Kids Beltane Festival Schedule If you're planning to attend Circle's Beltane Festival this year and you're bringing your kids, we have an entire program of activities lined up for them thru that weekend. Parental involvement is highly encouraged as these activities are not a daycare program! The activities are meant to provide your kids with great memories, meaningful lessons, and powerful themes of the season. They are also designed for complete parental involvement. The activities planned for Friday and Saturday engage the kids with problem-solving feats, personal challenges of creativity, questions and riddles to teach them about the festival themes, a lot of physical activity to acquaint them with the land and its May energy, introduce them to magical theory in practice, and to make the whole experience fun enough for them want to want to come back again next year. And the next. Which... is the whole point of Beltane after all, isn't it? There is no need to bring any materials this year, but we do need to know how many children are attending to plan the activities and resources for them. So, please contact evelyn@circlesanctuary.org ASAP if you're planning to bring your kids: let her know their names and ages. This is really important for our planning (after all, we can't get gifts and surprises for every child if you don't tell us exactly who is coming!!) Volunteers needed!! Although we have staff lined up to facilitate the kids activities, we are also looking for volunteers to assist them (especially parents and young adults) throughout the weekend. If you can spare an hour or two to helping Marshall and breeze manage the kids activities for the beltane Festival, please let Evelyn know. It's sure to be a lot of fun. Here's a sampling of the activities planned for the kids during the Beltaine Festival: Friday 3:30pm (1 hr) - Staff meeting: all kids program staff and volunteers meet to discuss the kids program for the weekend: props, facilities, prizes, locations, announcements, etc - parents please attend so you know your kids' plans for the weekend. 6:30pm (1 hr) - Children's ritual prep: all the kids have their special roles in the Friday night ritual. This meeting is just for kids to learn their parts so they can help cast the first circle of the festival. This will include learning a weather spell chant. 8:00pm (1 hr) - Friday night ritual: the kids get in the act as the weekend's celebrations get underway 9:00pm (1 hr) - Night Quest! prepare to explore the Nature Preserve grounds in complete darkness as we begin learning about the power of invisibility spells at work. Saturday 10:00am (1hr) - Garland-Making: kids gotta have their props for the main ritual, and this workshop assists the kids to make garlands to wear for the main ritual. All materials to make the garlands will first be harvested from the land. 11:00am (1 hr) - Morris dancing: kids partner up with a dedicated mentor to learn how to do Morris dances! Be sure to get your white scarves from the staff! 2:00pm (1 hr) - Scavenger hunt: find all the items in your list! The items will require identifying herbs on the land, finding specialists in the crowd who can point you in the right direction, and much creativity and cleverness. 3:30pm (2 hrs) - Magical Workshop: Invisibility spells learn how to be invisible, how to make friends invisible, and how to make things invisible! It's not easy learning invisibility magic, but if you work really hard at it you might learn these powerful spells before the weekend is out. 6:00pm (1 hr) - Children's ritual prep: all the kids have their special roles in the Saturday night main ritual. This meeting is just for kids to learn their parts and help work the main circle of the festival. 6:30pm (2 hrs) - Saturday night ritual: the kids have their parts to perform for the main event Sunday 10:00am (1hr) - Closing Ritual: kids join the adults in closing the festival circle. 11:00am (1 hr) - Labyrinth Races: the final exercise of the weekend will be a daylight physical challenge. All rules for the race will be explained at the Labyrinth. 12:00pm (1 hr) - Lunch/Final Instructions: the last instructions for the weekend will be given to the kids. Be sure to visit the kids section of the website at the end of May!