Cubyshka - beautiful folk doll

Made without a single stitch with natural fabrics and threads they represent an ancient tradition of doll making. "Cubyshka" is a doll, filled with meadow herbs such as mint, thyme and other, made to keep fresh environment in a house, and spread nice smell of dried herd around the room. Mint calms down mind and spirit.

That will be perfect present for Grandma or Mommy. We continue make folk dolls with our students.

ETSY available here

Как мы играли в индейцев or Happy Thanksgiving!

That is a wonderful celebration of Autumn Thanksgiving...The Nature become incredible colourful, weather still quiet and nice. Thanksgiving 2015 came to us exactly like that.Why do not say "Thanks" to everyone around the World? Thanks my Family that you are and supporting me in this world, friends that you exist and we can have fun and share hard time together...Thank you Lord that we have this turkey and bread for our dinner. Many, many thanks for small thing those happen every day and make our lives bright and happy...
We celebrating thanksgiving with the book
Who are Indians? Why pilgrims said them "Thank You!"? - that were important points of our today's games.

Indians do canoeing!

Indians do fishing!

Indians do growing corn, pumpkins and apples!

And they brought roasted turkey for pilgrims who were suffering from hunger!

Those are our turkeys!

If you would like to see how we were hunting it, come and look tomorrow!

In the garden, in the garden - Fall is coming now!

Today we continued to talk with children about Harvest. Children remember that we have already mentioned as the harvester gathers the wheat grain, as the drum rotates the feed grain on the threshing machine and then how on the  mill grain was grounded into the flour.
Children discussed vegetables yjose growing in the garden. Hey! do you see an apple on this picture?
Tommy eat in for snack! this is very healthy snack and good for Tommy's body - It has a lot of vitamines and minerals! Imagine that Tommy bites it. How the apple will look like now? And Tommy bites one more time, ond more... so finally apple look like that and we will put it in? Exactly! in a food waste bin. Ususally this bin has? Yes, green color. Do we have nim like that in our class?

Cjildren had an opportunity to touch, smell and taste all vegetables! Some of them enjoy smell herbs some did not like the smell.

Look at those mushrooms made by children!

That is my cat with the lomg long tail!

 This potato is yellow, I made a sun! and little pink piglet love it!

That was really fun tasty and cool snack today!

We are going camping.

We are going camping! Who does not know how exciting it is!Just make a check list what you will need and let children collect whole stuff!

Bring some outdoor! Natural mosaic is great activity for fine motor skills and science!

Create your own camping finally!

But the most exciting activity to sleep inside the tent!

So, sleeping bunny, sleeping.....

Great spring celebrations

Spring always bringing for us many great celebration. Very close this year coming Pesach (Passover), Catholic Easter and Orthodox Easter. As a multicultural country Canada celebrate all of the them, so children  begin to learn about those great celebration.

Passover

Over two and a half thousand years ago, G-d saved the Jewish people and took them out of slavery in Egypt, leading them through the Split Sea and into the land of Israel.
Each year we celebrate our redemption from Egypt by reading the story of Passover out loud during the Passover Seder. (read here)

Passover is biggest spring celebration for jewish people. We tried to learn about names, characters and stuff for Passover with our little children. For our class I prepared seder plate.Last year we spend a few classes to make a Seder plate matching game - children could match parts of seder plate with pictures on it. This year I brought this game and was very happy that my children still remember what to do.

To make a matching game "Seder plate" you will need:

Big paper plate

Six muffin cover

One styrolfoam egg

White  masking tape

Crumpled red and brown tissue paper

Small plastic bottle and clear plastic container

Piece of green, yellow and brown felt.

Cotton balls

White glue, glue gun, markers,

What to do:

We made a bone by covering two q-tips. For the end of shank I used brown finger puppet base(we were making once finger puppets and I still had couple. You also can use round piece of brown felt stuffed with cotton balls and glued on another end of q-tips)

Cut out leaf of green felt and also three- four ribbons(that will be celery stalks) Draw lines on the leaf. Ribbons take together and cover one end with white masking tape.

Cut styrolfoam egg in half and glue yellow circle on the middle - that will be egg. You actually can use whole egg - paint it light brown?

Cut 3-4 small ribbons of green felt glue them together and one side connect twisted napkin. Start to wrap it with masking tape - that will be horse radish root.

Glue crumpled tissue paper on the card board circle - haroseth. Make sure that you glue it very well because my one-year old took off all tissue balls in one minute!

Print out names (I had celery instead parsley) and glue them in to muffin covers. 

Ta-da! Now you can start to play with your children!

Next class we will talk about matza  and bread, we will look for the bread and collect all crumbs!

So we need a brash to clean our house.

Then, you will need:

Feathers, masking tape,pop sickle stick ribbon.

Let children to connect feathers to masking tape, explain the order.

Roll attached feathers, at the end attach pop sickle stick, tie with ribbon.

Ready to clean up house!

Happy Passover!

Knock, knock...Trick or Treat, Who are you?

I am pumpkin! I am little pumpkin!!

I am spider, I`m a gigantic spider!

I am ghost, I am little ghost!

I am witch, I am little witch!

And that is not only one little witch - it is `Witch Hazel Pharmacy and we were hardly working whole week on our potions and spells!

Provocation - rat`s brain (cauliflower+ one drop blue food colouring) 

Dusty bottle.

Dragon bone, Poison Mushroom and Rat Brain! Labels in process)) 

Creating recipe

Exploring ingredients))

Components of spell

Dead potion))

Making old paper ( instant coffee)

Lissy`s potion( flowers and herbs in water)

If you are have more question, always welcome!

Party - tomorrow!

Home amulet made by yourself. Doll Zernovushka.

We continue to explore harvest and today we were talking about folk doll "Croupenichka" or "Zernovushka" - the doll which made by yourself with any kind of croups.
At the end of harvest time people collect different time of croups and created small doll with them inside. This doll symbolized richness of harvest pray for next harvest time.

This doll has several names: Zernushka, Zernovushka, Krupenichka, Sweetpea. And it may look a little different, depending on the area where it does. But the foundation of her total - inside dolls grain.
Values ​​of cereals in Zernovushke:
Buckwheat - satiety and wealth, traditionally filled doll is this grain.
Rice - the most expensive grain, on a holiday;
Barley - satiety;
Oats - by force.
You can put all cereals. Also at the bottom of the doll would sometimes put a coin.

We were talking with my little children about the Bunny who stills a carrot and cabbage from our garden. We played the game "BUNNY" on the tune "Ringa, ringa roses"

Bunny jumping slowly,

Bunny jumping faster,

Ash a, ash a

Jump in hole!

Bunny's sitting quiet,

Bunny looks around -

If there hunter looks for 

them!

At this moment "Hunter" walks around and looks who is not hiding eyes with hands! Everyone wants to be hunter!!!!

We decided to make a bunny doll and stuff it with croups. This doll has a great value for children as made by them self, safe and nice to touch in in little hands,
To make the process easier I used socks and plastic needle. For very young children I put string inside before but older children were able to do it by themselves with my help.
       Look what we made!

The full workshop how to make a Zernovushka you can find here and here

My children were so exited to play with their bunny!

Natural ink

The idea of this activity appeared when children noticed that beet's juice colored hands. N. told: "This juice looks like the ink!" Children discussed how people used ink many years ago and why. Children find out that people did not have any computers at that time and they did not have pens. We started to talk about pencils and pens. " J. said:"I know, they used feathers!!!" We started to discuss how people can get the juice with beets or choke berries and how we can prepare feathers for writing.  "We can smash berries and get juice. I think we can write with berries' juice."- said M. The process started! First I showed children how to make writing feathers on the straw. Children could see how the straw hold the liquid inside and the liquid came out through the end cut  in two parts. Children cut feathers at the end and enjoyed drawing and writing with juice! They noticed that berry ink was more purple and beet's ink was more pink! Fall brings for my children new and new acknowledgements! I would like to share this idea  here