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Did you know that Candlemas has been celebrated for centuries under different names? As with many festivals today, it has its roots in pagan culture. For example, today, we are more familiar with references to Groundhog Day as a way to mark the coming of spring. However, way before Groundhog Day, this marking of the year was referred to as Candlemas, part of the Christian tradition. But, of course, before the Christian tradition, this day was celebrated by the Celtic people and known as Imbolc. This was in celebration of Brigid, the Goddess of the Dawn. Regardless of the festival's name, the intention is to celebrate the return of the light that becomes more noticeable on this day. Traditionally celebrated on February 2, it marks the halfway point between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. In ancient times, this day was cause for great celebration, as our ancestors relied so heavily on what they could grow for their nourishment. The sun's return meant restored health and strength in the deepest sense of the word. As well, without the convenience of electricity, once the sun set each evening, candlelight was all they had. Today, we can still feel this cause for celebration when we live in the northern hemisphere. Winter is long and dark and can often lead to feelings of depression in people. Therefore, marking this point can bring a sense of hope. To honour the return of the light, our ancestors built bonfires and made candles. On a practical level, preparing another batch of candles was needed to get through the final weeks of winter. Superstitions around weather on this day began to unfold. We know this today when we anticipate whether the groundhog will see its shadow. There were poems and songs in the days of old that referred to weather and what it meant if it was sunny or rainy that day. Annual festivals are so important to help mark the passing of the year. For children, especially younger ones, the concept of time is challenging to grasp. Festivals are a very meaningful and memorable way to mark time, and Candlemas is a lovely tradition that is very enjoyable for children to celebrate today. Celebrating Candlemas at HomeHere are some beautiful ways to celebrate Candlemas, and the coming of spring with your children. Candle Dipping Candle dipping is a fun and interactive activity that brings this celebration to life. You can easily make beeswax candles in your home or prepare a candle dipping station outside. You will need some old pots, beeswax pellets, and string for the wicks. Here's some detailed instructions to make dipped candles at home. Candle Dipping Activity This is a lovely reverent activity you can do while dipping your candles. Set your melted beeswax at one end of a table and a pot of water at the other. Walk slowly around the table, dipping your string in the beeswax at one end of the table and then in water at the other. Continue circling the table in this way until your candles are the width you would like. As you circle the table, you can sing the following Candlemas song: We dip our candles in the big old tin, And we wait a little bit for it to drip drop in. We make enough to last the year, To bring us joy and bring us cheer. Around and around and around and around...
Recite Candlemas Verses Here are a few verses you can say with your children as you light your candles. A farmer should, on Candlemas Day, Have half his corn and half his hay. On Candlemas Day if the thorns hang adrop, You can be sure of a good pea crop. ____________________________________ When Candlemas Day is bright with sun; Then Winter’s power has just begun – But when Candlemas Day is dark with rain Then Winter’s power is on the wane! ____________________________________ This is a verse that relates Candlemas to Groundhog Day: Badger peeps out on Candlemas Day, and if he finds snow, he walks away. But if the sun is shining down, Badger returns to his hole in the ground. Other Ideas for Celebrating Candlemas
Since Candlemas is a time for new beginnings, this is a good day to get creative and celebrate all that is new.
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 Hey Parents! After you have been a super hero and guided your child through the Daily Wonder morning lesson, maybe you want to take a step back, maybe you have to attend to your regular job, or maybe you need a coffee break. Whatever the reason, learning does not have to stop. In fact, learning is an ongoing process, and Daily Wonder will show you how easy it is to connect regular homeschool activities like free-play and everyday life experiences with your Ministry of Education Big Ideas and Learning Outcomes! 1. Build with Lego Applied Design, Skills and Technologies Grades 1-3: Big Idea/Concept: Designs grow out of natural curiosity Grades 4-5: Big Ideas/Concepts: Designs can be improved with prototyping and testing. Skills are developed through practice, effort and action. 2. Bake Muffins! Math Grade 1: Big Idea/Concept: Addition and subtraction with numbers to 10 can be modeled concretely, pictorially, and symbolically to develop computational fluency. Grade 3: Big Idea/Concept: Fractions are a type of number that can represent quantities. Grade 5: Adjust the recipe and learn this Big Idea/Concept: Numbers describe quantities that can be represented by equivalent fractions. 3. Clean Your Room! Career Education Grade 1-3: Big Ideas/Concepts: Strong communities are the result of being connected to family and community and working together toward common goals. Everything we learn helps us to develop skills. Communities include many different roles requiring many different skills. 4. Family Meeting Time Career Education Grades 4-5: Big Ideas/Concepts: Strong communities are the result of being connected to family and community and working together toward common goals. Leadership requires listening to and respecting the ideas of others. Grades 6-7: Big Ideas/Concepts: Practicing respectful, ethical, inclusive behaviour prepares us for the expectations of the workplace. Leadership represents good planning, goal setting, and collaboration. 5. Climb a Tree!! Career Education Grades 1-3: Big Idea/Concept: Confidence develops through the process of self-discovery 6. Make a Healthy Snack! Physical and Health Education Grades 1-3: Big Idea/Concept: Knowing about our bodies and making healthy choices helps us look after ourselves. 7. Work Through an Emotional Outburst! Physical and Health Education Grade1: Big Idea/Concept: Good health comprises physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Grades 2-3: Big Idea/Concept: Having good communication skills and managing our emotions enables us to develop and maintain healthy relationships. 8. Work Through Social Conflict with Friends Physical and Health Education Grade 1: Big Idea/Concept: Good health comprises physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Grades 2-3: Big Idea/Concept: Having good communication skills and managing our emotions enables us to develop and maintain healthy relationships. 9. Participating in the Digital World Physical and Health Education and Career Education Grades 6-7: Big Ideas/Concepts: Our personal digital identity forms part of our public identity. Practicing respectful, ethical, inclusive behaviour prepares us for the expectations of the workplace. 10. Knitting! Applied Design Skills and Technology Grades 1-3: Big Idea/Concept: Technologies are tools that extend human capabilities. Grades 4-5: Big Idea/Concept: Skills are developed through practice, effort, and action. Grades 6-7: Big Ideas/Concepts: Design can be responsive to identified needs. Complex tasks require the acquisition of additional skills. Stay tuned for new activities and life lessons to be shared on the Hub!!  Daily Wonder recommends that you take time to conduct a baseline assessment when you begin teaching your child each school year. Then, by observing them in everyday activities, you can track their development and become aware of areas that may need extra attention. Below, you will find specific areas to assess, ways to observe your child, and suggested activities to help strengthen particular areas of need. Establishing DominanceChildren typically favour a dominant side of the body around age seven. You can check if your child has done so by observing them with the following activities. ASSESSMENT ACTIVITIES:
Crossing the midline is a necessary skill that is related to bilateral coordination. This is the ability to use both sides of the body in a coordinated and organized manner, where one hand is the stabilizer, and the other hand is the performer. Crossing the midline is the spontaneous movement of one hand, foot, eye into the space of the other hand, foot, eye. You can see how handwriting requires this skill, as the arm, hand, and eye travel from the left to right, crossing the body's centre. Letter formation also requires this crossing. Many everyday activities require us to do this; however, some children may need more specific focus to cross the midline fully. Activities that address the hand and foot are easier to practice and can help support the eye and ear to align as well. STRENGTHENING ACTIVITIES: Activities to Support Hand Dominance and Crossing the Midline:
 Lemniscate Activities to Support Foot Dominance:
Healthy Posture & Pencil GripIt is essential to have healthy habits when it comes to posture and pencil grip. This will serve your child over the years as the demands for sitting at a desk and writing increase. ASSESSMENT ACTIVITIES:
 Proper pencil grip STRENGTHENING ACTIVITIES: Ways to Support Healthy Posture:
Ways to Support Healthy Pencil Grip:
Eye TrackingEye-tracking is an important foundation skill for reading. It’s important to notice whether your child can move their eyes horizontally while their head stays stationary. It is common to observe a tremor at the centre midline, which may indicate difficulty crossing the midline. ASSESSMENT ACTIVITIES:
MemoryWe use our memory for imaginative thinking. For example, when we remember something we’ve been told or see, we build imaginative pictures in our brains, leading to high-level thinking. The ability to build pictures takes practice, and we can strengthen this skill through memory games. ASSESSMENT ACTIVITIES:
STRENGTHENING ACTIVITIES:
Links for More Info & ActivitiesEstablishing Dominance and Crossing the Midline:
 Image credit: Andy Everson Content warning. This post, which addresses the painful history of residential schools, may be distressing to some readers.
Canada has declared that September 30th will be a National Day for Truth & Reconciliation fulfilling the Truth & Reconciliation Commission's call to action #80. This call to action means that the federal government in collaboration with aboriginal peoples, established this statutory holiday to honour Survivors, their families and communities and ensure that the history and legacy of residential schools is never forgotten. This has created another opportunity to find meaningful ways to connect to this important part of Canada's history. Below we share some ideas for how you can honour this day. Appropriate for Grades 1 and up: Phyllis (Jack) Webstad, a residential school survivor, shares her personal story which inspired Orange Shirt Day. After you share this story, here are three simple craft ideas for the young child, to build meaning and connection with the story:
Appropriate for Grades 3 and up: This video is a gentle reminder of what residential schools were and why it's important to learn about them. After watching the video you could have your child do the following activity:
At Daily Wonder, our goal is to connect parents with heart-felt, age appropriate activities to bring meaning to being human in our world. We hope to inspire you to build community and take a moment to reflect and connect on this new national holiday in Canada. We'd love to see your ideas. Be sure to share with us how you built connection on this day. Whether you welcome routine, or resist it, we're here to tell you why you should embrace it. At Daily Wonder we talk a lot about rhythm and routine. That’s because we know that young children feel a sense of good health when they are held by boundaries, including the lay-out of the day, week, month…. Children are meant to learn through play and doing until they reach high school. This means we need to provide them with lots of activities that spark their creativity and provide space for wonder. When they know what is expected of them children are freed up to be in the moment. It is up to the adults to create the boundaries to free the children. A friend recently told us that she was not expecting the freedom that came with building a fence around her property. It sounds kind of backwards, that a fence creates freedom, but think about it…she has a dog that had to be tied up or managed all the time. Once the fence went up, the dog knew how far it could go and the people trusted that the dog would just do dog things. We aren’t comparing children and dogs, but we are comparing the freedom fence to boundaries. Rhythm – this is your wide level organization such as your year, when you start school, what holidays or celebrations you participate in, what time you get up each day, what time you start and end your morning lesson… Routine – these are the details within your rhythm such as singing a song to begin the morning lesson, lighting a candle before story, and how you end the day. Routines are kind of like the rules for ‘how we do things’.  Any solid new rhythm and routine will take about six weeks to take hold. This means that once you've decided on the appropriate, realistic routine for your family, you need to harness all your forces to hold your new routine in place while you're settling in.
The temptation will be to let it go and give in because it's exhausting and feels like it's not working. But, what's actually happening during this time, is that you are genuinely exhausted because you are using your energy and life forces to hold a routine for your family. The good news is that around the 6-week mark, the routine will hold the family, and you can take a step back. You will notice that our daily lesson plans have repeating daily steps. This is to support you in holding that routine for your family. We can't stress enough how important it is to open and close your homeschool day at the same time and in the same way. Also, because you will feel exhausted during this return to routine, make sure to schedule your self-care into this routine. This might look like making yourself a cup of tea at 11:30 every morning and zenning out on the couch while your child plays lego on the floor. Your body will welcome this set time to relax each day within this structured routine. Remember to hold an abundance of love and compassion for yourself while on this rewarding journey. Do you have a routine that works well for you and your family? We'd love to hear about it in the comments below.  Looking for ways to bring awareness about our responsibility to care for the Earth? The following environmental actions are important to do all year round, not just on Earth day. We encourage you to go through the list with your child and choose a few that inspire you. Commit to making them a part of your homeschooling routine. Together we can build a better world for the future. 1. Go for a walk and pick up litter  2. Yes, it's not your own dog's poop, but pick it up anyways if you see it on your walk. 3. Ditch the paper towels, use a cloth instead. 4. Refuse the plastic straw and carry your own reuse-able ones. 5. Donate old clothing and household items to your local thrift stores, free stores or shelters. 6. Buy local, support local businesses and cut down on environmental shipping costs. 7. Choose sustainable products. 8. Grow a garden, even just one pot with a plant on your window sill if you don't have a yard.  9. Always recycle. 10. Try walking or biking instead of driving.  More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world. For more information, visit www.earthday.org
Easter brings the hope of rebirth and beauty. It could give you a point of focus when choosing stories, crafts and activities to do as a family. StoryThe Easter Bunny A charming, simple story about how the Easter Bunny learned how to deliver eggs. http://happywhimsicalhearts.com/2016/03/easter-bunny-rabbits/ This website has really great resources on further ways to celebrate the seasons, ways to bring Waldorf into the home, etc. GamesLittle Brown Bulb For this game, the child curls up on a ball and you cover them with a blanket (a nice, heavy one that blocks light really gives an idea of what it is like to be underground! Then you say: A Little Brown Bulb lay asleep in the ground (hands resting on child's back) And there she slept very sound (caress the back) While Old King Winter raged and roared overhead (walk fingers like spiders over the child's back) The Little Brown Bulb did not stir in her bed (rest hands) Then came Lady Spring tip toeing over the lea (tip toe fingers) Fingers to lips as quiet as can be (whisper) The Little Brown Bulb lifted her head (child lifts head) She slipped off her nightie and jumped out of bed! (child lifts the blanket and jumps up!) Sleeping Bunnies This song can be played while lying down on the floor/ grass/etc. As the song indicates, once you wake up you hop about! See the little bunnies sleeping until noon Shall I wake them with a merry tune? Oh so still.....are they ill?... Wake up little bunnies, hop hop hop! Wake up little bunnies, hop hop hop!  CraftsEgg Dying Natural dyed eggs are usually a 2 day project. To prepare, collect leaves and flowers, and secure them to the eggs using panty hose or cheese cloth (they work best when freshly picked, as maleable and moist sticks best to the eggs). After they have sat in the dye, the wrapping is removed revealing the beautiful stamp of the chosen flower or leaf. If you're not so keen on the chemicals in store-bought Easter egg dye, try these nine all-natural options. Each features a colouring agent — a vegetable, fruit juice, or spice — that gives colour to hard-boiled eggs.  Sprouting Beans Spring is a time to observe growth and life, and what better way to pass the days than seeing a baby bean grow right before your eyes? Here is a really easy, visual way to teach children about root systems. Five year olds might also like to hear the story of Jack and the Bean stalk. https://www.dltk-teach.com/rhymes/beanstalk/story.htm  Paper Seed Bombs
This is another multi step craft that is easy to execute and very rewarding. If you have any old seeds handy, this is the perfect way to use them! Perhaps you can plant to make them as gifts for friends and family, as a way of looking forward to seeing your loved ones again. Turn old paper into some super cool seed balls! This easy science activity and craft are perfect for Earth Day or a unit on gardening or plants and seeds! With thanks and credit to Lucia Perez from the Comox Valley Waldorf School. Passover (Pesach in Hebrew) is a Jewish holiday that celebrates the Hebrews' liberation from slavery by the great prophet Moses. Moses would not have survived to free his people, had it not been for the cleverness of his sister Miriam. She set him in a basket on the river Nile, and watched over him until the Pharaoh's daughter found him and took him home to be her own son. In this way, Moses survived the dangerous times in Egypt, and grew up with a deep compassion for the Jewish people. In his adult years, he fulfilled his destiny to guide the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt, to form a covenant with God through the Ten Commandments. Miriam, perhaps the only woman in the bible, who is not referred to as someone's mother or daughter, has, in more recent times, taken a place of honour at the Passover Seder. As Jewish celebrations and rituals become modernized to fit our new levels of awareness, we turn to the women of the Bible stories, choosing to elevate them to places of importance. In modern Jewish rituals, when the Seder, or religious dinner ritual takes place, many families choose to include Miriam as one of the sacred guests. A cup is filled with water, in her honour, and songs and stories are shared to celebrate her strengths. What a wonderful time we live in, where we can honour the importance of the feminine, and include it in a ritual that was formed thousands of years ago. Ways to CelebrateHere are some ways you can learn more about Miriam and celebrate her as well. Sing Miriam's Song A beautiful song depicting the spirit of women now and in ancient days. Here are the lyrics so you can sing along: And the women dancing with their timbrels Followed Miriam as she sang her song Sing a song to the One whom we've exalted Miriam and the women danced and danced the whole night long And Miriam was a weaver of unique variety The tapestry she wove was one which sang our history With every strand and every thread she crafted her delight A woman touched with spirit, she dances toward the light And the women dancing with their timbrels Followed Miriam as she sang her song Sing a song to the One whom we've exalted Miriam and the women danced and danced the whole night long When Miriam stood upon the shores and gazed across the sea he wonder of this miracle she soon came to believe Whoever thought the sea would part with an outstretched hand And we would pass to freedom and march to the promised land And the women dancing with their timbrels Followed Miriam as she sang her song Sing a song to the One whom we've exalted Miriam and the women danced and danced the whole night long And Miriam the prophet took her timbrel in her hand And all the women followed her just as she had planned And Miriam raised her voice in song She sang with praise and might We've just lived through a miracle We're going to dance tonight And the women dancing with their timbrels Followed Miriam as she sang her song Sing a song to the One whom we've exalted Miriam and the women danced and danced the whole night long Make Miriam's Cup Miriam’s cup honours her as a prophet in her own right and allows the opportunity to acknowledge the importance of women in general. https://creativecynchronicity.com/passover-elijah-miriam-and-kiddush-cups/
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BlogExplore schedules, rhythms & routines, songs, music, festivals, free play, meals, projects & more to support your homeschooling program.AuthorThe Wonder Squad Categories
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