I found this amazing book at the library last week, "Nature's Playground" by Fiona Danks.  It is brimming full of ideas for outdoors fun and is divided into seasons to make it incredibly easy to dip into for inspiration.  One of the ideas in the winter chapter was to make flags and then go out and fly them. 

We were inspired!

We did two wonderful projects over this past week in our attempt to bring the outdoors indoors!

After our pinecone hunt for bird feeders we had so many still to find a use for.  With the first snow the children were enchanted, so we decided to put our own "magical snow" on some pinecones.  Simply painting them with white glue and then sprinkling over silver and gold glitter.  Once they were dry we created rings with pipecleaners which we then used as frames to hang our pinecones.  They hang down in a spiral from each ring to make beautiful, yet simple mobiles.  Each child was thrilled to be able to take one home to decorate their house.

We also tried another arty project, this time unfortunately less successful.....but that just gives us an excuse to try it again, because it was really fun.  We did some "frost paintings".  After soaking heavy watercolor paper, we painted them liberally with liquid watercolors.  We then immediately took them outside and placed them on the frozen ground and left them to dry.  I have heard that you end up with wonderful frosty patterns within the paint, but we were only able to see that on a couple of paintings.  Maybe the ground was too frosty (i.e. frozen snow residue!).  We will have to try again in the new year!  I will upload some images when they are more successful!

We are so lucky to be able to play in such beautiful surroundings.  It is getting so cold now and going outside is more of a challenge.  We reminisce happily of out times outside, only a month or so ago.  Here we are on a late autumnal walk where we found some wonderful pears on a tree.  It felt so luxurious to be able to sit under the tree and eat the sweet juicy pears!

Now we are thinking of the animals who are finding it hard to eat.  So, we went on a pinecone hunt last week and turned them into beautiful bird feeders.  We now watch them intently hanging from the trees (from a distance) but sadly are still waiting to see some birds enjoying them!  Snow is due this week, so maybe that will encourage the birds.  We positioned the feeders so that we can also see them from inside where we play on really cold days.

I was introduced to the festival of Santa Lucia several years ago and was enchanted by it.  Each year i have tried to introduce it to the community where we lived (we have moved most years).  This year it was such a joy to recreate the festival with my own daughter.  She happily walked around singing the santa lucia song for weeks before!  With the children at the playgroup I found a gentle Santa Lucia story which I shared with them at each meeting and we prepared for the festival in a variety of ways - rolling candles, baking cookies etc.  We decided on cookies instead of the traditional saffron buns because we only meet three times a week and needed to be able to make the food a couple of days before the festival.  We made the cookie dough and cut the cookies, which I then refrigerated until the night before.

On  the day the children were so excited.  WE put on our cold weather gear and then covered it all with large white shirts, tied at the waist to form gowns. The kids looked adorable as they walked through the community holding the candles they had made, offering baskets of cookies to everyone they saw and singing the song.  It was a lovely celebration and my daughter was simply bursting to tell daddy when he got home from work!