We gathered by the ‘lantern fire’ in the hall (thanks to Micah and Rose for setting it up) to listen to the picture book, “The NightTree”. This is a tradition that Beaver’s family has on Christmas Eve and instead of checking for presents as soon as they get up on Christmas morning, they rush to the window to see which birds are feasting at their ‘Night Tree’! Talk with your family about this tradition and decide whether it’s a tradition you’d like to start.
They say you should think about others at this time of year so we turned our attention to the birds at the farm. We worked hard making edible decorations for our tree friends to enjoy during the holidays. Can you name the different kinds of decorations we made? We trekked over to the west side of the pond and hung them on our tree friends. What kind of birds or animals do you think will visit your tree to sample some of the treats you left?
We went on a scavenger hunt for the winter shelter the Turtles started to build on Tuesday. Where did we find it and how is it different from ours? On the way back, we had some good luck gathering more materials for our shelter and worked together to get them back to our shelter. Firefly was the first to try out our new stump seat and gave it a thumb’s up! The last stop for the morning was Sunrise Hill where Fox, Wolf, and Owl demonstrated the art crazy carpeting using the human sandwich style!
Grey Squirrel walked us through the steps for making s’mores in the oven. Can you remember what we did in order to make sure the chocolate chips and marshmallows didn’t burn? We even tried one of Coyote’s special maple marshmallows as we waited. Which treat was your favourite? Which one was the messiest to eat?
Tamarack whipped up mugs of hot chocolate for us as we played a lively game of “Restaurant Wars”. See if you can explain it to someone at home but please, don’t use real plates of food! It was great to see how many people took the time to get people back in the game when they lost their plate and wood cookie. Now that’s the Christmas spirit.
As we were getting ready for our afternoon wander, we talked about the winter solstice
which occurs on Dec. 21.. The winter solstice marks the day that we have the fewest hours of sunlight and the most hours of darkness. Hummingbird’s family has made it a tradition to celebrate this day. If this is something you think your family would like to do, check out this link to find out how to set up a Winter Solstice spiral celebration:
Our festivities carried over into wander time with the theme being ‘Secret Santa nature gift exchange’. We had a bongo made out of a stump, a winter solstice wand with wild cucumbers to light up the night along with many other creative gifts. What Christmas carol did we finish with?
We were excited at the end of the day to celebrate the many volunteers who help us each week at Coyote Nature school. We worked hard last week to make gifts for each of them and they had big smiles on their faces when they opened the gift bags the Turtles had decorated for them. Inside, they found a wreath the Chickadees wove and decorated with materials found on the property as well as a hand-painted snowman decoration for their tree and a personal thank you card crafted by the Herons. All of these projects were definitely a labour of love for the people for love! Thank you to Raccoon, Ladybug, and Tamarack who make our days at nature school even better!
It’s hard to believe that we won’t see each other for a whole month but just think of all the adventures and nature experiences we will have to share when we meet again on Wednesday, January 15! Happy new year to our forest friends and families from the whole Heron team!
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