In the spirit of spring, we read Rechenka's Eggs by Patricia Polacco. Most of my students do not celebrate Easter, so we looked at it from an art / author's purpose view.
Babushka is an artist who enjoys painting eggs. One day she comes across a goose that has been shot by a hunter. As she nurses it to health, it begins to lay eggs. The goose, Rechenka, accidentally knocks over a basket of Babushka's carefully painted eggs...right before the Easter Festival in Moskva. Each night until the festival, the goose begins to lay decorative eggs. Babushka says goodbye and thank you to Rechenka as she leaves for the festival, knowing that she is healthy and will rejoin to her flock. After Babushka returns home, she finds a decorative egg in her basket. It begins to shake and make noise. A baby goose hatches and keeps Babushka company for the rest of her life.
My students think that Patricia's purpose was to explain why we celebrate Easter with decorative eggs in baskets! I guess we will have to ask her in a few weeks!
Here are the eggs we made. First we drew a design on dry erase boards. Next, we drew the designs on the eggs using pencils. Then we used Sharpie markers to color in the designs. They're obviously more colorful than Pysanky eggs, but it was certainly easier than painting or dying them!
Scholastic Lesson Plan
