Craft Project – Page 13 – Wineberry Woods

03Jan 2023 by catbird

The 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

New Year Nature Crowns!!

Craft Project, 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

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 right 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…

28Dec 2022 by catbird

Hibernating Seed Bears

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

Many animals hibernate this time of year, and while plants don't hibernate exactly, many of them do go dormant which is similar. We observe a "Hibernation Celebration" each year in December as school winds down and we prepare for our quiet period of sorts. This year we made these sweet little seed bears with seeds tucked inside sleeping away the winter and waiting for spring. We chose seeds that are food for or have value to small mammals so that they wouldn't just look like sleeping animals, but actually help animals! I couldn't find a sleeping bear mold so we made these by hand which is time consuming, but feels right for this sleepy season. You could also try using bee friendly plants with a bee mold or swampy loving…

28Dec 2022 by catbird

Walnut Shell Fortune Telling Candle Boats

Craft Project, New Year's Eve, Play, Winter

I’m not sure when I started with the fortune telling slant to New Year's Eve, but I think it makes sense I think in light of the new year/ new beginnings. I like the idea of making predictions and solidifying hopes for the next year, and it feels more practical than resolutions no one intends to keep. Over the years I have added more and more unique and interesting ways to predict fortunes to my repertoire and my kids LOVE them, but this is one of the oldest that we have been doing since they were little littles. It's fun, it's easy and who doesn't love a little candle boat made from a walnut shell?? These are candle boats because we always do this at night, and it's very dramatic,…

28Dec 2022 by catbird

Winter Solstice Nature Activities for Kids

Craft Project, Nature Art, Nature Collection, Nature Journaling, Winter, Winter Solstice

Twelve ways to celebrate the Winter Solstice with kids!! Pin for later! Click the pictures below for more info.

27Dec 2022 by catbird

Magical Wax Fortunes for the New Year

Craft Project, New Year's Eve, Play

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…

20Dec 2022 by catbird

Yule Logs

Craft Project, Nature Collection, Winter Solstice

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…

19Dec 2022 by catbird

Winter Solstice Star Lantern

Craft Project, Nature Art, Winter Solstice

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…

12Dec 2022 by catbird

Festive Mushroom Ornaments

Craft Project, Nature Art, Play, Winter, Winter Solstice

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.…

Category: Craft Project