Preschool Theme: Armenia

Today was my turn to teach our home(pre)school's class. The theme this month is Around the World, and the country I signed up to teach about was Armenia. (I'm half Armenian and have visited Armenia twice.) We met at the park, and I set out lavash (a flat bread similar to a tortilla, it is baked by sticking it to the wall of a clay oven in the ground, and then peeling it off) and sliced cucumbers to dip in hummus, dried apricots, walnut halves, boxes of grape juice, and dolmas (grape leaves stuffed with rice, from a can, each dolma cut in half). I didn't have time to make anything because I was teaching today, and the prep for the craft I came up with was very labor-intensive.

After reading an Armenian folktale called "Grateful Animals," I showed the girls (we only had girls Monday) how to make an Armenian paper doll. I made this craft up myself; there are very few Armenian culture preschool resources out there - shocker, I know. (Also, very few Armenian folktales   are appropriate for preschoolers. The characters are verbally rude to each other, or the stories are too violent, or they don't make sense because something was lost in translation. "Grateful Animals" works though.)

To make the craft, I pre-cut everything (black construction paper hair, scrapbooking paper shirts and skirts and aprons, lace for veils, paper doilies for collars, yarn for belts, construction paper hats, and strips of gold rhinestones).

The gold rhinestones were because women's Armenian folk costumes include gold coins.

The girls did such a good job of gluing everything on, drawing faces, coloring shoes, adding their rhinestones...