Santa Lucia Day Celebration ECE

A few notes from our week of festivities, leading up to the Santa Lucia Day celebration on Thursday!

We continued with our Songs, Verses & Movement for classroom routines.

Circle Time

#1 - "Good Morning, Dear Earth" verse

#2 - "Morning Verse"
from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 13

#3 - "I'm a Tall, Tall Tree" song

#4 - "The Squirrel" finger play
from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 49

#5 - "We Push the Saw, We Pull the Saw" verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 76

#6 - "Hop Old Squirrel, Eidledum, Eidledum" song
from The Singing Year, track 68

#7 - "Bear Has a Snout" verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 93

#8 - "Ten Bright Candles" finger play
from The Breathing Circle, page 84

Monday

• Advent Spiral invitations
• "Whole Barley and Mixed Fruit Pudding" recipe
  from Rodale's Basic Natural Foods Cookbook, page 298
• "December" poem and illustration & "January" illustration
  from Around the Year by Elsa Beskow
• "Jingle Bells" and "Round and Round" songs

You can read this barley pudding recipe on Amazon if you click on "Look Inside" and type the name of the recipe in the search box. It was delicious!

We had two upcoming events to get ready for, the Advent Spiral next week and Santa Lucia Day this week. Reading the poem and looking at the illustrations in Elsa Beskow's book helped us begin to understand how Santa Lucia Day is celebrated in Sweden, and practicing our songs and making our parent invitations for the Advent Spiral helped us begin to lay the foundation for that family event. The sheet music for "Round and Round" is found in Seven Times the Sun and the song is track 36 on the CD.

Tuesday

• Star Boy hats and wands
• "Sweden," pages 28-29
  from Christmas Around the World by Mary Lankford
• "Jingle Bells" and "Round and Round" songs
• Pine Cone Weaving ornaments

All of the boys are very excited to be Star Boys for Santa Lucia Day! The hat and wand making was serious business and I met with the children one at a time. I used a piece of 11 x 17 white paper for each hat and simply wrapped it into a cone, fitting it individually to each boy. Once I had the measurement correct, I taped up the seam with clear tape. Then we used glue dots to adhere the smaller stars up the seam. Glue dots are awesome because they are pre-measured. They are neat, precise, and you don't have to wait for them to dry. They are instant and permanent. I used three small stars for each hat. For the wand, I taped a 12 inch bamboo dowel (the ones we use for making knitting needles in first grade) to the backside of one very large star, then put a glue dot on each point of the star. I laid the other matching sized star on top and pressed each point to adhere. The boys each went running to the mirror to see themselves when the pieces were complete.

I bought two sizes of star punch for making Mary's path of stars for our Nativity scene this year, since I knew it would be a lot of stars, but for the Star Boy hats and wands I just traced two different sizes of star cookie cutters from my Christmas cookie collection. It worked out perfectly! I got "Pyrite Metallic" paper from Hobby Lobby. I did write each child's initials in the finished hats and on the finished wands, and I made sure the stars for the wand lined up and wrote the initials on the backside of the stars at the point which I wanted to line up. I wrote initials on the three little stars for each hat too, even though lining up points isn't an issue there. I just thought it would make things go more smoothly on the morning of assembly. It did!

After snack I showed the children some traditional wheat straw and red thread ornaments. I even had a "Kirsten" American Girl Doll straw ornament making kit (which someone gave me when my girls were small) and we got it out so that they could see the straws and the wheat. We made much simpler Pine Cone Weaving ornaments, but we did also use the color red.

Thursday

• "Jingle Bells" and "Round and Round" songs
• "Santa Lucia" story by Tiziana Boccaletti
• Santa Lucia Sweet Rolls recipe

And, of course, today was also Stone Soup Day! Here was our list of group contributions to the Stone Soup this week:

onion
celery
carrots
sweet potato
parsnip
kale

The beautiful handmade felt Santa Lucia crown I purchased on Etsy didn't arrive in time so we had to create one out of artificial ivy. It was still lovely, though. Here is the simplest-ever recipe for sweet buns, which I got from Becca's Kindergarten teacher years ago. In the hustle of fashioning a replacement crown, I didn't remember to glaze the buns. I had the children help shape them, giving them each a piece of the dough on a piece of parchment paper, and showing them how to make the traditional swirly shape. We placed dried cranberries in each curl of the "S" before baking.

SANTA LUCIA SWEET ROLLS

You will need: 5 cups of Bisquick, 2 eggs, 6 T grapeseed oil, 3/4 cup + 5 tsp milk, 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Directions: Combine the Bisquick, eggs, grapeseed oil, and 3/4 cup milk in the order given, stirring after each addition. Divide the dough so that each child has a piece. Ask the children to shape the dough into 8 inch long rolls and curls the ends to form an "S" shape, as shown. Add raisins or dried cranberries for decoration if you wish.

Bake on a greased cookie sheet at 375 degrees for about 15 minutes.

While they are baking, prepare a frosting by combining the powdered sugar with 5 teaspoons milk. While the rolls are still warm from the oven, brush with the frosting.

our Advent Spiral invitations
the children drew a snowy scene on the front with white crayon
the white border of the invitation details, on a paper which I printed and glued inside, shows through the punched stars

gathering supplies

taping the wand dowel securely onto the star
labeling the points where the stars need to line up

putting a glue dot on each point

Star Boy hat!

the oldest girl is Santa Lucia

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