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| Onion domed churches of Moscow |
Here in Utah we have Easter Break really late this year. So I actually get to use all my Easter crafts! Woo Hoo! But I am longing for a break and some better weather. This year we made spring flowers, Easter chicks and Rechenka’s eggs in a basket.
I love the story Rechenka’s Eggs by Patricia Polacco. It’s got the character Babushka from our L.A. basal reader story Thundercake. So the kids easily spotted the “text to text” connection of characters. She’s an old Russian lady who crafts beautifully painted Easter eggs to go to market for a festival in Moscow. It show the onion domes of the Moscow capital city all in their splendorous colors.
It reminds me of when we went to visit Armenia and we had to stop over in Moscow to catch a small commuter plane.(word to the wise, never fly Aeroflot Airlines…we had a fuel line break in mid flight and almost blew up right over Budapest! not fun) Our flight was late so they had to put us up in this creepy Moscow hotel with barbed wire around it. The grumpy looking Russian in the fur hat who taxied us to the hotel never spoke a word to us.
I remember begging him to drive us up to Moscow to see the Kremlin. Silly me, I thought it would be like a fun little tourist side trip. Little did I know that they don’t even give day visas to tourists! When we got to the hotel, they placed a guard at a little desk outside our door. Since we were Americans they did not trust us I guess. And the only thing on TV was this creepy song sung in an Asian voice all about “It’s Time For Us” and it still gives me Heeby Jeebies thinking about it. Yuck. I’m NOT a good traveler.
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| Here’s a close up of one of the eggs, and Andrew’s Spring poem… |
Anyway, then I had made copies of some really decorated eggs we called ” Rechenka’s Eggs” and I have a contest to see who can make the most beautiful eggs to send to the Moscow market. The top 3 eggs win a prize. I don’t like to do this very often or the kids start asking “What do we get for doing this?” you know how old THAT gets. But contests do bring out a bit more motivation to do an excellent job.
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| We’ve added about 20 more eggs since this picture….it looks real pretty now! |
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| I typed up this poem to sing and put on the back of our Spring Chicks… |
Then I brought in some plastic eggs for each table in a basket. It will be a center activity all next week. They look at the number on the outside of the egg. Inside they write all the addends (addition number sentences) and factors (multiplication number sentences) that would end in that number. The kids will be creative I know!
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| Spring Acrostic Poem by Saige…..turned out sweet! |
Then we talked about the season of Spring and read a book called It’s Spring by Linda Glaser. It has beautiful illustrations and it was a good springboard for a brainstorm on the board of spring things that start with the letters S-P-R-I-N-G. They are really good at brainstorms now, although somebody thought rhinoceros would be a good spring word…hehe.
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| Kate’s poem….very cute…. |
Then I had them write sloppy copies with all these wonderful S and P and R words on the board like sunshine, storms, pretty flowers, potted plants, rainbows and raincoats.
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| Easter Chick craft….Moby Chick |
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| Pink crepe paper cheeks, wiggly eyes, square orange beak and triangle at the bottom legs. |
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| Easter Chicks made from traced hands….we added orange feathers to the tops! |
Then I edited their simple poems and then handed them this cute printed poetry form for the SPRING Acrostic. Lastly I showed them how to put together the little spring chicky art project. We had a funny poem called Moby Chick we added on the back and read and sang together to the tune of Itsy Bitsy Spider.
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| I just couldn’t resist putting this little Easter “Chick” on my blog….it’s my granddaughter Josie! peep peep! |
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| Easter Crafts and Easter Art |
Here’s how our finished bulletin board looks! Spring is so bright and beautiful! I love it! And boy is it raining hard and thundering loud today. Snow one day and 30 degrees, Sun and 70 degrees the next, wind and rain and thunder with lightening the next! What the heck?! CRAZY weather! Can’t wait for SPRING BREAK!!!