Russia...

Only God knows exactly how long ago, we "rowed" "Another Celebrated Dancing Bear." This was a cute story about a couple of Russian bears learning to dance to be a part of the circus. We mainly focused on Russia for this one. You actually can find a short Youtube video of bears dancing in the Russian circus. (I swear, I can find anything and everything for short video examples on Youtube.) We learned about ballet, onion domes, the dreadful Baba Yaga, Tchaikovsky, bears, etc. We listened to "Peter and the Wolf" by Prokofiev, and I loved that, too.

Our lovely friend, "Miss Catherine," had lived and studied in Russia, and she had a lot of goodies for us. In the story, the bears put the samovar on to boil and have tea with brown bread and strawberry jam. I was so excited about borrowing the samovar. Since I didn't have a converter to plug this bad boy in, I just boiled hot water on the stove, filled the samovar, and then used the awesome little spigot thingy to fill their cups. (The samovar is the large metal thingy on the table.)

And then we had tea. They LOVED it. I've never had a tea party with my boys before, but I think I should try to come up with an excuse to do it from time to time. I bought some strawberry jam and a loaf of bread during my usual Walmart run. I pulled out the matching china, and they each got to make their own tea by swishing the tea bag in the hot water and adding sugar from the sugar bowl. Seth kept saying, "Mommy, I'm so glad you put the samovar on to boil." :)

Oh, and we called Miss Catherine for help with our Russian pronunciation. She was great to talk to us on the phone while helping her toddler go to the potty. Talk about multitasking.... :)

We were loaned some great hands on visuals. Here we have a lacquer box, Russian Orthodox icons, rubles, and tiny nesting dolls.