Winter Wonders

1/11/2025

“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.” — William Blake

This Winter we have been fully embracing the season by learning about wintertime celebrations, building fire, learning about chemical reactions that create warmth, cozy tea parties, and lots of home cooking!

We love to learn about different cultures and the ways they celebrate. In December we have learned about Kwanza, Hanukkah, Christmas, Yule, and the Winter Solstice.

We explored how these different holidays are celebrated and what ideas and principles they celebrate. This time of the year is a time to come together, spread love, and appreciate what you have and how you can give to others.

We learned that some of these holidays are celebrated in very similar ways and have similar customs. Both Hanukkah and Kwanzaa have candles that lit every night, one is called a kinara and one is called a menorah.

Kwanzaa : December 26 - January 1

Kinaras are similar to Menorahs, but they have seven candles which are lit every night of Kwanzaa. Traditionally, there are three red candles on the left, one black in the middle (which is the first to be lit), and three green on the right (the colors of the African flag). Each candle represents one of the seven principles of Kwanza. We learned all about these principles at CG!

1. Umoja - Unity
2. Kujichagulia - Self-Determination
3. Ujima - Collective Work and Responsibility
4. Ujamma - Cooperative Economics
5. Nia - Purpose
6. Kuumba - Creativity
7. Imani - Faith

Unity cups are also decorated in the colors of the African flag, red, black, and green. We also added in some yellow and purple for extra fun. During Kwanzaa a wooden cup is decorated and passed around to take drink from in celebration of community and coming together. Kwanzaa is heavily focused and based in community and unity and bringing people together. It does not belong to one religion, but rather it is a celebration open to all from all religious backgrounds to strengthen community.

Unity Crafts

We created pieces out of clay creating symbols that represented unity to us. We talked with the children about unity and encouraged them to create this craft with the idea of unity in mind and whatever resonates with them around that concept.

Hannukah : December 26 - January 2

Hanukkah is the Jewish celebration of lights. We see some similarities here between Hanukkah and Kwanzaa with the Kinara and the Menorah. The Menorah has 9 candles while the Kinara has 7. There are 8 days of Hanukkah and each evening a candle is lit. The extra candle is designated to lighting the rest of the candles on each evening.

Hanukkah candles out of popsicle sticks. They wrapped them with yarn and worked on their fine motor skills! Wrapping things is great for developing coordination.

Christmas : December 25

Making gifts, creating Christmas cards, and weaving in tree inspired literacy! We also heard a great story connecting the Christmas tree to its Yule-tide roots of bringing in an evergreen tree to symbolize the perseverance of life through Winter.

Solstice and Yule

Winter Solstice Celebration

We love to gather and celebrate with the turning of the wheel! The kids got very creative with this nourishing sun bread for our Solstice potluck.

Solstice Sun Bread

Sun Bread

2 1/4 cups raw sunflower seed kernels ground into flour
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/4 cup whole psyllium husks
1/4 cup flax meal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 cup water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 egg
Yellow, orange, and red bell peppers cut in slivers

Mix dry and wet ingredients separately, then mix together. Pat into round sun shape, decorate sun rays on top, and bake at 375 for 55 to 60 minutes.

Thank you Mama Kat and Papa Matt for bring us the sunshine love of the Freedom Family Band at Winter Solstice!

Thank you Teacher Jackie for an awesome magic show and such incredible face painting!

Circle Time & Yoga

Deep breath in, and deep breath out a few times then on the last breath out we made deep belly noises! Another breathing exercise we've been doing is breathing in and on the exhale shaking our bodies out and releasing the build up energies from inside us. The kids love these breaths and ask to do them daily along with our silent meditation. They love the "Om" breath and then sitting with our eyes closed in silence. Sometimes we think about someone we want to send lots of love and hugs too, so if you've felt a little energetic hug when your little one is at school, they are sending you one!

Math, Literacy, and Science

Letter matching and recognition. Spelling new words and working on the sounds the letters make for the younger ones!

We did a little math activity : Who can make the biggest snowman? Each child rolled a die, they determined the number that they rolled and cut out that amount of circles to build their own snowman. They did the same to see how many buttons to put on their snowman. We wrote math equations to see how many more circles snowman "A" had than snowman "B". The kids helped figure out how to write out the equations as well as did the math to find the answers!

Walking Rainbow!

We put six cups out in a circle and filled every other cup with varying amounts of water. We added red dye to the first cup, left one empty, added yellow to the next, skipped another, added blue, skipped another. Each cup had a folded up paper towel looped from one cup to the other (see photos). Then we waited.

"What is your hypothesis? What do you expect is going to happen?"

"How will we end up with all the colors of the rainbow?"
-The children hypothesized that the water would climb up the paper towels and drip into the empty cups and the colors would mix to make the full rainbow

"What colors mix to make the missing the colors?"

This was a fun experiment on mixing colors and understanding how water flows.

We experimented with cutting some of the paper towels shorter

"What do you think will happen if the paper towel is shorter versus longer?"
-The children hypothesized that the shorter paper towels would reduce the time it takes for the water to move between cups - or along the "Highway" as Stella put it. They guessed that because the paper was shorter the water would have less to travel.

We also experimented with filling some cups more than others and asked, "Why might the water fill faster with water that is filled higher than others?"