Egg Week

For school the week before Easter, we devoted a lot of science, art, and history time to the egg. We learned about pysanky (but we got the DVD from the library, not this terrible youtube version) (the traditional Ukrainian egg decorating) and tried our own version with crayons instead of melted beeswax in a kistka (including the blowing out the yolk part!); we tried a variety of natural dyes and made hypotheses and observations about what colors the eggs would become from each dye, and how long the dyes took to become vibrant; we dyed still more eggs with a fun tie dye kit we picked out at Winco; we read piles of books about the science of eggs; we attempted an egg drop challenge on our deck (and pretty much failed, but had fun trying) before we watched the expert's tips; we watched a pbs documentary called The Egg: Life's Perfect Invention; we watched another clip of Lithuanian Easter egg decoration (they use a scratching technique compared to a wax relief like in Ukraine). It was such a fun week (plus) of learning and creating and celebrating. Hooray for homeschool!

Step one of pysanky: blow out the yolk.
It was a little tricky at first, but we eventually
got the hang of it.

Here's Sam's masterpiece.

Cal is melting off the wax (crayon) to
reveal the colors underneath.

Wiping off the melted wax.

And . . . voila!

Hers turned out SO good!

Close up of Sam's football decorated pysanky
egg.

We had a fun start to our Easter/egg (slash Easter egg) week by reading these stories and nonfiction blurbs about pysanky, the traditional Ukrainian egg decorating. The Reading Rainbow episode was especially awesome because Patricia Pollaco herself showed how to draw with the kistka of wax on the eggs and dye them in beautiful colors. Then we tried it ourselves (with crayons instead of beeswax).

And here’s the rest of the stack of egg and Easter books we
 worked through during the week. 🥚 🍳 🐣

Here's our kit dying evening.

Tie dye eggs!

My attempt at pysanky - I wanted the dark
color that they have, but I didn't have black
dye, which was my problem. But this is my egg
completely covered in black crayon.
Now for the big reveal . . . 

Meh. Underwhelming.

Oh well. Next time I'll follow Cal's lead
and embrace the lighter colors. :)

Natural dye experiment: from left to right we have
beets, yellow onion skins, turmeric, red onion skins, and
red cabbage.

Writing down hypotheses and observations.

Cutest little egg dying scientist I ever did see.

Checking after a few hours in the dye (in the fridge).

These ones went overnight and they didn't get much
darker than the original ones who had a short initial soak,
a complete dry, and then a handful of hours second soak.
Science!

Comparing those two groups of natural dyed eggs
(top two rows). Plus more colorful fun.

Yeah, we went dye crazy this week!
(They're not all hardboiled! My mom's cousin Sharon
says she always dyes raw eggs so she can use them
like normal afterward, so that's what I did for a bunch
and it worked great!)

Peeling them for deviled eggs.
(Of course!)

They were delicious!

bonus videos!

egg drop science!

(I'm not sure why I filmed these, since it's not like you can see

anything happening inside the egg drop contraptions. But, there they are.)

Ehhh, not lookin' so good in there little egg.
We'll have to try again next year with some of Mark
Rober's physics tips!

Of course there was an Easter Egg hunt
in the mix, too. Great Grandma Elwood's tradition
was back on for 2022 and we didn't want to miss that!

Let the sort and swap begin!

Not all of my grandparents' greats, but all of my parents' grands.

This was a fun nature journal activity Sam
did (I think Cal was grumpy or not feeling
well or something) to collect all the pictured
items from our yard and store them in an
egg carton (that's why it fits in during "egg"
week).

Here’s another egg book that didn’t make it in the last stack of egg-related books. We decided it absolutely deserves a spot of its own in this round up! We learned so much about so many kinds of eggs, plus the collage art is just really cool. Check it out!