Today we had our last week in Russia. We looked at two famous Russian stories – Peter and the Wolf and The Enormous Turnip.  Here are the plans that I used.

Passport Pals: Russian Stories

Welcome to Passport Pals! Let’s sing our Passport Pals song! (Come on everybody and clap your hands . . . stomp your feet . . . jump up high . . . spin around . . . sit right down . . . watch me spin the globe.)

Privyet! This is our last week in RUSSIA. Who remembers what continents Russia is on? (Europe and Asia) This week the kids interrupted me before I had a chance to say anything about Russia. They found Russia on the map for me AND pointed out the two continents that Russia is on. Yay!!!

Song: Continent Cheer (GGM #3) My preschoolers are getting GREAT at spelling the word “Continents”!!!

And, while Russia is on the continents of ASIA and EUROPE, who knows what continent WE live on? (North America) Find on map. What do we live in? (a house). Where is our house? (a street) Where is that street? (a city — name our city name), Where is our city? (a county — say the county name), Where is our county? (a state – say the state name), Where is our state? (a country – name the country) Where is our country? (a continent – North America), where is our continent? (a hemisphere)

Song: Where do I live?

Suitcase: Flag of Russia (the kids told me the colors before I pulled the flag out), a Russian nesting doll (I used a craft that I had made for my Geo Treckers group to show this to the kids), pictures of all the characters from “Peter and the Wolf”.  I found the pictures here, printed them off and then used them to explain the characters of the story first. Then I put each picture in the front of the room where they could be seen when I read the book. I explained how Peter and the Wolf is all music and how each character is played by a different instrument.  (Today’s passport had pictures of each of the instruments connected to the characters from the story).  After doing this, I read the book.

Read: “Peter and the Wolf” by Chris Raschka. This was a longer book than I usually read, but it is such a neat retelling of this story. The kids really seemed to enjoy it.

Song: I wanted to do a song from Peter and the Wolf and have the kids play instruments to it, but I wasn’t able to get it on time. Instead, we did “The Freeze” with instruments.

Read: “A Little Story about a Big Turnip” by Tatiana Zunshine

Activity: Act it out using role playing masks. Oh, this was fun! I printed off the masks for this story and then we “acted” it out together. The kids LOVED this! It was also perfect because I had just enough kids for each mask!  This was a great way to end our storytime – and our visit to Russia!

Stamp Passport