Happy Winter Solstice

Today is the winter Solstice, the longest night of the year.    It was also Coen's last day of school for twelve days!  After we picked him up from school, I had the kids come into the back yard with their snowsuits on.  I told them that the Winter Solstice is the longest night of the year and one of the greatest things about that is that it means that every night-tomorrow and the next night and the next night, the nights get shorter and shorter and the sun shines on us for longer and longer each day.  Then I told them that we were going to have a Solstice scavenger hunt.

I told them this story:
Long ago there was just space, dark empty space going on forever and ever, but that long long ago, in our galaxy, the earth formed. Scientists do not know exactly how the universe formed but that some say that many particles of rock crashed together to form planets and some say that many particles of rock blew apart to form planets...  
Here I told them to go find some rock.  They both brought me one and I went on. 

When the planets formed, scientists decided that probably the earth was the one planet that has water on it.  

I told them to find me something made of water.  They both brought me a snowball.  They looked at me, ready for more story.

We are very lucky that the earth has water for us to drink and also has air to breathe

All four of us took a big breath of air and we watched how the cold made the warm air we breathed come out like smoke. 
The earth also has two very important Elements.  Wood and Earth.  Wood is what we use to build our houses and our furniture and it gives us shelter and a place to sleep. Earth is what lets us plant seeds to grow which turns into vegetables and fruits and grains and good things for us to eat.
I told them to find me earth and wood and they each brought me a stick and some grass they had pulled.  I went on.

The last element of our earth is something I mentioned in the beginning.  And that comes from one very important star in the sky that gives us our light and our warmth and helps our earth be a place that people can live and grow. What is that star? I asked.

The sun!  Yelled Coen and he pointed to a candle that I had burning on the picnic table.  I told him that it was very good, and that the candle represented the sun or fire.

And we are very lucky because we have all these elements in our earth and we also have one thing that comes from putting many of these elements together.  And that is food.  We have everything we need on our earth to survive and grow.   And even better, and why we are the luckiest of all is that we have each other and all the people in our lives to love and to love us.

I had hidden two frosted gingerbread cookies shaped as snowflakes in the yard and both kids found theirs.

We went inside then and Tad and I gave them each a present (a superhero cape for each kid that I sewed) and then we ate a fancy solstice dinner complete with sparkling grape juice and fancy glasses.  And guess what dinner was....  The third day of Christmas, our true friends gave to us----Three French Hens! 

We had our Cornish game hens for supper with stuffing, red potatoes, and brown sugar carrots. It was delicious.  And the kids were so excited to be eating our three french hens.  

Thank you again, 12 days of Christmas elves and fairies!  
And happy Solstice everyone!