Wild Kids Magazine for December

Happy December!

Here’s the link for this month’s Wild Kids Magazine:

This issue marks our 12th issue of Wild Kids Magazine! This month’s issue is 20 pages (PDF) and as always it can be read online or printed out.

From the intro:

In this issue, we have:

Fun ways to celebrate the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year for those of us in the Northern hemisphere.
Information on winter foraging and all of the wild plants you can still find when the weather gets cold.
Coloring pages for spruce and chestnuts, two very timely wild plants for December.
Botanical gift tags of all 24 Elizabeth Blackwell coloring pages you did in Wild Kids Magazine this year.

We’ll also look back at some of the things we learned about this year. And as always, there’s seasonal poetry, ways to go wild and play with nature this month, and nature study pages.

If you look in the nature journal pages, I’ve also added a page for kids to record all of the plants they foraged in 2019 if they did any foraging.

A note to the folks in the Southern hemisphere: I’ve tried this year to include information and fun to work for everyone, but that was especially tricky for me here in snowy, cold Minnesota this month.Please forgive the focus on winter activities and enjoy a little peek into our cold weather fun. I promise to work at incorporating more Southern hemisphere fun in the future.Perhaps it’s an excuse for a trip to Australia to do some research?:)

Here’s wishing you a wonderful, wild December, no matter where you are!

Here’s some information to learn more about this month’s topics

Winter Foraging

Practical Self Reliance has a great list of wild plants to forage in the winter time.

Forage Wild Foods has a good list of greens that you can forage in the winter, even under the snow sometimes!

Winter is also a good time to plan for the next year’s foraging activities and to read up on foraging books from the library.

The Winter Solstice

Here’s a short little video that explains a bit more about the winter and summer solstice.

Here’s a bit more information about the winter and summer solstice from SoftsSchools.

On continuing on another year…

When I started this project last year, I committed to one year of the magazine. The magazine has been very popular — so popular that our web host charged us overage charges for most months of the year since the magazine is a large file and so many people downloaded it. I didn’t expect this expense but we have paid to upgrade our server and that seems to be managing the web activity for now. Some folks have suggested that I should start charging for the magazine to cover this cost, but my goal all along with Wild Kids has been to offer it for everybody so I will never charge for it.

This has been a lot of work and some loved ones have been not-too-subtle in suggesting that I call it a day after the year is up. That said, at this point I am planning to commit to another year. As long as there are people who really appreciate the magazine and get something out of it, I’m going to do my best to continue to put it out. This is my version of Miss Rumphius, doing something to make the world more beautiful. I’m tentatively committing to another year to see what we can do.

I’ve even got some fun plans on a 2020 theme for the Elizabeth Blackwell botanical coloring pages!

I would dearly love it if kids (or their grown ups) wanted to start contributing some of the material for Wild Kids. Every month, I’ll put out a list of topics that are possible for the next month’s issue. If you or your kiddos want to contribute a one or two page article, please email them to me at alicia.bayer@gmail.com. I can provide all the photos and formatting unless you have photos to accompany it. This is a great way for kids to get writing practice — and some bragging rights to boot!

Possible topics for January include:

Snow fun/sports
Helping wildlife in the winter
Foraging in the Southern hemisphere
My nature hero
Winter nature crafts
20 _____ (something nature related) in 2020

Submissions are welcome from any ages!

P.S. On subscribing — every month, people comment and ask how they can subscribe to be notified of new posts/issues. Most months, I’ve updated you that I am still having problems making any subscribe button work. I still do not have this fixed. Honestly, it’s not a priority for me anymore since there’s only so many hours I’m going to fight with a plug-in (or four). 🙂 Please just make a mental note to check for the new issue when you switch your calendar page. I’m late this month, but I usually try to have it done by the end of each month for the next one. Thanks for understanding!