The holidays are upon us and I find myself searching for activities for the kid that will provide him some education and something to do.
Saturday: Christmas Walk At the Central West End
The Central West End in St. Louis does a Christmas Walk on the first Saturdays in December. So we picked a warm weekend and bundled up the kid and decided to explore the Christmas displays.
We saw an interesting variety of decorated storefronts. One had a mixture of model railroads running around Christmas trees. Another had a large festive green mermaid with mermen surrounding her, a very different Christmas theme than I’ve seen before. A window include
d a land filled with magical fairies. I found the Mexican restaurant with the painted on snow boarding gingerbread men entertaining. We even saw a sushi snowman that was ready for winter.
Our son enjoyed watching the ice carver, seeing the street performers, and of course having a balloon snowman made for him from a balloon man wearing a white blazer with snowmen and snowflakes all over it.
An art gallery went all out and created a walk-through area with all kinds of blow-up displays. You could see
all of Santa’s reindeer, all different kinds of snowmen. Santa on an elephant and it included Ralph in the bunny costume from “A Christmas Story.”
Along with decorated stores, one Saturday a year the Window Walk includes a tented Holiday Market, this year it was on Dec. 8. We saw vendors selling handmade crafts, antiques, art wares and baked good. The Walk had an entertaining variety of decorated storefronts, vendors and we have found a tent that had free yummy s’mores to eat!
Sunday: Holiday Activities at the St. Louis Art Museum
The next morning I checked the newspaper and local TV station websites for listings of events that were going on. I came across a notice that the St. Louis Art Museum had activities for kids. So we headed into the city to check them out.
Colombian folkloric dancer and retired Washington University Professor Carmen Dence provided tales of Carnival in Columbia. She said the celebration begins with the start of January. She demonstrated the dancing that takes place. Carnival began in the small communities outside of Bogota and spread from there. It has roots in the rituals for protection of crops, prior to the Spanish arriving in South America. The festival now brings together native and Spanish cultures and commemorates a Native-American uprising in the 19th Century.
Dence brought dolls decked out in their costumes out into audience for the kids to take a closer look. At the end of talk the kids were able to try on the masks, my son chose the one with a yellow tiger face.
After we left there we went and made seasonal cards. He was able to use stamps for the cards and he enjoyed pressing the stamps all over them. The cards will be given out to those in need, which is a nice element for this time of year.
We ended the day at the art museum by making a snowman out of clay and wire to take home to show papa!
