How to Make Ukrainian Eggs (Pysanky) for Beginners

During my time as a Benedictine Hall Director, a resident of mine shared with us her family's Pysanky tradition. It was such a quite and meditative way to spend an afternoon that now, years later, making Pysanky is our Holy Saturday Tradition. 

Traditional Christian Pysanky are rich with meaningful colors and symbols, such as red for the blood of Christ and drawn wheat, crosses, fishermen's nets, etc while the egg is a symbol of the empty tomb and the new life that came from it. Slowing down and creating these beautiful works of art, which remind us of our faith in Jesus, helps keep our family focused on this day of waiting for the Resurrection.

I pulled out my dyes today and made a test egg to ensure they were still effective. While I was at it I took photos of the process so I could put together a tutorial on how to make these beautiful eggs. If you have older children who are too old for dying eggs with the tablets you get from a box, this is a fantastic way to continue the egg dying tradition. Happily, we've found that no matter what a person's artistic ability is, anyone can create an egg that they are proud of!

Here are the supplies you will need:

• Blas-Fix Egg Blower
• Set of 9 Dyes
• Fine Tip #1 Traditional Kistka
• Medium Tip #2 Traditional Kistka
• Heavy Tip #3 Traditional Kistka
• Kistka Cleaning Wire
• Basic Black Beeswax
• Eggs
• Pencil
• Rubberbands
• Candle
• Newspaper (to protect your surface)
• Paper towels

And for fun, two children's picture books on Ukrainian Eggs are Rechenka's Eggs and Easter Eggs for Anya. 

I should note here that I am not an expert on this topic. How we make our eggs is probably not the "right" way to make them, but it's the best way for us in terms of time and cost. There are things I won't dive into here, like varnishing eggs, whether or not to empty the eggs and when the best time to do so is, properly drying them out. Check out Learn Pysanky if you want to really get into this tradition, what I'm sharing is a family friendly, get it done in one afternoon experience.

Simplicity warning finished. Moving on to...

Step 1: Empty Your Eggs

Like I said, people debate about when to empty your eggs, if ever, but what we've found is that it's easiest to empty them right from the start, with a little help from the Blas-Fix.

Here's what you do:

Thank you to my 5 year old son for taking these pictures... I did a lot of cropping.

First drill a hole in the egg with the green stick. Just spin it back and forth until the shell is punctured. Then use the clear handled stick to poke the egg yolk in the egg until it is broken and runny. This helps the guts come out more easily. Next use the yellow squeezer to force air into the egg, which forces the guts out. You don't have to put the tip into the egg, just hold it over the hole and the guts will flow out. Finally cover the hole with wax. We'll get to using wax in a bit, but don't forget to plug your egg with wax or it will fill with liquid when you dye it.

Step 2: Draw Your Guidelines

(This design can be found at Learn Pysanky, which is a has everything you'd ever want to know of the topic!)

Using rubberbands to ensure straight lines and complete circles draw the guidelines and for your egg. The pencil will come off in the dying process, but make sure NOT to erase the lines if you make a mistake because dye won't stick to the egg where eraser has been rubbed on it.

Now your egg is ready to be written on with wax!

Step 4: Fill Your Kistka with Wax

This is really quite easy. Just hold the metal portion of your kistka over the fire for a few seconds until it is hot, then scoop some wax into the back of the kistka. If it is hot enough the wax will melt right into the well, if it doesn't put your kistka over the fire again. Now you are ready to write on your egg.

Step 5: Apply Wax, Dye, Dry, Repeat

Next you will begin a three step cycle. First, using the hot wax from your kistka, draw on your egg where you would like the current color of your egg to be preserved. In the first picture of the sequence below, everything that I drew with black wax will now remain white. Second, dye your egg the next lightest color that you would like to use, in my case this was orange. Third, allow your egg to dry. Now you can begin the process again by writing on your egg to preserve your new color, followed by dying it the next lightest color (red), and allowing it to dry.

(Here lies the disadvantage to emptying your eggs before you begin... hollow eggs float. Try holding them down with the back of a spoon, or rotate them in the dye every few minutes.)

Step 6: Melt Wax and Wipe Clean

Once you are finished with the writing and dying process you are ready to melt off the wax that has been preserving the colors of you pysanky. Hold your egg close to a candle flame to melt the wax and then whip it clean. 

Repeat until your egg is wax free and you are finished!

Check out these posts for more of my liturgical ideas!
Ideas for Lent
Ideas for Holy Week
Ideas for Easter Season

Be saints, it's worth it!
Lisa

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Moving Jesus Along a Holy Week Path: An Activity for Kids

While pulling together my post on Holy Week ideas I kept running into these cute Holy Week banners and wanted to create something similar, but without felt. (I have a bit of an aversion to felt... I cut up tons of it when Bean started the Little Saints preschool program and now I avoid it when possible.)

I found a beautiful wooden Holy Week craft at Joyful Mama's Place and instantly knew that it was the version of the felt craft that I was looking for. I gathered some supplies, tweaked the prototype, and in a few hours created this...

Jesus (the wooden doll) will begin his journey down the path of Holy Week on the far left green tile with palms for Palm Sunday, and then be moved one space each day until he reaches the far right gold tile with flowers for Easter Sunday.

We might add a tea light to each square as the days progress and light them at night during our Lenten family prayer time. The addition of fire always goes over well during prayer time.

So you wanna make your own? Here's what you'll need:

• A wooden board that is roughly 3x24 inches
• Acrylic paints
• Wooden doll
• Paintbrushes
• Ruler (preferably one as cool as mine)
• Pencil
• Embellishment symbols (optional, not pictured)

Step 1: Divide your Board

Using your ruler and pencil, divide your board up into 8 equal parts. If you have a custom cut board that is 24 inches long, each part will be 3 inches. Ours was about 22 inches long since I found it in the pile of random wood in our crawlspace.

Step 2: Paint the Squares

Here are the colors I chose for the various days:

• Palm Sunday - Green (for the palms)
• Holy Monday to Holy Wednesday - Progressively darker shades of purple (for the color of penance)
• Holy Thursday - Brown (for Jesus giving us His body in the form of bread at the Last Supper)
• Good Friday - Red (for the blood Christ shed)
• Holy Saturday - Black (for the day of mourning and waiting)
• Easter Sunday - Gold (for the glory of the Resurrection)

Step 3: Paint a Jesus Doll

For instructions on how to paint a wooden doll, check out my tutorial!

Step 4: Embellish with Symbols

Here are the symbols I chose for the various days:

• Palm Sunday - Felt Palms (I know, don't judge me.)
• Holy Thursday - Mini Chalice and Paten (It looks like Shepherd's Closet is no longer making my set... which will temporarily be relocated from our Saint Doll Cathedral... this set would work just as well. You could also make some out of clay.)
• Good Friday - Crucifix 
• Holy Saturday - Stone 
• Easter Sunday - Flowers

I'm lovin' how this craft turned out and can't wait to add it to our repertoire this year!

Check out these posts for more of my liturgical ideas!
Ideas for Lent
Ideas for Holy Week
Ideas for Easter Season

Be saints, it's worth it!
Lisa

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Ideas for Classically Catholic Memory: Gamma Year: Week 8

Classically Catholic Memory: Gamma Year: Week 8
I'm blogging my way through our four year curriculum program so I don't forget everything that worked for us! Please feel free to use what works for your family and share in the comments anything you would add. For more on Classically Catholic Memory go here.

Religion

Lesson 1
The kids filled out a Corporal Works of Mercy word jumble while listening to a few Angel Food sermons. Pick your favorites, or listen to both!

• The Three Little Angels (FYI: It's a Halloween story)
• The Shoemaker

Lesson 2
Corporal Works of Mercy Charades was super easy and fun. Write the works down on a strip of paper and then let the kids take turns drawing slips and acting them out.

You can also check out what Family Catechism has to offer on this topic, and this would be a great week to go and perform one of the works as a family!

Latin
We are learning the Sanctus by watching and listening to this version on youtube.

History

Lesson 1: Versailles

To teach the kids about Versailles Kevin used a free, and amazing, google tour! You could spend hours getting lost in the chateau without even leaving your home :). Rick Steves also has an awesome audio tour of Versailles that you can download for free. We didn't try it, but you might be able to pull off using the google tour with the audio tour for the full experience.

Kevin and I were extremely blessed to go to France for our 5 year anniversary, so we pulled out our photo book from the trip and shared with them some of our own Versailles photos as well.

A little selfie in the Hall of Mirrors. You can see the headphone cord in Kevin's hands from
our listening to Rick Steves tour!

P.S. If you ever travel Europe check to see if Rick has free audio tours of where you are headed, it's way cheaper than paying for a tour or renting the audio tour on site. We used them several times during our France trip, it was awesome on so many levels! Just download them to an iPod or similar device and bring your headphones!

Lesson 2:

For our second history lesson Bean read Peter the Great. Then we started Christmas break :).

Science

This week's memory work is on the states of matter. There is so much out there for teaching this topic! Separate from the lessons that follow, we also read the books pictured below and watched Bill Nye's Phases of Matter on youtube.

Lesson 1
Here is what you'll need for your first lesson on the states of matter:

To begin we observed the three main states of matter: gas, liquid, and solid. We talked about their properties and what makes them unique. (Better details are in the Teacher Text.)

Next we did an activity that demonstrated how molecules move faster when they gain energy. The food coloring in the hot water spread faster because the molecules have more energy and therefore move faster.

We followed that up with activity 2, which aims to demonstrate a similar principle. Something about mixing dyed hot water with cold clear water and vice versa. It didn't work for us. I say just do activity 1.

Womp-Womp-Womp

Lesson 2
Supplies needed:

For starters we blew up a balloon with a bottle of root beer. They suggest cola, but we don't like cola, so I bought root beer. It still worked, so pick your favorite carbonated beverage.

After the balloon was filled up we compared the volume of the bottle that was used to fill the balloon to an unopened bottle and observed that they appeared to still have the same volume. I think the one that blew up the balloon looked like it now had more volume, but I'm no Bill Nye. In the end, what you are observing is that gas molecules are much farther apart from each other than liquid molecules, so there is no observable difference between the two bottles.

Next we observed gas molecules turning back into liquid molecules via sweat on a glass.

And for our last observation we put together this contraption.

It took me several readings to understand what they wanted me to do with a pencil, ruler, cups, etc., I kept picturing the pencil under the cups... anyway, there you have it (look at the picture below). The paper towel labeled A was soaked in rubbing alcohol and one labeled W was soaked in water. The alcohol evaporated faster than the water and...

boom.

Finally, we made our last mini-book for our science lapbook! It came from Discovering Atoms, Molecules, and Matter. We then assembled our folders with all of the inserts we'd been collecting over the semester and called it a day.

Math
Lesson 1
I made these strips of paper for the kids to make a ladder out of the multiples of 9.

Lesson 2
Then I taught them them a finger trick for the multiples of 9. I always found this trick fascinating as a kid!

Timeline

Lesson 1
We played Timeline Hangman this week!

Instead of drawing a blank for each letter of a word, I drew a blank for each word in the card. If a player guessed the beginning letter of a word, then I wrote just that letter in the blank. Above you see "Charlemagne Becomes Holy Roman Emperor". For this to work the kids need to be fairly familiar with the week's cards, so don't play it right after you introduce the new cards. And I'd suggest playing this game during a week when you don't have cards with dates... like week 8 :). Instead use it during week 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 16, or 18.

Lesson 2
And we put pictures into our timeline book this week!

Geography
Since May we have been studying one state per week to go along with our study of North American geography. Here are the states I've blogged about so far. You could pick one thing from each lesson or just do something fun about a few states each week. I'll keep linking to the state studies as we move through our Journey Across America!

Kentucky
Ohio
Michigan
Indiana
Illinois
Wisconsin
Minnesota

Great Words I
It's another quick poem-in-one-week this week! I couldn't find The Elephant by Hilaire Belloc in any picture books, sorry. To bring the fun you can do some fun crafts or activities from this Pinterest board. I particularly like the milk jug elephants!

Be saints, it's worth it!
Lisa

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Ideas for Classically Catholic Memory: Gamma Year: Week 7

Classically Catholic Memory: Gamma Year: Week 7
I'm blogging my way through our four year curriculum program so I don't forget everything that worked for us! Please feel free to use what works for your family and share in the comments anything you would add. For more on Classically Catholic Memory go here.

Religion

Lesson 1
I found a word jumble for the spiritual works of mercy here. While the kids did their worksheets we listened to some Angel Food sermons on praying for the souls in purgatory. These are the same stories I suggested for week 5, so pick one you haven't listened to yet, or listen to them again :).

• Chippy
• Six Red Roses
• An Elephant Never Forgets
• A Grave Stops Perot

Lesson 2
Here is what Family Catechism has on this topic.

While we don't own it, EWTN's My Little Angels has a whole show on the spiritual works of mercy and you can download a Works of Mercy Lapbook from Emmanuel Books for $10.00. Maybe I'll buy those in four years?

Latin
We are learning the Sanctus by watching and listening to this version on youtube.

History

For history this week Kevin opted to teach a lesson on different types of government because so many were mentioned in the memory work. To do this he took everything to the whiteboard and basically just had a discussion with the kids. I wish I had more to tell you on this, but I don't, which is why he teaches history and I don't. 

Science

Lesson 1: Mixtures
Here is what we used for our first science lesson on mixtures:

First we mixed things like rocks and sticks into a glass of water and then we mixed sugar into another glass and talked about what made the two glasses mixtures.

Next we mixed oil, butter, vinegar and apple juice in various combinations to see if the liquids would mix or not. The instructions for both of these first two activities are in your CCM Teacher Text.

Then we did the classic water-and-baby-oil-sea-in-a-bottle, because it's just too fun. This is not in the Teacher Text, but you can find instructions here.

Finally I introduced the concept of separating mixtures, which is heavily covered in the second lesson. To do this we separated marshmallows out of Lucky Charms. The Teacher Text suggests separating raisins out of Raisin Bran. Good for them, they suggested something healthy... and we ignored it.

Lesson 2: Filtration, Evaporation, and Chromatography

For our second lesson we did an experiment for each of the different ways to separate mixtures. Supplies for this lesson included:

1st Filtration: Pretty easy folks. Take a glass of water with rocks, filter the water from the rocks with a colander. Rock-et science.

2nd Evaporation: For this experiment we mixed water and salt, painted the mixture on black paper, and baked the picture at 170 degrees for 5 minutes to evaporate out the water and separate it from the salt. Tip: Warm the water to help the salt integrate into the water.

Bean's salt painted nativity scene.

Chromatography: Place a dot of green food coloring 2 inches from the bottom of a strip of paper towel. Place the very bottom of the paper towel in some water, being careful to not let the dot become emerged in the water. This will allow the paper towel to soak up the water and in the process... (head to the next picture)

I've had this sweet letters and numbers stencil ruler since I was in grade school. Tell me you also have supplies in your home from when you were in grade school.

the blue and yellow from the green dye will be separated. So pretty.

Math

Lesson 1
I taped the multiples of 8 to the floor this week and the kids hopped their way through them. Use card stock and tape each corner!

Lesson 2
The kids played multiples of 8 Fruit Shoot at Sheppard Software. It's like Fruit Ninja, but not nearly as cool.

Timeline

Lesson 1

This week's timeline game consisted of placing each card in a paper lunch bag, then having the kids alternate turns trying to find the cards in order. Once a card was found we removed the bag from the line and started looking for the next card. I did not tell them the order, rather once they found the card that they thought was next they checked the back of the card's number to see if they were right. If they were wrong, they had to pick a new card to start looking for until they found the correct card.

Lesson 2
More pictures went into our timeline book this week!

Geography
Since May we have been studying one state per week to go along with our study of North American geography. Here are the states I've blogged about so far. You could pick one thing from each lesson or just do something fun about a few states each week. I'll keep linking to the state studies as we move through our Journey Across America!

North Carolina
South Carolina
Georgia
Florida
Alabama
Mississippi
Tennessee

Great Words I
I couldn't find this week's poem by Hilaire Belloc anywhere! And, no it's not in Cautionary Tales for Children. So, I guess you'll just have to memorize it, but you could do a fun lion craft to go with it!

Be saints, it's worth it!
Lisa

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Catholic Christmas Gift Ideas

Are you working on your Christmas shopping? Yes, yes you are. (Unless if you are really on top of things and finished shopping before Advent began.) So, I've put together the links to various Catholic Christmas gift ideas that I've posted over the years to give you something to help in the creative process. P.S. There are no paid endorsements here.

Creative Catholic Christmas Gifts 2012
Here you'll find a post from the FOCUS blog with gift ideas for anyone on your list. Favorites include Mystic Monk coffee with a Happy Saints mug, or a Catholic Movie with Prayerfully Popped Popcorn.

Creative Catholic Christmas Gifts 2013
This year's FOCUS blog list includes saint packs for the kiddos, a host of Catholic subscriptions so you can give a gift that keeps on giving, and a few FOCUS missionary Etsy shops!

Homemade Catholic Christmas Gifts
This list is from my achieves and has several DIY gift ideas. You'll find tutorials for holy medal wine charmers, a saints matching game, Christmas coasters, family board game pieces, felt bags and flower headbands at the link.

Not on the link above are tutorials for wooden saint dolls and a saint doll cathedral, which make excellent Christmas gifts!

And for a fun and easy teachers' gift check out my hot chocolate cones tutorial. We've been making these as presents for several years now!

Blessings on your shopping adventures!

Be saints, it's worth it!
Lisa

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