Christmas Around the World – Russia and Ukraine

So Thursday through Monday was not days of great productivity as far as Christmas studying goes.

We are mixing Russian and Ukraine (our Saturday country – but I didn’t want to skip it) Here are the things we did, besides looking up the country on the map and reading about other general customs, flags, currencies, etc in our other country / culture / geography type books.

• Legend of the Snow Maiden
• Stained Glass photography
• Stained glass craft, melting crayons on wax paper… That was fun. click on link for the picture

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• Make Ukrainian Christmas Kalach (braided festive bread) click on link for the picture

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• Put strands of hay on our table at dinner time, to remind us of baby Jesus in the manger.

• Don’t start dinner until we see the first star of the evening in the east, which remembers the wise men’s trek.

EDIT TO ADD: Our home church leader came and made us Russian borsch (cabbage and beet soup – he does that once and a while, I thought the timing was perfect!)

We forgot the hay for the table, and the boys were VERY disappointed!! 🙂

We watched the Nutcracker, and I bought them a nutcracker… which they have been asking for a couple years now!