community

Mini Magic Challenge, Week of May 25

The Madrona Mini Magic Challenge is a weekly activity where community members seek to infuse their own home and our shared virtual community life with a bit of fun. It is open to all and is designed to offer the possibility of a little bit of fun, playfulness, creativity and shared inspiration to our collective experience as we settle in to a longer period at home.


This week’s theme: Bees! How did you interpret this theme? See below for our entries, and click on an image to see it in a larger lightbox.

Mini Magic Challenge, Weeks of May 11 and May 18

The Madrona Mini Magic Challenge is a weekly activity where community members seek to infuse their own home and our shared virtual community life with a bit of fun. It is open to all and is designed to offer the possibility of a little bit of fun, playfulness, creativity and shared inspiration to our collective experience as we settle in to a longer period at home.


We’re running this theme for two weeks: Your favorite book character! Or, if you can’t choose, a character from the book you are reading now. How did you interpret this theme? See below for our entries, and click on an image to get title and author information (if you can’t guess!).

From Alden, in honor of the book Enclave, by Ann Aguirre
 Deuce

Born in an enclave
Down deep in a hole
Deuce was a huntress
And would play her role

She was banished to topside
With a boy named Fade
And through these experiences
Unbreakable bonds were made

Amazingly, they killed the freaks
Both rotten and with lesions
Our deadly future is their past
Bioengineering should never use ferromagnesian

They made it through the ruins of Gotham
But two more with them in the woods
Stalker, Tegan, Fade, and Deuce
Would make it safely to Salvation


Mini Magic Challenge, Week of May 4

The Madrona Mini Magic Challenge is a weekly activity where community members seek to infuse their own home and our shared virtual community life with a bit of fun. It is open to all and is designed to offer the possibility of a little bit of fun, playfulness, creativity and shared inspiration to our collective experience as we settle in to a longer period at home.


This past week's theme was 'birds.' How did you interpret this theme? See below for our entries:


Mini Magic Challenge, Week of April 27

The Madrona Mini Magic Challenge Week 2

The Madrona Mini Magic Challenge is a weekly activity during remote learning where community members seek to infuse their own home and our shared virtual community life with a bit of fun.

Everyone in the community (current students and families, alums and friends of the school) is welcome to participate. There are no rules. You simply work with the theme to either paint, draw, photograph, craft or make a related offering. The theme is designed for families to collaborate or older students to work alone. It need not take more than an hour (except for those who go wild). 


This week's theme is May Day:
Be it crown 
or be it pole,
lemon with
a candied hole,
or your family dressed in white
dancing in the morning light!

Happy May Day!

We’re really looking forward to the time when we can be together in person again — especially as it’s May Day and time for dancing and lemon peppermints and cake walks and a giant school picnic. This year we are marking the occasion with remembering our festivals of past years. Enjoy this glimpse put together by our office, with music from strings teacher, Justine Jeanotte.

Some Parent Testimonials

We are grateful for those parents who chose to include testimonials for our website with their answers to our end-of-year survey this past summer. We highlight a selection of them here:

“Madrona School's approach to nurture our children's love of learning has been deeply moving. We appreciate how the school weaves the emerging scientific understanding of child's psychoneuro-developmental process along with the wisdom of Waldorf education. The school's ability to hold open and growing spaces for new information and the lived knowledge of the past to coexist has been important. Such a discerning and non-judging attitude the school embodies, we hope our children will continue to learn to practice to become who they are as unique individuals and as vital members of a meaningful community.” —Sierra, mother to two students

“The first week of school, my daughter said: ‘Mom , I wish school lasted until 5 pm’. The last month of school, she told me: ‘Mom, I wish school did not end so soon’.” —Mom of a 7th grade student

“This school brings so much joy to our child's life which in turn makes our lives so much richer. The wholesomeness and care each teacher puts into their students is in invaluable.” —parent to a kindergarten student

“Madrona is a gift to our children and the whole community! Keep up the great work! I tell everyone I come in contact about the school and what it has meant to our lives and our daughters! I have watched [them both] change dramatically since becoming part of the Madrona community. They entered unhappy and with a lack of confidence. Now I am in awe of how confident, happy and well rounded my daughters are! I for one will never be able to thank you enough for what your wonderful school has given them.” —Dad of two students

“My child’s teacher is ALWAYS prepared. Every week, everyday. She is amazing.” — from a parent of a rising 6th grader

“Rooted in the reliable insights of Waldorf and renewed by the inspired, loving presence of its teachers, Madrona School has been a wonderful blessing to our family. I'm very grateful.” -- parent of two students

A Note from Missi About Spiral of Light

Dear families and friends,

We are truly into the darkest days of winter with solstice just ten days away.  Amazingly, it will be lighter when we return from break in January than it is now!  While I find myself longing for the light to return, I am also grateful for the opportunities of reflection that this season offers.  

For me the season really kicks off with the Spiral of Light festival that we celebrated this past Sunday.  For those who haven't had the chance to come yet, imagine a room all in darkness.  In the center of a spiral of evergreen boughs laid on the floor, a candle is lit.  Solitary and dim, it barely begins to light the room.  Everyone sitting around the edges is swathed in darkness.  Our sweet-voiced teachers are singing an array of seasonal songs from both Christian and Jewish traditions: they sing in delicious harmonies in English, German, and French.  Through the singing, family after family walks the spiral to light a candle and set it down on golden paper stars sprinkled among the boughs.  Bit by bit the room becomes filled with a golden glow.  Suddenly, I realize that I can make out the faces of the people sitting across the room from me.  Friends old and new, grown-ups and children.  I am struck by the lovely metaphor that I have just witnessed, articulated in the words of one of the carols being sung: "Each little child shall shed her light, till all the world is warm and bright."

In this season of veritable darkness, I appreciate the unique light that each child and each parent shines into the world.  Thank you for sharing yourselves with this precious school community.

Reflectively yours,
Missi

— From our newsletter, December 11, 2018

Michaelmas Festival 2018

Each September we gather to celebrate Michaelmas, our first seasonal festival of the school year. Our festivals connect us to the natural world and renew our connections between classes, and among parents and friends. Michaelmas is a celebration of courage and harvest. This time of year we observe the seasonal changes in the natural world as plant life bears fruit and then begins to die back, leaves turn and animals prepare for the coming winter. Personally we find ourselves of two minds — trepidation for the shorter, darker, cold, wet days ahead, even as we feel a surge of energy and a counter force to the slowing in nature around us. The story of St. George fighting a dragon with the angel Michael’s help embodies this time of year, a call to gather courage and engage the dragons we need to battle and transform.

As the pictures below reflect, our festival includes challenges for all ages, a baked potato feast utilizing the bounty of our school garden, and a pageant of grade school students to both sing and tell the story of St. George taming the dragon.

Thank you so much to parent Julie Rings for sharing her beautiful photography of the festival with all of us. We are grateful!

Madrona School is a non-profit, tax exempt public charity organization incorporated in the State of Washington. Madrona School does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender expression or identity, national and ethnic origin, sexual orientation, or religion in any of its programs, classes or activities.