In Gitsenimx January is named hloxsa (1) gwineeḵw: the month of cold.
In Cree, it is kisê-pîsim: the great moon.
What is the word used to describe this month in your community’s cultural calendar? What teachings does the word contain to share with children?
Invite your Elders and Knowledge Keepers in to assist with planning for the new year, their teachings will inspire many new and thoughtful ideas!
We are excited to go into a new year supporting AHS programs across the province and the many teachings and activities that will happen this year!
Are there any resources that your program needs assistance with sourcing? Would you like to creating or enhance your cultural calendar? Let your regional advisor know if you would like to connect with our ECE specialist, Michelle Gravelle ecespecialist@ahsabc.com who will be pleased to work with you on this!
January is a month where food insecurity may show up for families due to the holiday season. What resources and referrals does your program offer to families facing financial stress?
January is the perfect time to host a selfcare evening for parents to rest and relax after the busy holiday season.
- Think about offering a cultural cooking class with a warm, nutritious and filling meal.
- Suggestions that come out of our PEPs are activities that provide parents and children with an interactive play experience that involves creative play or story telling; or experiences that offer families connection with Elders to learn about traditional parenting practices.
- Winter fun includes inviting families outdoors, to take part in a traditional activity such as snow shoeing.
Sharing some ideas and inspiration for your new year of planning and activities!
Art Centre:
Add new additions to your art centre to inspire creativity and interactions with art materials.
- Source out and post colourful Northern Lights photos at the children’s level in the art area. Label with traditional language the Northern Lights and the colours that you would see represented in the Northern Lights. Mix paint, or set out crayons or playdough in those colours.
- Handheld hole punchers and shape punches make for fun tools to manipulate.
- Bubble wrap recycled from December packages, cardstock, different colours of foil, cotton balls and batten, white glue, epsom salts for sprinkling on glue, colourful chalks and watercolors, pompoms, buttons, small sticks and twigs collected off the ground in the fall, leftover winter wrapping paper, paper bags in all sizes.
- Food coloring/water and straws to try blowing paint on different colors of paper for a Northern Lights effect!
- Snowflake patterns, lightweight paper and scissors are also great for developing and refining cutting skills and make from some serious concentration, and they inspire creativity.
- Try a new paint recipe and ways to apply these types of paint such as icing/piping bags or condiment squeeze bottles!
- How to Make and Use Salt Puffy Paint: YouTube Video
Baking Soda Puffy Paint: Puffy Paint Soda
Craft:
January is a fun month to make 3D items such as animals out of clay and items such as snowglobes with the children.
- How to make snowglobes: Bing Video
- 20 DIY Snow Globe Crafts for Kids to Make
Sensory Ideas:
- For those with snow, winter sensory is fun in the snow: from making imprints in the snow to finger painting in the snow!
- For those without snow making ice for the children to play with as a sensory still gives a wintery cold hands-on experience that encourages new vocabulary.
Sensory Table:
Snow, ice cubes, artificial snow, foam packing peanuts recycled from December make for fun sensory play indoors.
How to Make Snow for Pretend Play
Playdough:
Ideas for additions to add texture to your white playdough:
Tinsel, tin foil pieces, foil confetti, white seed beads or pony beads, peppermint essential oil, white or blue sand, foam balls, twine or string.
Science Ideas:
- Display pictures of different patterns of snowflakes in the science area!
- The science of snowflakes! Have microscopes for children to closer examine snowflakes!
- Condensation and frost science experiments.
- Grow your own polar bear activity. Polar Bear Science Experiment
- How is snow made? How much water is in snow.
- Build a crystal snowman.
Cooking / Food Prep / Gathering:
Traditionally, this was a month for Bannock making while family members were getting reprieve from the colder weather. Invite an Elder or community member in to teach their favourite Bannock or yeast bread recipe and/or have the children learn how to make their own butter to put onto their Bannock or homemade bun/bread. Make an easy freezer jam out of the berries children previously collected and were frozen.
What is the word for Bannock, butter or jam in your traditional language? These are great opportunities to make documentation boards out of the pictures and using the children’s words to describe these processes.
Take the cooking outdoors, find a clean patch of snow and have the children participate in making snow taffy. Métis and Indigenous Peoples with mixed French ancestry have been making this for hundreds of years!
How to Make Churn Butter with Kids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxSgYmFTSPY
Playful Additions:
Building Block/Construction Area
- Try some new and fun activities in the block area.
- Shape Puzzles.
- Use painters’ tape on the floor, building table or light table to create shapes. This could be a log cabin shape, tipi shape, mitten shape, or snowflake shapes.
- Have children fill the shapes with blocks. This is a fun activity that helps create spatial awareness.
Dramatic Play Area:
- Set up an ice fishing area, skating rink, or other winter landscape to inspire storytelling and creativity.
- Tie the dramatic play area into your loft décor this month.
- Also have out groups of items that encourage group story telling and cooperative play.
Reading Area:
Winter is a time to gather and tell stories, some of which have protocols on what season they can be shared. Does your local nation(s) have stories for this season?
Transform your reading space into a traditionally inspired storytelling spot.
- Tipi, longhouse, log cabin, canvas tent.
- For a cozy space, gather: buffalo or bear furs, quilts or blankets.
- Children can help make a fire as a centerpiece or these can be made from felt and other materials.
- Have books about winter activities, arctic animals, and science.
- Books about snow and ice.
- Indigenous winter stories
Suggested Legends & Oral Stories:
- Legends of Wesakechak (Michelle’s favourite: Wesakechak and Asnee).
- The Anishinaabe Creation Story.
- Adventures of Nanabozho, also known as Nanabush.
- Arctic tales of Tikta’Liktak!
Does your nation have stories about a trickster or a legendary mischief maker? Which of these stories are only shared in the Winter?
Outdoor Ideas:
Children can create nature inspired ice ornaments to hang on trees and other areas outdoors. If your program is in a warmer area, make ice indoors and take them outside to explore how water turns to ice and then back to water!
Invite parents/caregivers for a family skating day at a local arena, skating pond, or outdoor rink. This is a great way to encourage physical activity as a family in the outdoors!
Invite parents/caregivers and community members for an outdoor adventure such as snowshoeing, tobogganing.
Invite familes and community members for a winter walk to look for animal tracks in the snow. If there’s no snow where you are, tracks can be seen in muddy areas, too!
Other Daily Outdoor Ideas: painting the snow with large paintbrushes, or spray bottles and food colouring! Drawing in the snow using sticks, rocks and twigs. Colored ice treasure hunt in the snow, create a fun obstacle course or maze out of snow or play games such as freeze tag and Simon says!
30 Fun & Cheap Outdoor Winter Activities for Kids Without Snow
19 Outdoor Winter Activities For Preschoolers
20 Outdoor Winter Activities Toddlers will Love (easy, cheap, & fun)
Circle Time Area:
- Word Weavers or Moe the Mouse kits help focus on Early Speech and language skills. For more information or support with AHSABC Word Weavers training please contact michelle.gravelle@ahsabc.com. Word Weavers was created to complement and build on the BCACCS Moe the Mouse program. https://www.acc-society.bc.ca/resource-centre/curriculum-boxes/moe-the-mouse-speech-and-language-development-program/
Listen to winter stories and creation stories in their first languages. To download audio stories in Indigenous languages here: Traditional Stories & Creation Stories
Elder Involvement:
Invite Elders to lead nature walks to look for animal tracks, animal habitats, winter animals.
Create a display at the children’s eye level of photos of Elder interactions, participation, and teachings.
Traditional words highlighting the 7 sacred teachings can be posted to accompany the photos.
Encourage Elders to drop in! They would be a joy to have leading bannock making, storytelling, beading, sewing, dancing, and fiddling activities.
Parent Involvement Ideas:
Send home a checklist of winter activities that parents can experience in the outdoors with their children and a few new creative ideas for inside.
- Host a Fun Family Activity, family Involvement is at the core of AHS program planning! Make a creative poster to send in backpacks, send by email, post on your App or fb page and to post at your program to advertise this family participation event.
- An animal track finding contest, an afternoon of snow shoeing, winter survival skills by an elder done outdoors.
- Tea and story time by the fire outside.
- Host a family craft/activity night with a warm traditional meal (bison chili, bison spaghetti, salmon chowder, stews with ingredients from the land.
- Send home ingredients to make snow man pancakes. Ask families to send in a picture or post online– share participation prizes!
- Create a parent board with a map with ice fishing locations! Have an Elder lead a ice fishing demo in person; or with the Elders consent, film and post online.
- Learn to Fish – Youth Ice Fishing Events
Outreach / Activity Kits:
January is a great month to send home a healthy food box as many families struggle after the holiday season– and gifts of healthy foods are appreciated after holiday treats!
Other Ideas from Programs Across the Province:
- Slow cookers, recipes, bison roast or traditional stew meat
- Blenders, smoothie ingredients, recipe,
- Salmon and ingredients to make a warm nutrient filled salmon chowder.
- Large cooking pot, white fish and ingredients to make a fish head soup.
- Box of in season locally grown fruits and vegetables and locally purchased meats.
What resources are available in your community or close to your community? Do you have a bison farm, freshwater fish co-op, apple store, locally grown potatoes, turnips and other root vegetables?
If you’re a remote Northern Community perhaps a box of dried nutritionally filled pantry ingredients could be an option.
Other Ideas could include:
Wild rice, Traditional tea, Dried Corn, Dried Rosehips, Blue Corn meal, Chestnut Flour, Dried Gooseberries.
Lofty Ideas:
- Wintertime is the perfect time for trapping and bird hunting. Turn your loft into a scene from the trapline, hunting cabin or an igloo.
- Hang items such as camouflage nets, furs, and lanterns. Provide child appropriate hunting gear, traditional winter clothes such as hunting mukluks, beaver hats, polar bear or hide gloves.
- Winter animal stuffed animals that would be trapped such as rabbits, squirrels, lynx, fox, wolves.
- Stuffed birds that would be hunted such as ptarmigan, grouse, prairie chicken.
- Staff can make props such as fires and traps, dog sled, skidoo.
Resources & Related Articles:
- 15+ Winter Math Activities for Preschoolers
- Slow Cooker Venison Roast
- Exploring Nature With Children
- Helpful Weather Tips for Outdoor Play & Learning
Children’s Indigenous Literacy resources:
We are very thankful to GoodMinds/Indigenous Reflections for assisting with securing cultural resources and having these directly delivered to programs across the province. Achilles Gentile (Skownan FN) is the Indigenous owner of both Good Minds and Indigenous Reflections. We asked for his thoughts and recommendations for cultural calendars.
“A ‘Cultural’ calendar makes us think of a Lunar Calendar. Anishinaabeg, as well as many other Nations, have teachings known as 13 Moons on Turtles Back. This is our ‘Cultural’ calendar. Different nations have their own name for each full moon… this is our understanding of a ‘Cultural’ calendar. The Gregorian calendar is the most commonly used ‘commercial’ calendar today and is based on a solar year. This calendar gives us January, February, etc., and is why we have a ‘Leap’ Year.”
GoodMinds.com, and Indigenous Education Press, offer a number of publications which talk about our relationship with Grandmother Moon, including a free resource: 13 Moons on Turtles Back.
- We all Play
Author: Julie Flett - Mi’kmaw Moons: The Seasons in Mi’kma’ki
Author: Cathy Jean LeBlanc, David Chapman - Mii maanda ezhi-gkendmaanh / This Is How I Know
Author: Brittany Luby - A flock of seagulls, A course of frogs
Author: Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd - A winter celebration
Author: Wahwahbiginojii – David Anderson
Recipe of the Month:
- Halibut Cheeks – Are easy to cook, low in calories, high in protein and omega three fatty acids, potassium and B vitamins.
- Can be served with a gooseberry sauce.
Health, Safety and Nutrition Resources
After all the festive treats December brings January is a great time to explore and promote dental health teachings with children and their families.
- Promote hands on teachings on the importance of teeth brushing by incorporating it into your daily schedule.
- Send home easy to read information and toothbrushes and toothpaste home with each child.
- Recommended hand outs: BC Healthy Kids Program Brochure
Create a dental health board, take a picture of it and post resources on a parenting app your program uses or your programs fb page.
