Craft Project – Page 12 – Wineberry Wood Press

03Feb 2023 by catbird 1 Comment

Red Berry Ice Heart Garland for Bird Friends

Craft Project, Nature Art, Play, Valentine's Day

We grow a lot of different types of berries in our yard, some for us to eat and some for the birds to eat. Most years there are holly berries rosehips and winterberry holly berries all through the winter, but this year I noticed they were all gone by December. I'm not sure why berries are so scare this year, but we decided we needed to help our bird friends out. We like to learn about and celebrate winter birds around Valentine's day, there is long held folkloric belief that February is when birds begin to pair up and make nests, which likely plays into the modern themes of the holiday. They do begin to make nests this time of year as many types of birds time the hatch of…

29Jan 2023 by catbird 1 Comment

Seed Clouds

Craft Project, Garden, Midwinter, Nature Art

After making the Edible Meringue Clouds I was still thinking about Frau Holle shaking her feather quilt and making it snow. I love the image of the feathers turning to snow and wanted to do something more literal with it. I came across some writing about the goddess version of Holle that talked about her flying over fields at Midwinter to make them fertile. My rather practical scientific mind was immediately struck by the idea of seed starting in relation to this myth. Most native seeds require a period of cold to germinate, gardeners call this cold stratification. This is why I paradoxically love seed projects in the winter, there are many plants that actually grow better when planted in the cold and snow. So I came up with another…

21Jan 2023 by catbird 5 Comments

Frost Lanterns

Craft Project, Frost Moon, Full Moon, Midwinter, Nature Art

Midwinter is a snowy sleepy time. The days are 42 minutes longer and brighter than then were on the Winter Solstice, but they don't really feel like it yet. In one of my favorite winter nature books, Grandmother Winter, Grandmother shakes her down comforter out and the feathers become snow. This image is actually drawn from the Grimm's fairytale Frau Holle, which itself is drawn from a much earlier myth. In early Germanic and Nordic folklore, Frau Holle controlled the weather and kept children safe in the winter. In modern lexicon she is a kindly old woman who makes it snow by shaking out her quilts. I like the idea of a sweet old woman who makes snow and looks after children. It follows to me that giving children lanterns…

19Jan 2023 by catbird 2 Comments

Midwinter Nature Activities for Kids

Bath & Body, Craft Project, Midwinter, Nature Art, Recipes, Winter

Ten ways to celebrate the Midwinter with kids!! Pin for later! Click the pictures below for more info. (Tutorials for the candles and moon milk will be in my upcoming Midwinter guide!) Midwinter is an inward facing, puttering kind of celebration, in contrast to all of the pomp of the December holidays. It’s cleaning out the old and looking forward to the new-- spring, new gardens and days filled with light all while staying cozy and warm. You can celebrate by making soap, candles, tidying the house, pouring over seed catalogs, laying out garden plans, forcing branches or making traditional foods with milk, honey and seeds. It's a great time to practice hygge, taking pleasure in slower, simple things.

18Jan 2023 by catbird 1 Comment

Edible Snowing Clouds for Midwinter

Craft Project, Midwinter, Nature Art, Recipes

This Midwinter project grew out of some research I was doing about the fairytale Frau Holle. Frau Holle is a classic Grimm's fairytale in which a mistreated step sister falls down a magical well to a fairy realm in which is rewarded for being kind to Frau Holle with gold. (There is of course also a "bad" sister who does everything wrong and is punished in proper Grimm fashion.) Frau Holle in the story needs help shaking her bed linens because the feather make snow in the mortal world. It's one of the more interesting fairytales I've read, and more so because Frau Holle features heavily in Grimm's non-fiction writing about Germanic folklore. Frau Holle is not just a fairytale, but an important goddess in the early Germanic pantheon. She…

16Jan 2023 by catbird 3 Comments

A Valentine for the Birds

Craft Project, Learning, Nature Art, Play, Valentine's Day

It probably doesn’t come as a huge surprise that we like to make valentine’s for the birds. (Both wild birds and our chickens, but our chickens are much easier to photograph) there are a ton of good reasons to celebrate birds at Valentine’s Day! 1. Even though February is often one of the coldest snowiest months for us, the days are getting lighter and the very first stirrings of spring are starting. There was a popular notion in England and France during the Middle Ages that birds started to look for their mates on February 14. The reason for this assumption is not clear, but might be related to the fact that the warbling of the first songbirds after a long winter started sometime in mid-February. Many birds also start…

11Jan 2023 by catbird 2 Comments

Hibernation Party!!

Craft Project, Hibernation Celebration, Learning, Nature Art, Play, Winter

Maybe you've been learning about hibernation all week... maybe you just like a good party. Either way, a hibernation party is a ton of fun!! This is a great party to have with friends right before winter break (which is what we usually do) or a fun way to celebrate winter in January. Check out the Hibernation Celebration page for some more ways to learn about hibernation or just dive right into the snacks! Below there are ideas for: storing up for the winter (snacks), making your den cozy (activities) and training for hibernation (games). Store up for Winter Mobile Hibernation Snack Necklace One of the most important parts of hibernation is storing up tons of food and you never know when you might get hungry! Cue the mobile hibernation…

03Jan 2023 by catbird 2 Comments

The Twelfth Night

Craft Project, Play, Twelfth Night

I am never quite set on what to call this holiday– January 6th. Its Epiphany, Twelfth Night, Three Kings Day, Befana. Most of them are Christian in origin having something to do with the three wise men arriving at the manger with gifts. In fact, in 567 the Council of Tours proclaimed that the entire period between Christmas and Epiphany should be considered the twelve days of Christmas replacing an ancient celebration that the church deemed “too rowdy.” Modern scholars have suggested that it was instead to solve "administrative problems for the Roman Empire as it tried to coordinate the solar Julian calendar with the lunar calendars of its provinces in the east." And in fact, those ancient celebrations all revolved around that same discrepancy between the lunar and solar…

02Jan 2023 by catbird 1 Comment

New Year Nature Crowns!!

Craft Project, Free Printable, Nature Art, Nature Collection, New Year's Eve, Play

One of the activities that we do every New Year's Eve is to make some sort of crown or party hat. In teh past we have mostly just colored in something free and printable and not gotten particularly fancy with it, but this year we decided that we needed to step up our crown game. The kids requested nature crowns, but we couldn't think of a way to make them "New Year's Eveish." I considered make stick crowns and spraying them gold because gold seems to be my default on NYE, but then I had an epiphany! Half of the crown would be bare sticks (like winter and the old year...) and the other half would be greenery (spring and the new year!) we ended up adding some sticks with…

29Dec 2022 by catbird 2 Comments

What is a Hibernation Celebration?

Craft Project, Hibernation Celebration, Learning, Nature Art, Nature Collection, Play, Winter

Every winter we have a "Hibernation Celebration" both at school and at home. What is a Hibernation Celebration pray tell? It's a super fun way celebrate the winter holidays in a non-denominational nature focused way. It can be a full lesson block with academic content the way we do at school or it can just be a fun party. We usually celebrate at the end of December right before winter break (otherwise known as the perfect time to hibernate...) but this is a great topic for January or February-- or any snowy cold month really. If you want to skip to party ideas click here. For all of my Hibernation content click here. When we celebrate hibernation at school it isn't just a straightforward scientific discussion of bears in caves.…

Category: Craft Project