Saturday, April 19, 2014

Froehe Ostern!


Happy Easter from Germany! Easter is a big holiday celebration in Germany. It begins on Good Friday and ends on Easter Monday, with both Friday and Monday being a holiday. Schools usually have two weeks off during this time. (Wish we did too!) Easter Sunday is celebrated like many families do in the states, hiding hard boiled eggs and candy for the children, attending an Easter service and then a family dinner. The traditional German Easter lunch includes lamb, potatoes and fresh vegetables. Yum!
Another Easter tradition is the use of the noise maker by the village children.  Beginning on Thursday before Easter Sunday, the church bells are silenced and the village children go around with wooden noise makers at various times of the day with their wooden noise makers to fill in for the quiet church bells.  Many of these noise makers are very old and are family heirlooms. 


Preparations for Easter begin several weeks ahead of time with flowers being displayed in planters, trees being decorated with eggs, and Easter markets where vendors sell handcrafted Easter eggs and Easter crafts. Did you know that boiling and painting eggs is a custom that began in Germany? The eggs symbolize new life and the colors characterize sunlight and growth. Germany is also the birth place for the chocolate bunny. Thank you Germany!  


This week's activities included the egg and oviparous animals. 






Pixie slides on the egg:

Pixie slides on Oviparous Animals:


This weeks activities included research projects. Writing samples: 
simplebooklet.com

German Klappern (noise maker)



Kindness book of the week: One Hundred Eggs for Henrietta by Sally Huss

Henrietta the hen learns that there will be 100 children coming for the egg hunt. She begins racing around collecting eggs and realizes they will not have enough. So, being the hen in charge, she decides to call on the ducks, swans and geese for help. She also has to enlist the help of the rabbits, the cats and a hummingbird in order to complete their mission. This story illustrates the importance of working together and being helpful.  It is a great story to teach children about teamwork, and about not giving up when things look impossible. 

Easter and the egg iPads Apps:

iColor Easter Eggs is an Easter app for any age. Using iColor Easter Eggs you can create a custom Easter Egg and then share it with your friends through email, Facebook or save it to your photo library.


"Fingerprint Art" allows you to create fingerprint art.



Paint Easter Eggs: This egg painting app is perfect for children of all ages. Take some drawing and relax time together and color some eggs.  


Check out these Pinterest boards on the egg and insects:



Instead of an egg timer - what about a rotation timer for your center time? Here's a freebie:




Youtube video links on the egg and insects:


Finally, a Smilebox slide of several eggs from all over the world including Jordan and Russia. This is a collection of eggs that Ms G and I have collected over the years!

Click to play this Smilebox slideshow
Create your own slideshow - Powered by Smilebox
Another free digital slideshow by Smilebox



                      
                                 



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