Winter Holidays Unit Study | Winter Solstice

 

We've been continuing our reading of our books on the Winter Solstice and have been enjoying the tales from around the world especially so.

Our weather is finally starting to get a bit cooler so we fashioned some simple bird feeders using pine cones, peanut butter and bird seed.

There are actually lots of ideas for Winter Solstice bird feeders/winter bird feeders at The Crafty Crow. Last year we made ones using hollowed out orange peels and filling the orange peel halves with seeds. I always think these feeders are so pretty hanging from the trees.

We read today that a long time ago people would hang apples and other fruits and foods from the evergreen trees to remind them that spring was to return again and that greener days were ahead.

I got Zoey's pointe shoes sewn up for dance class, I've done them up three different ways now and they are still popping off the backs of her heels so it looks like her dance teacher is going to try and find a different pair for her. I'm happy that she'll be getting a different pair but am nervous that it's going to be too late to break them in on time for the upcoming Nutcracker performance coming up in mid December. We're going to stay positive and see what happens though.

Yesterday was my birthday. We had a somewhat quiet day of school mixed in with some sewing of Zoey's shoes for dance and then I had to head in to an evening of work at the library. I came home and then was up until at least 3am due to having a sharp pain in the middle of my stomach that wouldn't go away, I was convinced that I had appendicitis and that the evening/morning was going to end with me going in to the emergency room but somehow I made it through the night and then slept for a few hours in the morning. Upon waking the pain slowly subsided and I've been alright for the most part all day. Praying that I stay healthy here these next few days. Not exactly the way I would have preferred to bring in the start of my "new" year but, things could have been way worse!

XO,
Jen

Winter Holidays Unit Study | Winter Solstice

In addition to our readings today from The Return of the Light: Twelve Tales from Around the World for the Winter Solstice by Carolyn McVickar Edwards we read the book The Shortest Day by Wendy Pfeffer.

I also had Zoey watch the following short videos. 

She thought they were a bit cheesy (the voices mostly) but they are good review on the "why" of equinoxes and solstices I thought.

 

Most of our afternoon (after some math and other work) consisted of sewing Zoey's new pointe shoes that just came in for ballet class. They've been back-ordered since the start of her dance class this year and she has yet to go on pointe at her lessons which hasn't made me feel very good about her upcoming performance. After sewing them this afternoon we discovered that they pop off the back of her heel while walking, let alone while going up and down from being on pointe. Not a happy mama or daughter! We're going to take them apart tomorrow and try sewing them a different way, but if they don't work out we'll be having a discussion with her dance teacher. I feel like it's pretty late in the season for discovering we have shoe issues! Plus, all of the other dancers in her class have had their shoes for over a month or two! She should have had her shoes for some time now. Grrrr...

Tomorrow we are hoping to make some simple bird feeders and dig more into our Winter Solstice study. Hoping we can rest easy about her pointe shoes getting figured out too!

Winter Holidays Unit Study | Winter Solstice

We started off our Winter Solstice study by creating a crown using yule greens, (or what we could come up with here that look like or are similar to yule greens). Since people celebrating the solstice (which is around December 21st) are known to dress up, I thought this might be right up Zoey's alley since she loves dressing up. In celebrating Yule, some say you should enjoy yourself as much as possible on the Winter Solstice (this including dressing up) because this will bring back the light (and lightness) into the world. The Winter Solstice marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year.

For our project of making a Winter Solstice crown we gathered as many natural materials as we could find from our woods and I bought some floral tape and wire at our local dollar store.

We measured Zoey's head and looped several loops of the wire into a circle and Zoey covered all the loops with the green floral tape, creating her bare crown.

We started creating a base for the crown by attaching evergreen using little bits of wire that Zoey looped throughout the greenery so it was snug on the crown. She then added other bits here and there doing the same with little lengths of wire that we cut.

She wanted a simple crown and I think it turned out just sweet as can be!

Of course I had to take a few pictures of her modeling her Winter Solstice crown.

Our first project was a hit! I'm feeling thankful that we had nice weather to work on this project together outside today. It really was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

Winter Holidays Unit Study | Winter Solstice

This week we are starting our Winter Holidays Around the World unit of study from Build Your Library. I've mentioned it already in previous blog posts, but I'm really excited about it and so is Zoey! I hope our excitement is warranted. We are adding in lots of additional projects to make it a bit meatier since we are pressing pause on our normal geography and science curriculum just during this unit study. We will be continuing on with math, grammar, and handwriting. Geography, writing, reading, art and some science is incorporated with our unit study. 

Our areas of study in the following weeks will be:

Winter Solstice

Hanukkah

Kwanzaa

Chinese New Year and

Christmas

We're starting with studying about the Winter Solstice and our first project will be to craft a celebration crown of sorts using some yule greens along with other bits and pieces that we find. 

One of the books that we will be starting this week is The Return of the Light: Twelve Tales from Around the World for the Winter Solstice by Carolyn McVickar Edwards. Along with this book of stories we will be reading several picture books as well. I'm a firm believer (being a part-time library employee) that it's fantastic to read picture books even if you are well into adulthood! I have been known to tell people that some of my all time favorite books are indeed childrens books, so I don't feel badly that we are working these into our studies. 

It's been kind of difficult for us to get into the spirit of the upcoming holidays here since the weather has been so unusually warm and sunny! Two years ago at this time we had 17 inches of snow already! Zoey has been checking the weather online every day and there hasn't been any snowfall foretasted in the near future as of yet. To say she is patiently waiting for snow would be perhaps a false statement if there ever was one. She can't wait for it to snow and I have to admit that I am anxiously waiting too! 

I'll be sharing some more of our Winter Solstice activities here throughout the rest of the week...it feels good to have a little bit of the weekend left to enjoy finally! After being sick for so many days and working with Zoey on school and at the library through it all, I'm ready to get back on track again. Sitting at my desk and organizing for the week ahead has me already feeling more prepared.