Odin, Dvar, trrri.......welcome to Ukraine
Today is the last day of February and tomorrow when we come to school, it will be the third month of the year, March. The word March has two meanings; if we use it with an upper case letter, it is a month of the year and if we use it with a lower case letter, it is like walking. In the Olympics in Korea, the people who were competing, marched into the stadium. We think that it is a kind of walking. When we went to the park, we were so happy to be able to take our jackets off. The weather was lovely and warm and we had a lot of fun playing in the green area.
Today we travelled to Ukraine with Maryna and Iryna. Iryna, is Yuri’s mum and they took us on a real adventure to their home country. Maryna was dressed in a traditional blouse and head dress from the southern part of Ukraine, where she comes from. Her blouse was white with yellow and blue flowers embroidered on it. Her headdress was filled with yellow and blue as well. There were yellow sunflowers and blue and yellow ribbons. Meg said: “Maryna’s clothes are almost as pretty as a hanbok but not the same colours”.
Maryna said that in other parts of Ukraine, people wear the same clothing however the designs and colours on the blouses of men and women, may be different. The yellow and blue colours are the same colours as the flag of Ukraine. Maryna asked us if we knew what the blue stripe on the top was,
and what the yellow stripe on the bottom was. Griffin thought the blue reminded him of the sky and Meg said that maybe the yellow is for sunflowers. BINGO! They were both correct. Maryna also showed us a picture of wheat, which is yellow too and wheat is a big part of the diet in Ukraine. Bakers use wheat to make bread and we learnt that in Ukraine people eat bread, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Junto asked: “And for snack too?” The answer was “Yes”, they eat a lot of bread. In fact, if you look at the picture here below, you can see all the different types of bread you can get in Ukraine. And…….instead of a wedding cake, people have a “Bread Wedding Cake”. It is made into a beautiful shape however it is not a cake, it is bread. Since bread is a huge part of the culture, when visitors come to your home, you welcome them with a round bread and salt. They break the bread and dip it in salt and then eat it.
There were so many incredible things that we learnt about Ukraine. It is a country that has eight borders. It has land borders with Russia, Belarus, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Slovakia and Romania and it has a sea border with Turkey. The subways are all really beautiful and look like museums, with art works hanging on the walls, chandeliers and archways etc. Kiev which is the capital city of Ukraine, has the deepest and longest escalator in the whole world. It is 105 meters deep and goes very fast. We learnt about an instrument called a “trembita” which is a very long horn. It is 25 meters long and is used to send messages from one village to the next, to tell them about an event.
We played two traditional games afterwards. The one game was with a piece of elastic which is tied together. You put it around the legs of two chairs so that there
jumps and steps. When you play the game for real, the elastic band gets higher and higher and it becomes much more difficult. Look at the fun pictures of us and our teachers jumping. Just before we jumped we counted in Ukrainian, odin, dva and trri. The second game was with cushions that look like logs of wood. Maryna piled them on top of one another and pretended that they were used to make a fire. There is a festival in Ukraine on 7th July called “Night Kupala”. You can jump over the fire to get rid of all illnesses and some young ladies go down to the sea or the river and put flowers there, so that they can find someone to marry them.
There was still more to learn about Ukraine and this time, it was about the food. We had rich, delicious food to try at snack time. The one was called blini, which was layers of thin crepes with sour cream and fruit in between the layers. On top there was another layer of sour cream and chocolate sprinkles. The second thing that we tried was a “bublik”; a crispy round bread with a sweet covering that is threaded on a string, like a necklace. We loved eating them.
You can see from the other photo of the blini, the different crepe layers and the fruit inside. It was the first time the Yuri’s mum, Iryna made the blini. We thought that she was an expert blini maker.
We were also treated to a special gift from William in Petals Class. His family gave us a special T-shirt with a Norwegian design on it. We want to say a big thank you to them for the beautiful gift for all of us in Flowers Class.
We feel so full from all the learning and delicious food that we ate today. Thanks for a wonderful day in Flowers Class and a big thank you to Maryna and Iryna for their wonderful presentation of Ukraine.
Love all the children in Flowers Class.