We made a point this year to celebrate the changing of Summer to Fall and want to continue celebrating the changing of the seasons. I think by choosing to celebrate the uniqueness each season brings and how it affects our lives can greatly change our emotional state during that time.
While we are a growing family, the winter offers a special time to rest, recharge, and prepare for next growing season.
Winter may not offer the bright colors of spring and fall, or the warm rays of sun found in summer, but a peace can definitely be found from drawing inward and reflection.
Winter Solstice
Celebrating the season’s change, shortest day of the year, and the “Great Conjuncture” occurrence this week definitely sounded like a good chance to feast! Monday morning, we had a candle lit breakfast with plenty of eggs, bacon, seared butternut squash, and apple crumb topped with pecans and seasoned heavily with cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.
Obviously, some extra rich, nutritional hot chocolate was on the menu for the first day of winter!
The lessons we reviewed with the boys focused mostly on the importance of winter and our solar system (and the exciting opportunity to see the Great Conjuncture).
Their current favorite book on the solar system is Usborne’s Fold-Out Solar System board book! It’s double sided and expands out into several feet of space information, including asteroids, satellites, moons, etc. There are several nuggets of information to go along with the illustrations as well!
For a more hands on activity, a jigsaw puzzle of the solar system always captures their attention, too!
So many times we hear that celebrating the solstices are tied to other religions or pagan celebrations, but that definitely isn’t our intent. We are choosing to celebrate the beautiful patterns and intricacies of creation – and let’s be honest, any excuse to sit down and have a ‘feast’ is okay in my book!
We did several activities focusing on winter this week, and I thought I’d share our ideas and hope you have some options for us to try, too!
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to see the Great Conjuncture due to heavy cloud coverage, but could see the two separate planets shining brightly the following day, which the boys were just as excited to see!
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Winter Sensory Box
You may recall in our Fall Activities post that sensory boxes are much loved by our four and two year old sons. With the changing seasons, a change of fillers was in order!
I tried to keep it as winter related as I could with the different colors, scents, and items we foraged for.
We included:
- White rice (to look like snow)
- Pinecones, rosehips, greenery foraged for from our woods
- Dried fruit
- Cinnamon sticks and star of anise
- Bells
- Our Sensory Bin Tool Kit
Evergreen Cardboard Tree
A super easy one to put together, this activity was a last minute thought to keep the boys occupied while I finished a few other things that needed done around the house. They spent time plugging white pine needles into their trees and figuring out which amounts of needles were needed for the different holes.
Honestly, white pine was not the easiest to work with in the small space of their cardboard pictures, but they concentrated long enough on this activity, I was able to get around all of the items needed for their next project!
Pinecone Bird Feeders
This was another fun activity that was fairly easy as far as execution! Once the boys were shown what to do, they went through two baskets of pinecones in a matter of minutes!
We used:
- Garden twine
- Pinecones
- Lard (at room temperature)
- Birdseed
A light roll in the lard made the pinecones sticky enough to get coated in the birdseed. I tied each one with the garden twine (prior to being covered in lard goo definitely works best… Ask me how I know!)
It was just above freezing this day, so only a few minutes of sitting out side and our bird feeders were ready to be hung on the tree! They’ve been checking periodically throughout the last week to see if the birds have been visiting. Now that it’s past Christmas, we are planning on stringing up the popcorn and fruit garland alongside the pinecones.
Christmas Cookies
Baking cookies was a must! I must confess, this year we just used a prepackaged mix instead of baking from scratch. I always prefer making things from scratch when we can, but chose the easier route this time around. The boys love the story of the gingerbread man, so when Stirling saw the package at the store – we had to get it!
We Used:
- An organic gingerbread mix
- Gingerbread cookie cutters
- Stoneware for baking
I would love to hear how your family celebrates the changing of the seasons! Share your ideas in the comments below!