Thanks to the wonderful people at homeschoolshare.com, I found the unit study for Rechenka's Eggs by Patricia Polacco to use for our Easter week book.  We have had a wonderful week reading this book each day.  The book is about a Russian woman, Babushka, whose hobby is painting eggs for the Easter festival.  Babushka sees miracles everywhere she looks.  She nurses an injured goose back to health and the goose gives returns the favor with miracles of her own.  Here are some of the things we did this week.

We had a geography lesson on Russia.  We talked about Imaginary vs. Real and noted what miracles in the book were real and what were imaginary.  Then each CJ & AK came up with some miracles that they see in their lives.  Later that day, as we were cleaning out the garage, AK found Woody the Cowboy's hat which had been missing since we moved in.  He ran in shouting "My miracle!! My miracle!"  We've had so much fun seeing the little blessings in each day.  We also talked about the miracle of the Resurrection at Easter.

We went through some new vocabulary words as the kids acted out the words quiver, savor, hobble & falter which were words in the story.  We played a game with colored squares (courtesy of my scrapbooking supplies) to make patterns(like the patterns on Babushka's eggs).  Each person had a turn guessing what the next color in the pattern should be.  We talked about what a dozen was and went around the living room looking for dozens of things. 

We talked about eggs and read the book Chickens Aren't the Only Ones by Ruth Heller to learn about what other animals lay eggs.  I also borrowed a movie from the library that talked about different birds including geese, chickens, swans & turkeys.  For art we painted wooden eggs from a kit that Aunt Kris sent us (Thanks so much!!!!).  They had a blast and they will be keepsakes for years to come. 

Finally, today, we are baking a Russian sweet bread called kulich.  We'll see how it turns out as the recipe called for nuts and raisins and we left both out as the kids don't like "things" in their bread. 

We are looking forward to doing a family devotion tonight for Good Friday and celebrating Easter dinner with my side of the family tomorrow night (due to travel plans).  We will be attending church on Sunday with the kids in their new clothes courtesy of my mom.  Will update with pictures soon!

Wishing you all a very blessed Easter!

-J