nature crafts – Page 4 – Wineberry Wood Press

10Jul 2024 by catbird 1 Comment

Magical Summer Solstice Rituals & Traditions

Craft Project, Folklore, Recipes, Summer, Summer Solstice

The Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year. It’s the day that the earth is tilted the closest to the sun and consequently has more hours of sunlight and less hours of dark then any other day of the year. The sun is at its highest point in the sky on the Summer Solstice and shadows are the shortest they will be all year. The word solstice comes from the Latin, sol means sun and stitium means still. The sun on the Solstices seems to pause, leading our ancestors to surmise that it was standing still for a time. Humans have observed the Summer Solstice since the Stone Age. Stonehenge was built at least in part to track the Solstices. On the Summer Solstice the rising sun is framed…

05Jul 2024 by catbird 2 Comments

Sea Glass Mobile

Craft Project, Nature Collection, Nature Table, Summer, Summer Solstice

I love to collect sea glass-- it's like areal life treasure hunt. Although in my case, I technically mostly collect river glass, but people don't know what you are talking about when you say river glass. It looks exactly the same, but I find it along a rocky river near my house. I actually think it's easier to find near rivers because there seem to be far less people searching it out. In the beginning, I had so few pieces that it was precious and I kept in in glass jars in the window, but as I discovered river glass and started to find more and more I decided that I wanted to make something with it. Generally I think sea glass belongs near a window so you can admire…

05Jul 2024 by catbird 6 Comments

Seashell Fragment Wreath

Craft Project, Nature Art, Nature Collection, Summer, Summer Solstice

Every summer we seem to acquire an overwhelming number of shells. Little clam shells and river mussels from the creeks around our house, snail shells around the garden and a whole array of shells when we visit the beach. The kids and I will both often collect little bits and fragments of shells, they might be super shiny or have an interesting pattern of shape. They all have their merits, but all those broken bits scooped into a bucket, toted home and left to sit have tendency to just kind of disappear. I wanted to do something with them that would showcase them up close, the same way you hold them in your hand close to you when you are finding them on the beach. I wanted to emphasize those…

05Jul 2024 by catbird 2 Comments

Shell Candles

Craft Project, Nature Art, Nature Collection, Nature Table, Summer, Summer Solstice

Our shell collection always seems to balloon in the summer, and while we live a few hours from the coast, the bulk of our shells are found closer to home. The shells we used for this project are hand sized river mussels that we find in the streams and lakes around our house. I love them and can't seem to stop collecting them! (So don't feel like you have to live near a beach to find shells!) You just need a tiny bit of beeswax to make these candles, and we sprinkled some of those tiny shells we always seem to accumulate on top along with a few pressed summer flowers. My favorite part is actually the sand sprinkled on top, it looks properly summery and was a last minute…

05Jul 2024 by catbird 1 Comment

Summer Nature Table

Craft Project, Nature Art, Nature Collection, Nature Table, Play, Seasonal Nature Table, Summer, Summer Solstice

Nature tables are the perfect place to store and display all those nature finds that we “just had to bring home.” Honestly, I am almost as bad as the kids about this… Ours is on our porch so that things can be easily added and subtracted at will and we change it out for each season. (And it substantially reduces the stray sticks in the house..) In summer, the rock and shell collections get especially prolific, along with interesting sticks, feathers and flowers. Use log slices or old shelves and add some height. Try a vase to hold flowers. I like to stick rooting houseplants on the nature table too, they love the heat and filtered light, while the kids love to watch the growing roots. The kids are always…

24May 2024 by catbird No Comments

“The Accidental Apprentice”

Craft Project, Folklore, Foraging, Free Printable, Learning, Middle Grade Book Buds, Recipes, STEAM

I began Picture Book Buds with the intention of exclusively featuring picture books. But then I read The Accidental Apprentice (Wilderlore Series). I was so inspired that I knew I needed to start doing middle grade book buds! I have been reading a ton of middle grade books lately, but would love to hear your suggestions for more book buds! Middle grade books are substantially longer, so I have broken the middle grade book buds into a lesson (called lore in honor of Wilderlore here), a craft or two, and a snack. All are driven by the themes and ideas in the respective book. These could be the jumping off point for a more in depth academic book study, or just a fun project to further immerse yourself in the worlds…

16May 2024 by catbird No Comments

“Mother Holle”

Craft Project, Folklore, Learning, Midwinter, Picture Book Buds, Recipes, Winter

Picture Book Buds are a fun and easy way to incorporate literacy into nature study. Read a book (you can even read it outside!) and then enjoy the related activity and snack suggestions! Mother Holle Written by: The Grimm Brothers & Illustrated by: John Stewig Mother Holle is a classic Grimm’s fairytale in which a mistreated step sister falls down a magical well to a fairy realm where she is rewarded for being kind to Mother Holle with gold. (There is of course also a “bad” sister who does everything wrong and is punished in proper Grimm fashion.) The moral of the story is that “industrious children are rewarded and lazy children are punished” although I like to view it in a more modern sense- that kindness is rewarded. Mother Holle…

21Mar 2024 by catbird No Comments

“Fungi Grow”

Autumn, Craft Project, Hike Ideas, Learning, Picture Book Hikes, Play, Recipes, STEAM

Picture Book Hikes are a fun and easy way to bring learning outside. Read a book (you can even read it outside!) and then enjoy the related hike, activity and snack suggestions! Fungi Grow Written by: Maria Gianferrari & Illustrated by: Diana Sudyka Maria Gianferrari is one of my favorite nonfiction authors and Diana Sudyka is one of my favorite illustrators so I I had high hopes for this book. It didn't disappoint-- it has simple kind friendly explanations of how mushrooms and mycelium grow and live. It is of course a perfect excuse to take a mushroom hike! I usually think of this as a fall activity because so many edible mushrooms fruit in late summer/ early fall, but there are mushrooms fruiting nearly year round. I love crafting and cooking…

18Mar 2024 by catbird 1 Comment

Mushroom “Spore” Bombs

Autumn, Craft Project, Earth Day, Garden, Nature Art, Play

As a member of the Plant Wonder Collective, each month I make a craft from the plant of the month. This March is coffee. I was really stumped trying to figure out what to make. Coffee and I are not friends. I had to stop drinking coffee cold turkey in my early 20s for medical reasons and I have never quite forgiven coffee for turning on me. And my husband, who drinks lots of coffee, leaves a little pile of gross coffee grounds on the counter every morning that makes me insane. So I decided I was going to do something with coffee grounds if it killed me. First I made some seed paper with coffee grounds, because of coffee’s high nitrogen content it should theoretically give those seeds a…

14Mar 2024 by catbird No Comments

Worm Moon Seed Bombs

Craft Project, Full Moon, Garden, Play, Spring, Worm Moon

Jonathan Carver is credited as the source of the Worm Moon name, claiming it was a Dakota name. However, every Dakota resource I have found calls this full moon the Sore Eyes Moon, which refers to the glare of the sun off snow. (“Sore Eyes Moon” is how this moon’s name translates from the Lakota and Assiniboine dialects as well.) Allegedly, in the late 1700s, Jonathan Carver wrote that the worms actually refer to larvae that are emerging from winter hideouts around this time. Where I live in the Mid Atlantic, snow is receding in March, and spring is just starting to peek through. I often think of March as the muddy month. Worms make their first trip to the surface as the ground unfreezes and leave their little piles of…

Tag: nature crafts