Create your own moon graphic using the languages of your program! Download template here.
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?
We asked Achilles Gentille (Skownan FN) for recommendations for cultural calendars finding Indigenous resources to represent the different moons and seasons. He shares, “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.”
A number of, offer a number of publications which talk about our relationship with Grandmother Moon, including a free resource: 13 Moons on Turtles Back. Mi’kmaw Moons: The Seasons in Mi’kma’ki
Author: Cathy Jean LeBlanc, David Chapman publications teach about our relationship with Grandmother Moon, including a free resource:
13 Moons on Turtles Back. Mi’kmaw Moons: The Seasons in Mi’kma’ki
Author: Cathy Jean LeBlanc, David Chapman
Program Planning
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 create or enhance your cultural calendar?
Let your regional advisor know if you would like to connect with AHSABC Advisor Michelle Gravelle, who will be pleased to work with you on this!
January is a month where families may experience food insecurity after the holiday season. What resources and referrals do 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 or a fun family cooking contest.
- Think about offering a cultural cooking class with a warm, nutritious and filling meal. (bison chili, three sisters’ soup, corn chowder, fish chowder,)
- Suggestions from our PEPs include providing parents and children with interactive play, creative play or story telling; or experiences that offer families connection with Elders to learn about Indigenous values and parenting practices.
- Winter fun includes inviting families outdoors, for example snow shoeing.
Sharing some ideas and inspiration for your new year of planning and activities!
Art Centre:
Add new materials to your art centre to inspire creativity and interactions:
- Source out and post colourful Northern Lights photos at the children’s level in the art area. Using Indigenous languages, label the Northern Lights and its colours.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, Baking Soda Puffy Paint.
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
- 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.
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.
Health Promotion/ Fun in the Kitchen
January is the perfect time to bring fun and creativity into your kitchen. The theme for this year’s Family Literacy Day, January 27 is “Make mealtime family learning time.” Preparing for mealtime is a fun (and tasty) way for families to learn together. Whether it’s following recipes, making shopping lists, or sharing stories at the dinner table, make your mealtime family learning time. Download a booklet of ideas here! Do the children have a favourite book that you can tie a cooking activity into? Some fun books to try out for this idea are: If you give a moose a muffin, If you give a mouse a cookie, Awasis and the World-famous Bannock, Kohkums Kitchen
Innovative Ideas: Maggie the Chef at Little Pebble was inspired by the book Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
Winter months are great for baking bannock to warm up family members! Invite an Elder or community member in to teach their favourite bannock or yeast bread recipe. Children can learn to make their own butter, or make an easy freezer jam out of the berries children collected in the summer and froze. A fun and delicious way to incorporate the rhythm of living with the seasons!
What are the words for bannock, butter or jam in your programs’ Indigenous languages? These are great opportunities to make documentation boards out of the pictures, using the children’s words to describe these processes.
Take the cooking outdoors, find a clean patch of snow and if it’s cold enough, have the children participate in making snow taffy. Indigenous people have been tapping trees for sweet syrup since time immemorial.
Moose, caribou and deer are a few animals that do not hibernate and are an available food source during these harder colder months. Have discussions with children on how these items were harvested and prepared.
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.
Monthly Health Resources
After all the festive treats December brings, January is a great time for dental health teachings with children and their families. Promote hands-on teachings sharing 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.
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:
Dental health, healthy eating, oral health.
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 storytelling 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. Do your local nation(s) have stories for this season?
Transform your reading space into a traditionally inspired storytelling spot.
- This could be a tipi, longhouse, log cabin, canvas tent, igloo.
- For a cozy space, gather buffalo or furs, quilts or woven blankets.
- Children can help make a fire as a centerpiece 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!
Each AHS Program was gifted an Oopik made out of Sealskin. January is a great time to introduce your Oopik through storytelling.
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 families 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!
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! Replace words with Indigenous Language terms.
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)
Exploring Nature With Children
15+ Winter Math Activities for Preschoolers
Circle Time Area:
Secure cultural resources, especially books by Indigenous authors. Invite guests in to read such as local Librarian, CCRR, older children, Book store owners, school librarians. Have Elders and Knowledge Keepers in to tell legends that are told in the Winter! Listen to winter stories and creation stories in their first languages.
Download audio stories in Indigenous languages: Traditional Stories & Creation Stories
- Use resources such as Word Weavers or Moe the Mouse kits to help focus on early speech and language skills. Word Weavers was created to complement and build on the BCACCS Moe the Mouse program. For information or support with AHSABC Word Weavers training, contact michelle.gravelle@ahsabc.com.
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.
- 100 Free Winter Activities for Kids
- Winter Bucket List Worksheet
- Helpful Weather Tips for Outdoor Play & Learning
- 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!
- Host a family field trip to a local bookstore or library!
- 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: with recipes for bison roast, venison roast or Indigenous stews.
- Blenders: with recipes and smoothie ingredients.
- Salmon and ingredients to make a warm, nutrient-filled salmon chowder.
- Large cooking pot: with fish head soup recipe, white fish and ingredients.
- Box of winter 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 Indigenous Food Ideas:
Wild rice,tea, dried corn, dried rosehips, dried gooseberries, spruce tips, seasonings, canned salmon
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.
