Winter Solstice Nature Activities for Kids
Twelve ways to celebrate the Winter Solstice with kids!! Pin for later! Click the pictures below for more info.
First Day Hike!
One of the the New Year's traditions we never miss is a first day hike. The idea is that it sets the tone for your year- make getting outside and interacting with nature a priority! This was actually the brainchild of the State Parks in the United States and most parks offer official guided hikes, but we prefer to do our own thing. (Which also sets the tone for the year!) If you are looking for a good hike check out your state's First Day hike offerings! And if you aren't in the US or want to go somewhere else, just pick your favorite park and go for it. It doesn't have to be a fancy or super challenging hike, it just should make you feel good! Last year, on…
Magical Wax Fortunes for the New Year
Bleigießen is an an old Austrian New Year's Eve tradition in which you pour lead into water on New Year’s Eve and try and interpret the image you see made. It translates literally to "lead pouring." You can buy little lead pouring kits in many northern European countries for this very purpose, but the custom is though to be ancient in origin dating back at least as far as the Romans. The practice of telling the future from poured metal is officially called molybdomancy, from the Greek word for lead, molybdos. In Finland, little tin horseshoes are melted and tossed in the snow for the same purpose. There, the shadow the shape makes when held up to the light is more important than the shape itself. Apparently a basket shape…
Yule Logs
I was super inspired by Acorn Moon Mercantile's instagram post last year about fire incense. She collects scraps and bits of pinecones, plants and shells and throws them on a smoldering fire. This ties nicely into my natural hoarding instincts, and also gives purpose to all of those random scraps of things I can't seem to part with. We decided to take it a step further and use fire incense to make our yule log! First we created our own fire incense scraps of birch and bayberry and fir and spruce and collected black walnuts shells and spruce resin and holly branches—- anything seasonal or nice smelling that spoke to us. Once we had our collection of incense we picked out our special Yule Log and got to work. The whole…
Winter Solstice Star Lantern
Winter Solstice is the longest, darkest night of the year. Every day after this night the day gets a little bit longer until the Summer Solstice. Light is an important theme across winter holidays in most cultures, many of whom tried to coax the sun back with fires, lights and lanterns. We always make ice lanterns for our Solstice Spiral, but wanted lantern that we could carry this year. This Star Lantern was inspired by the “parol” a type of Christmas lantern traditional in the Philippines, it’s made with bamboo and rice paper and is meant to represent the star of Bethlehem, but has become an art form of its own. We swapped the bamboo for sticks to make our lantern more rustic looking and I am delighted with how…
Festive Mushroom Ornaments
I don't think its any secret that I love mushrooms, foraging and eating them, making art with them and generally just finding and observing them. They seem to me having a moment right now too. At the same time I am slowly becoming one of those crazy old ladies who has a tree in every room of her house with a different theme. I’m at three now. (Is there a threshold for when it becomes crazy? Like cats?) The family tree is in the living room and has all of our special ornaments, there is a sunny solstice tree and last is this tree. I live in an old Victorian house with a tower… so it clearly needed a tree. And obviously that tree needed to be a mushroom tree.…
Golden Solstice Tree Topper
Once I started making these simple tree toppers I never looked back-- they are easy and cheap to make, rustic yet elegant and speak to the importance of the sun at the Winter Solstice. I have three- one for each of my various trees and I have made smaller versions as ornaments too. It could be a fun way to use special sticks (yes we have those too...) the last one I made used sticks that had mushrooms growing on them, lichen can be beautiful too! Golden Solstice Tree Topper Materials: Sticks Scrap cardboard Hot Glue Strip of felt for the hanger Method: Decide how big you want your topper to be and cut all of the sticks to approximately the same length. I like to make sure that cuts…
Solstice Tree & Handmade Sun Ornaments
I have been meaning for years to make a dedicated Winter Solstice tree. Our family tree has solstice-y vibes but really focuses more on ornaments that we design together to commemorate each year. It's already packed full of ornaments and we add a few more each year. So last year I got another tree for another room and dubbed it the solstice tree. That December got away from me as the often do and I only managed to buy one blown glass ornament. This year, not wanting to buy a million expensive ornaments, I decided to make the bulk of them and I am beyond thrilled with how them came out. All of the crafts are super kid friendly, but can just as easily be done by adults. My Solstice…
Pine Needle Tea
Pine needle tea is a fun and easy winter beverage hat is is oh so wintery! Its a fantastic source of nutrients, particularly vitamin C, which was used to supplement people's diets in the days before you could go to the store and buy a bag of oranges without a thought. Allegedly, Frenchman Jacques Cartier and his crew were cured of scurvy by an Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) tribe in 1543 and they wrote an account of it. All edible species of pine contain vitamin C-- purportedly have three to five times more than an orange, depending on what source you read. Vitamin C is an immune booster (and a cure for scurvy!) Pine needles also contain vitamin A which improves red blood cell production. Pine needle tea can also soothe sore…
Chrysalis Sleeping Bags
I was so inspired by this artwork from photographer Levon Biss that I knew I needed to come up with a project about insect hibernation. My brain immediately went to chrysalis sleeping bags because a chrysalis is in a way a tiny sleeping bag, and the patterns on these are so beautiful I though they would be amazing inspiration. First things first, insects don't technically hibernate. Many are inactive during the winter and undergo a state in which their growth, development, and activities are suspended temporarily, with a metabolic rate that is high enough to keep them alive. This dormant condition is termed diapause. We made our sleeping bags on a small scale for stuffies, but this would a fantastic project for an older student (or grown up...) at full…