Week 3: Russia! (Short side-trip to Tanzania and Kenya)

This week MonkeyD pointed at Russia on our map when choosing our new culture to explore.  So, as is becoming my ritual, I spent Sunday evening on the computer looking for ideas to learn about Russia.

On Monday I was sick, but my wonderful husband stayed home and took over our Russian experience for the day.  Since he is, without a doubt, the better chef in our family, he indulged us in a few Russian meals.  He started us out in the morning with a brunch of deruny - potato pancakes.   MonkeyD was not completely impressed with the deruny, but Lil' Pistol couldn't eat enough of them.  The previous night, The Big Bad Dad had made and frozen a large batch of pelmini, so we had those for dinner.  With this dish, MonkeyD ate and ate, (how could she not?  she got to use her favorite condiment, ketchup!).  Lil' Pistol was not interested in dinner though.  I think that the pelmini was the perfect hot food for me that day. In the evening, The Big Bad Dad, assisted by his mini-chefs, made a delicious Russian apple pie. 

One evening we made Babushka dolls out of a paper towel roll.  I cut the roll into pieces of decreasing size and rolled some of them tighter so that they could fit inside one another.  Then, MonkeyD decorated them and played with them for a while.  I had also come across this website, http://mssscrafts.com/crafts/matryushka/, that has a template to use for making Babushka Dolls. 

We had a long booklist of Russian folktales.  The Gigantic Turnip by Aleksei Tolstoy and Niamh Sharkey, Bit by Bit by Steve Sanfield, Clever Katya retold by Mary Hoffman, Baboushka retold by Arthur Scholey, Baba Yaga retold by Eric A. Kimmel, Bearhead by Eric A Kimmel, and The Firebird retold by Demi.  We looked at and discussed the pictures in the book Looking at Russia by Jillian Powell - although we didn't actually read it together.  We also enjoyed the stories of  Max Moves to Moscow by Winifred Riser, and  Castle on Hester Street by Linda Heller.   The first is about a dog who moves to Moscow.  For this book we paid attention to the cathedrals in the illustrations and made note of the long winter season.   The second is about a husband and wife that moved to the New York from Russia many years ago. 

We watched three dvds this week.  The first two, The Firebird and The Fool and the Flying Ship are based on traditional folktales that we had also read.  We watched the versions created by Rabbit Ears Storybook Collection.  The third dvd we watched was Little Pim the Panda: Russian.  This is a language learning program.  We watched the "Eating and Drinking" video, which is the first of the three videos in their Russian collection. 

On Wednesday we made a side trip in to northern Tanzania and Kenya as we visited a nearby museum, The Spurlock Museum,.  In their Around the World Wednesdays art program for kids, the girls each made a Maasai necklace and earrings using paper plates and beads.   They were shown, allowed to touch and even try on an actual Maasai beaded wedding necklace and earring.  This was our first visit to Spurlock Museum, but we will be visiting again and touring the exhibits since we hadn't given ourselves enough time to do that during this trip.