What word describes this month in your community’s language? What teachings does the word contain to share with children, and inspire your cultural calendar?
Invite your Elders and Knowledge Keepers in to assist with planning for the new year, their teachings will be inspiring!
We are excited to go into a new year supporting AHS programs across BC!
Need help with sourcing, creating or enhancing your cultural calendar? Your regional advisor can connect you with our ECE specialist Michelle Gravelle.
January is a month where food insecurity may show up for families after the holidays. What resources and referrals does your program offer to families facing financial stress? Send home a healthy food box after holiday treats! (Outreach/Activity Kits)
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 vegetables and locally purchased meats.
What resources are available in 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, a box of dried nutritious pantry ingredients could include Wild rice,Traditional tea, Dried Corn,Dried Rosehips,Blue Corn meal, Chestnut Flour, Dried Gooseberries.
- 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. (Nutrition, Family Outreach/Activities, Culture) Send home a checklist of winter activities outdoors or inside.100 Free Winter Activities for Kids,Winter Bucket List Worksheet 19 Outdoor Winter Activities For Preschoolers,20 Outdoor Winter Activities Toddlers will Love (easy, cheap, & fun),30 Fun & Cheap Outdoor Winter Activities for Kids Without Snow
Send home ingredients to make snow man pancakes. Ask families to send in a picture or post online– share participation prizes!
Winter fun includes inviting families and Elders outdoors, to take part in a traditional activity such as snow shoeing, skating, tobogganing or winter walks. (Family Outreach, Elder Outreach, Sensory, Outdoor Play, Physical Activity, Vocabulary) 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! (Outdoor, Art, Science)
- 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!
- 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
- For those with snow, winter sensory is fun in the snow: from making imprints in the snow to art making in the snow! Paint with large brushes, spray bottles or food colouring. Draw 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 outdoor freeze tag and Simon says!
If snow isn’t outside your door, create snowy experiences with sensory tables and dramatic play and loft areas!
Snow, ice cubes, artificial snow, foam packing peanuts recycled from December make for fun sensory play indoors. Recipe for White Play Dough or foam packing peanuts make for fun sensory play indoors. 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.
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.
Groups items that encourage group winter storytelling and cooperative play. 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 culturally inspired storytelling spot. Does your nation have stories about a trickster or a legendary mischief maker? Which of these stories are only shared in the Winter?
Tipi, longhouse, log cabin, canvas tent. Gather buffalo or bear furs, quilts or blankets. Children can help make a fire as a centerpiece with stones, wood, and felt “flames.” Set out books about winter activities, arctic animals, science, snow and ice. Invite an Elder to share a story! (Elder, Reading, Culture, Cooperative Play)
Listen to cultural winter stories and creation stories in their first languages. To download audio stories in Indigenous languages here: Traditional Stories & Creation Stories
Add new additions to your art centre to inspire creativity and fresh 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, such as this salt puffy paint, and experiment with new ways to apply these types of paint such as icing/piping bags or condiment squeeze bottles!
January is a fun month to make 3D items such as animals out of clay and items such as snowglobes with the children. See where the children’s exploration leads with snow globe crafts! (Crafts)
Snowflakes, Condensation and Ice
- Display pictures of different patterns of snowflakes near art making supplies and microscopes! (Art, Science)
- 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.
Invite an Elder for tea and bannock
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. Make an easy freezer jam with children from frozen berries they remember collecting! (Baking, Food Prep, Elder/Family Outreach, Language, Documentation Boards)
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!
Playful Additions:
Building Block/Construction 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.
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.
- Listen to winter stories and creation stories in their first languages. To download audio stories in Indigenous languages here: Traditional Stories & Creation sStories
Encourage Elders to drop in! They would be a joy to have leading bannock making, storytelling, beading, sewing, dancing, and fiddling activities. 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. (Elder Outreach, Culture, Language, Documentation) Family and caregivers would love an invitation to a tea and story time by the fire outdoors, a family craft night with an Indigenous foods for dinner. (Culture, Family Outreach)
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
- 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
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
- Exploring Nature With Children
- Helpful Weather Tips for Outdoor Play & Learning
Cultural resources from Good Minds have been delivered to programs across the province. Achilles Gentile (Skownan FN) is the Indigenous owner of both Good Minds and Indigenous Reflections. 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. Achilles shared some of his favourite books, and recipe of the month: Halibut Cheeks. 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. (Culture, Reading, Meal Prep)
- 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
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 your program’s parent app or fb page. Dental health, healthy eating, oral health. (Health, Safety and Nutrition Resources)
