Oh man, am I behind on my blogging! I have so much to share of our last few weeks — its been a whirlwind of crafting, celebrating, eating and fun (and well as illness, though they are all recovered now, woohoo!), and I intend to get a lot of recaps and photos up, hopefully in between more substantial posts. But, it may just be a week or so of pictures — just warning you! I am excited to have gotten through downloading, editing and uploading them all, at least. That’s something!
Since I want to go in chronological order, tonight I’ll tell you about our winter solstice celebration. This was the first year doing anything at all for this, and it was fun! The girls, especially Emma, really got into it!
First, in the days leading up to the solstice, we talked about what it was (the shortest day of the year, the time when the dark is the longest, etc., though I think Lonnie went into more detail than that and showed Emma pictures of the eclipse). I told some bedtime stories to Emma about how the Hedgehog family (we tell "animal forest" stories based loosely on her Calico Critters dolls) celebrated solstice, which she really latched onto.
Then, we did some similar things to the Hedgehogs on the day and evening of solstice. We had been talking about making lanterns, but I had procrastinated looking up exactly how (I was going to use tin cans and hammer/punch holes in them, which I heard turn out well) but realized that there was a day or two of prep involved, yeeps! After a quick internet search, I landed on an easy project. Tissue paper collage on glass jelly jars, with wire hangers. Can do, had all the supplies and tissue paper already cut for similar projects. Score!
All the girls had a great time making their lanterns, which we did in about 30 minutes after lunch. We used multicolor tissue, cut into roughly 1" squares, and watered down white glue. I had to help them smooth out some bits, and direct the little ones where to fill in some holes, but they all could do it just fine. Lonnie punched two holes in the metal rings and we used thin wire to make a long handle. They were dry by sunset! The girls "helped" me light them, and they were beautiful. I couldn’t get pictures of the girls parading around the house with their lanterns, but they were so proud of them and loved it! Later, we hung them in the front window with paperclip "S" hooks on our curtain rod.
Also at nightfall, we turned off all the lights and lit a huge collection of candles at our kitchen table. Emma kept saying how much she loved solstice and how excited she was as we were assembling all the candles. Such an easy thing, with big payoff, woo hoo!
Unfortunately, we were not done cooking dinner and had to turn the lights back on to finish — next year, I hope to get that done ahead of time so we can have a few hours of only candlelight. Emma was unsure and a little annoyed about no lights on during dinner, but she get through it with some encouraging….
At bedtime, we let all three girls have their lanterns on their bedroom windowsills. They loved it! (Luckily, their sills are high and they generally don’t get out of bed, so I wasn’t worried about safety).
We will definitely do this again next year, it was a great new family celebration! I’d also love to add in a lantern walk outdoors, weather permitting, of course. We were much too under the weather health wise to manage that this time!
Related posts:
Wow, LOVE the lanterns! What a clever idea! We did paper lanterns previously and I had purchased battery powered tea lights which meant I was less worried about the candle thing. But we did the candles at dinner too which was awesome
It never occurred to me to celebrate this, but I think it’s a really cool idea. I wonder if I’ll manage to remember this for next year.
Lovely tradition. Kids remember that type of thing FOREVER!