and allows us to listen to one another with greater love and intention. This workshop is a delightful, experiential event for parents and teachers to gain resources, nurturing and inspiration to sing with the children in their lives. We will explore simple exercises to care for our singing voices and learn simple songs to sing with children throughout the day.

Profile: Shea Darian is an author and family educator who encourages parents, teachers and caregivers to transform our often busy, chaotic 21st century lives with a greater sense of balance and peace. Shea offers practical and inspirational tools to build healthy, joyful  relationships. In addition to her new title, Living Passages for the Whole Family: Celebrating Rites of Passage from Birth to Adulthood (2008), and her previous books on family life, Seven Times the Sun: Guiding Your Child through the Rhythms of the Day, and Sanctuaries of Childhood: Nurturing a Child’s Spiritual Life, Shea is currently working on a book to honor family passages of grief, death and change. She recorded the CD Celtic Quest with Mary Thienes Schunemann and Amy Chevalier as the women's ensemble, Avalon a cappella.  Shea received a BA in Speech and Theater, a Masters of Divinity, a certificate in Waldorf Administration and Community Development at Sunbridge College, and is a certified spiritual director, specializing in small groups and family groups. Shea is also a sacred arts enthusiast, particularly in the area of sacred drama. Shea and her spouse, Andrew, are inspired homemakers and the parents of two young adults.

DANCE

Anna Rainville

Keynote: Dancing as a Village

Come join our circle of singing games to enliven family, classroom and community life. Experience the joy of moving and singing together. You will learn a repertoire of  traditional and new steps and tunes to include in your daily rhythm and seasonal celebrations. These singing games are appropriate for children of all ages and those who love them.

Workshop 1: "Music and Rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul." Plato. Come find out how and why music and rhythm sustain us. Practical ideas to cultivate these important elements in the family and school settings will be explored.

Workshop 2: “Gather together in a circle we will sing, gather together we will make a golden ring." Come join our golden ring to learn traditional and new singing games to support your school curriculum and family life.

Profile: Anna Rainville grew up in a family who honoured singing and dance and has carried this love into her teaching of children and adults for thirty years in public and Waldorf schools. Her book, Singing Games for Families, Schools and Communities (2006), includes dances for all ages which she has presented in workshops and community gatherings coast to coast. Anna taught kindergarten for eleven years in a public school and was chosen outstanding teacher of the year by the California Kindergarten Association. A founding board member of the National Kindergarten Alliance, she is an advocate for integrated arts, play and nature. With her mother, Betty Peck, she co-founded and directs the quarterly Kindergarten Forum.  A Waldorf teacher for both children and teachers in training, she recently graduated her class after eight years at the Waldorf School of the Peninsula in Los Altos, California. She lives with her family in Saratoga, California, where every May Day friends and neighbours come to dance around the May Pole.

IMAGINATION

Suzanne Down

Keynote: Imagination, the Key to Thinking

When a child listens deeply to a story told, or enters, full of wonder, the visual life of an enlivened puppet show; for that period of time the child lives in the world of imagination.  Or should we say IMAGINATION, for the experience is so big, so profound on so many levels, that it transforms the child, body and soul.  Story and puppetry that are penetrated with art and archetype become building blocks for the developing brain, and fill the soul with meaning.

Workshop 1:  The Art of Storytelling

The Art of Storytelling - In this skill-building workshop, participants will learn the wise secrets of how to tell a story so that the children will open their hearts and souls in their listening.  How do we consciously speak with our voice so wonder and warmth imbue it?  What happens when we speak the true essence of King, different that we speak the truth of Old Gnome?  Enlivening language stirs the imagination, breathes through our circulation, and builds our children's brains!

Workshop 2: Puppetry, Making Stories Visible

Every child loves the puppet theater.  A visual world is revealed where characters, colors, movements and gestures, voice, music, and fantastical landscapes unfold a beloved story.  In this workshop we will explore the possibilities of creating instant puppet theater with a piece of silk, a puppet, and ....our laps!  Come prepared to create a magic kingdom where swans swim, ladybugs linger, pumpkins become houses, and perhaps a little brown bulb transforms into a crocus.  You will leave this workshop with many ideas and the confidence to begin to tell stories with this wonderful, friendly, Art of the Lap Theater!

Profile: Suzanne Down is founder and director of Juniper Tree School of Story and Puppetry Arts, www.junipertreepuppets.com, which offers a one-year part time certificate puppetry training, the Elements of Therapeutic ECE Summer Institute, regional puppetry conferences, and professional development and community workshops internationally.  She has taught puppetry in many adult teacher training centers, conferences and school communities.  She was co-founder and co-chair of NAARPA, the healing arts puppetry association in North America, and is on the education committee of the Puppeteers of America. 

Suzanne also created the Puppets for World Change Institute, a training and research initiative which houses the International Puppets for Peace Day project, now in its seventh year, the Hope Puppet Project, which develops healing puppetry for underserved children, The Mother Earth Puppet Project, to help renew children's and family's relationship to nature, and PuppetAid, a social arts initiative.

She has written four puppetry and story resource books, and is working on her upcoming books, 'Lifting the Veil, a Renewal of Puppet Theater', and 'The Mother Earth Puppet Project' will be available next year. 

Suzanne travels internationally extensively throughout the year bringing her experience and belief in puppetry as a healing art to many teachers, therapists, parents, and children.  She resides on beautiful Vancouver Island in British Columbia near her three children.