Embrace The Spirit Of Winter - Creating a Winter Scene and The Okee Dokee Brothers' - ‘Winterland’

Mamatomo Mama
Dec 26, 2018
2 min read

Updated: Dec 26, 2018

With the holiday season almost behind us and the coldest, bleakest months still ahead of us here in NYC, you could be forgiven for feeling a touch of dread. However, the increased time you’ll be spending indoors gives an opportunity to teach kids about this very special season. Teaching kids about the seasons is essential to build their knowledge and understanding of the world. It is a fundamental part of many early years curricula across the globe. We have been inspired by The Okee Dokee Brothers' new album 'Winterland' (read on to hear more about it) and decided to create our own wintery scene at home.

Sensory Snow

I recently came across a really fun sensory snow activity using only baking powder and hair conditioner (so it smelt super nice too).

Combine 1 and a half cups of baking soda together with 1/4 cup of hair conditioner.

The ‘snow’ is really tactile and actually does hold its shape so you can mould it into snowballs. Great fun for little ones and it can be made in seconds! We thought we’d combine this activity with some simple painting to create our own ‘winterland’. We painted our winter backdrop and then made our ‘snow’.

To Make The Picture:

Use watercolors to paint a sunset.
Wait for the paint to dry.
Use a calligraphy pen to draw trees. My kids loved this. They are 4 and 5 years old and they really enjoyed making different kinds of strokes to create the tree's branches.

Wintery Music With The Okee Dokee Brothers‘ - ‘Winterland’

Grammy Award-winning duo Joe Mailander and Justin Lansing released their new album ‘Winterland’ in October 2018. The album celebrates ‘the spirit of the winter season‘ and comprises sixteen original songs about winter; ‘covering themes such as cycles of loss and new life, darkness and light, bitter cold and warmth’. It’s a wonderful album for children with relaxed, folkey tones and warm melodies. We have been enjoying listening to it in our house and I plan to use it in my classroom next term too.

See The Okee Dokee Brothers at Symphony Space, NYCThe Okee Dokee Brothers will be playing at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side in NYC on January 5th. Click here for more! Tickets are a very reasonable $17 each.

Save Our Winters!

The great news is also that The Okee Dokee Brothers will be donating 10% of their ‘Winterland’ album sales to Protect Our Winters. In their words:

To help ensure our fans can enjoy a lifetime of snowy winter exploration, we’re donating 10% of all Winterland CD sales and 10% of ticket sales for our Minnesota album release concerts (Nov. 3) to Askov Finlayson’s Keep the North Cold initiative, which supports leading-edge climate solutions in the North and across the country.

Read more about their important mission here: http://www.askovfinlayson.com/mission.

For more information about Protect Our Wintets: visit www.protectourwinters.org