Ukrainian Painted Eggs

This morning when I went to Wonderopolis, I noticed the new background of the beautifully painted eggs.  Immediately, I thought of the book by Patricia Polacco called, Rechenka's Eggs. The story is about an old woman, Babushka who is painting Ukrainian eggs for an Easter Festival.  She finds a wounded goose (she names Rechenka) outside of her house and nurses it back to health.  As the goose is getting healthy, it knocks over all the paint and breaks the beautifully painted eggs.  Renchenka then mysteriously lays beautiful eggs to replace the broken ones.  Later while Babushka is at the Easter Festival winning first prize, the goose flies way.  Before leaving, she lays one last egg.

The background also reminded me of making Ukrainian painted eggs with a class many years ago while doing an author study on Patricia Polacco.  I couldn't remember how we made them, so I went on a search for child friendly directions on how to make painted eggs.  My daughter was having a friend over and I thought it would be a great activity for them to do together.  I found the directions for Patricia Polacco inspired Ukrainian painted eggs and the girls spent a couple of hours making artwork out of our white eggs this afternoon.  While the eggs didn't quite turn out like the Ukrainian painted eggs in Patricia Polacco's book, they had a wonderful time talking, sharing and thinking of unique ways to decorate their eggs.