04Feb 2023 by catbird
Color Changing Blue Butterfly Pea Valentines

Color Changing Blue Butterfly Pea Valentines

Craft Project, Nature Art, Play, Valentine's Day
We love a good color changing secret message around here... and there are lots of plants that will change color depending on pH levels. One of them is the Blue Butterfly Pea flower which turns from a beautiful deep blue to bright pink in the presence of an acid. The pink is perfect for a secret valentine! https://www.pinterest.com/pin/91831279894699638/ Color Changing Blue Butterfly Pea Valentines A fun and easy way to make valentines or valentine's day art with plants! Materials: a handful of dried blue butterfly pea flowers boiling water watercolor paper foam brush matte acrylic medium (you can also water down white glue a bit, but it will be shiny) a lemon Method: Pour just enough boiling water over the blue butterfly flowers to cover them. Let them steep until…
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03Feb 2023 by catbird
Nesting Materials Willow Heart

Nesting Materials Willow Heart

Craft Project, Learning, Nature Art, Play, Valentine's Day
If you've read any of my Valentine's posts, you probably already know that I like to celebrate birds around Valentine's Day. There are old folkloric beliefs to support this, people have long believed that birds in temperate climates start looking for mates and making nests in February and its' even though to be part of the reason that this time of year was chosen to celebrate love. Scientists do know that this is both a great time of year to spot birds in the absence of foliage, and the time that many early birds start to build nests. (Check out the Great Backyard Bird Count for a fun citizen science project_ Many birds time the hatching of their eggs with the emergence of insects in the early spring, some are…
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03Feb 2023 by catbird
Red Berry Ice Heart Garland for Bird Friends

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…
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16Jan 2023 by catbird
A Valentine for the Birds

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…
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11Jan 2023 by catbird
Hibernation Party!!

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…
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09Jan 2023 by catbird
An After Holiday Tree for our Animal Friends

An After Holiday Tree for our Animal Friends

Nature Art, Play, Twelfth Night
I always feel a little down in early January after all of the excitement of teh December holidays. One thing that I have always kind of dreaded is taking the tree down. Over the last few years as we have started to celebrate the Twelfth Night however, it's become its own little celebration, which has completely changed how I feel about this time. It's become something to look forward to, rather than something to be sad about. In fact I have begun to enjoy taking the ornaments down and packing them away- when we put them up there are frantic little hands grabbing for them and bickering about who gets to hang the most. When I take them down I can reminisce about each of them. We make a family…
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06Jan 2023 by catbird
Wassailing the Trees and 2 types of Toasts

Wassailing the Trees and 2 types of Toasts

Garden, Learning, Nature Art, Play, Recipes, Twelfth Night
For years we have wassailed our fruit trees on the Twelfth Night to ensure a bountiful fruit harvest, because who doesn't want a bountiful fruit harvest, right? My kids were little and I never really went into too much depth though... until this year when I went down a rabbit hole and became obsessed with wassail toast. More on that later. For years we stuck a cinnamon stick in a cup of apple juice and sang songs about wassailing or fruit and it was a good time. Actually only my 7 year old ever remembers the words to "Here we come a Wassailing" so he's generally in charge lol. They also sometimes make up songs about specific fruit trees in our yard. It's fun and you should try it! As…
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03Jan 2023 by catbird
The Twelfth Night

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…
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02Jan 2023 by catbird
New Year Nature Crowns!!

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…
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