The turning points of the year offers children so much more than a pleasant seasonal activity. They offer a way of understanding time, creation, history, and faith. Midsummer is one of those beautiful, full and rich moments.
The days are long and golden, the hedgerows are thick with green, flowers are abundant, bees move busily among the blooms, and the evening light lingers long after dinner. Children often notice these changes instinctively: the brightness at bedtime, the warmth in the garden, along with the sense that the year has reached a rich and shining fullness.
A Charlotte Mason education gives children the habit of attention. It teaches them to form relationships with the world around them: with nature, poetry, art, Scripture, history, and the changing seasons. Seasonal celebrations bring these living relationships together in a way that is deeply memorable.
Midsummer invites our children to observe:
the height of the sun,
the fullness of the garden,
the abundance of flowers,
the work of bees and insects,
the long evening light,
the turning of the year.
These are not abstract lessons. They are living ideas, rooted in the child’s very own experience of the world.
For Christian families, Midsummer is also traditionally connected with St. John’s Tide, celebrated on the 24th June, the feast day of St. John the Baptist.
At the height of the sun’s light, the Church remembers John: the one who prepared the way for Christ, and whom Jesus described as a “burning and shining lamp.” This gives the season a beautiful spiritual depth. As the outer world is full of light, warmth, flowers, and growth, we are invited inwardly to prepare the way for Christ, the true Light.
Celebrating The Seasons With Children: Midsummer and St. John’s Tide is a 37-page PDF guide created to help families observe this rich seasonal moment with beauty, meaning, and ease.
It is not a busywork craft pack or a collection of disconnected activities. It is a guide to creating a living family tradition: one that helps children connect the natural year with the Christian year, and gently weaves together nature study, Scripture, poetry, art, observation, and reflection.
Within this guide, you will find:
- Midsummer and St. John’s Tide Journal Pages
- Getting started: notes on using this guide
- About Midsummer and St. John’s Tide
- Joyfully Observing Midsummer and St. John’s Tide
- Book List
- A poem to enjoy as you celebrate
- A piece of art to enjoy as you celebrate
This guide gives you everything you need to mark the day thoughtfully, without hours of preparation.
You might take an evening walk, gather flowers, notice the bees, read a poem aloud, look closely at a painting, talk about St. John the Baptist, light a candle at the family table, or invite your children to record what they observe in their journals. Simple things, offered with intention, become part of the atmosphere of home.
Over time, these seasonal observances become anchors in a child’s memory. They remember the flowers, the long light, the stories, the prayers, the books, the family table. They learn that the year has rhythm and meaning, that creation is worth noticing, that faith is not separate from the natural world, but can be lived and remembered within it.
Celebrating The Seasons With Children: Midsummer and St. John’s Tide is available now as a PDF download.
37 pages | $9
A beautiful way to help your children notice the light, give thanks for the season, and prepare the way for Christ.
From my home to yours.
