Fun on May Day

Yesterday we had a wonderful time celebrating May Day. We put aside all normal school work (one of the great advantages of homeschooling and being ahead of schedule) and just had fun making cookies, "baskets" shopping and delivering the baskets (we also had a friend over for lunch).

We pretty much have a tradition of delivering May baskets but as usual I forgot about it until the night before. We were on our way home from Church on Wednesday night and suddenly we realized tomorrow was May Day! What to do? I was trying to think of some neat basket that we could make with what we had on hand but one that would also be pretty and easy for the kids to work on. So I did a Google search and I found this site. The idea called for boxes (I hadn't taken the recycling lately so this was easy), wallpaper (I had been given some rolls of border years ago that have just been sitting around for some such project), and then they used ribbon but I decided to use raffia and add a doily too. It was really quick and easy and all the kids got to help. Mara helped to cut the boxes, put the wallpaper on (one roll had a sticky back like a sticker and the other was pre-pasted so we just had to dip it in water)and cut out flowers from a catalog for our little cards. For boxes we used a soda cracker box using both ends, hamburger helper box, Mac and cheese boxes, a spaghetti noodle box, butter boxes and boxes that Walmart samples had come in. Jonathan helped to put the raffia handles on and bagged up cookies and Aaron glued on doilies. Megan tried to help with the gluing and then proceeded to tear up some boxes. :-)

Here is Jonathan ready to make a delivery. For our baskets we put some cookies in each one as well as a couple of flowers (which I had bought) and a little note that said: "Happy May Day!! We hope your day is delightful! Ps. 37:4 "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart."

Here are all the kids at an apartment building that is pretty much for elderly and disabled people.
Here they are with the two men that we delivered baskets to. Wayne and Gerry seemed quite pleased.
This is a picture of my cute girl ready to deliver a basket. She added the hat to her outfit herself, she also got one out for me but I wasn't sure that it was quite neccasary. We made 15 baskets in all (next year I really hope to plan ahead so that we can make more baskets and get them all ready ahead of time and spend more of May Day delivery baskets.) Six of the baskets we delivered to neighbors, most of them with children and we also delivered an invitation to an upcoming kids program at church. For our next door neighbor the kids thought it would be fun to do it the traditional way of delivery by sneaking over, hanging it on the doorknob, ringing the door bell and running away. There was a complication because the owner's dad was in the yard working on a shed, they decided to try it anyway and I had fun watching them sneak along the edge of the woods.

We really did have a fun day. It is so fun to encourage others in that way. I think doing stuff like that helps the kids to learn to think about others too. Did you have fun on May Day?