Winter Solstice and Holiday Parties

Winter Solstice was Friday, December 21st this year. Our morning sunrise was at 10:58 AM, and sunset occurred at 4:34 PM. That gave us five hours and thirty-six minutes of daylight. By contrast, this summer we had from 5:13 AM to 12:28 AM giving the Summer Solstice 19 daylight hours and nine minutes.

We had quite a week as the temperature dropped. The community had the funeral for Oscar Nick. He was an elder in the community and had been quite ill for sometime. There had been a request to have the sirens for curfew silenced as it bothered him, and after he died, all balls (basketball practice) needed to stop bouncing. This is a common practice even when a death occurs in a neighboring village.

I went to Oscar's funeral, held at the Moravian Church. Singing, prayers, stories and an open casket were part of the ceremony. His burial was in the cemetery near the airstrip. The weather was scarey cold (30 below), wind blowing violently, so few made it out there. Most that did went by car.

 












 

But, in school that Friday, we had our holiday celebration. Here the first and second graders are mixing salt, flour and water to make dough for ornaments. These little boys and girls are very use to mixing dough to make asuliaq (fry bread) with their mothers and aunties (2 cups flour, 2 cups pancake mix, 1 TBL baking powder and water).

I brought pine cones from our huge Jack Pine in Oregon and had my reading group help the Kindergartners make ornaments from them.

The students would get two little ones at a time and were to have them drizzle glue over the cone and then shake glitter over the top.

One would think a straightforward activity......not so. We cleaned up glue and glitter for days.....

The third and fourth graders were busy making gingerbread cookies.






Then came our program!



The Kindergartners sang songs........

The audience loved it!

The first and second graders had written their notes to Santa, practiced, and then read them aloud.

Then the first and second graders acted out a snowman, or should I say, snow women story.

The sixth grade class was a big hit telling holiday jokes like:

Which reindeer has the cleanest antlers?
Comet.....

and many others that had the same groan reaction.

The sixth graders put in time on their own to learn to play Jingle Bells with bells. It sounded great! Most hit their notes on cue. Students were excused shortly afterwards and were not expected back for another three weeks! Yay, for vacation!