среда, 24 декабря 2008 г.
вторник, 23 декабря 2008 г.
Christmas is a special time to people all around the world. It is a time to spend with your family. It is a time to share your love. It’s impossible to pass a beggar and not to give him something.
The reason for this is the Christmas spirit that you can feel everywhere, that changes you and makes you kind, thoughtful, open-hearted.
We wish you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
May all your dreams come true!
We wish you many good friends and a lot of Christmas presents!
среда, 17 декабря 2008 г.
пятница, 12 декабря 2008 г.
New Year celebration at school
Our family always celebrate The New Year’s day and Christmas. I send postcards to friends in Moscow. My mother decorates the room. My grandmother does Christmas shopping. My mother makes traditional dishes- pelmeny ( meat filled dumplings), salads and a cake. My brother plays games. We watch New Year programme. At 12 o’clock we go out and set out salute and enjoy its beauty. I and my brother like to decorate the New Year tree. My family likes these holidays.
My name is Ivan.
My name is Olga.
Christmas is celebrated on January 7.
My favourite holiday
New Year’s Day is more popular in our country than Christmas. It is a family event. In my family we prepare for it beforehand. We usually have a New Year tree at home which is decorated with toys and lights. All members of our family buy presents for each other and put them under the tree. I buy postcards and send them to my friends. In the evening we have a holiday supper with traditional dishes: roast chicken, salads, meat jelly, many other tasty things and sweets.
Everything is bright and nice on this day.
среда, 10 декабря 2008 г.
Christmas tales...
The Night It Rained Toys
was written by S. Lewis (an Irish writer)
One Christmas Eve it rained toys. This is how it happened. In the year 1910 Santa Claus caught a cold. His nose got so red that the elves started calling him Rudolph. Clearly, he was too sick to make his usual trip around the world.
Santa wanted to go, of course, for without him who would deliver the toys? But Mrs. Claus was firm. Santa must stay in bed.
“But the children!”, he protested. Mrs. Claus volunteered: “I’ll drive the sled,” she said.
Santa started ho-ho-hoing. “No one can drive that old sleigh but me,” he insisted, and then sneezed and sneezed some more.
It was decided , Mrs. Clause would deliver the toys. Santa instructed the reindeer not to go too fast and with that off they flew.
The sleigh was sailing along and everything was going well when Mrs. Claus saw a a great light in the sky. The light, that night in 1910, was Comet. It was near the sleigh.
To avoid being hit, Mrs. Claus swerved the sled, and for a moment it tipped over onto its side.
The old sleigh quickly righted itself and no one was hurt, but all the toys in the sack fell out and they poured down onto the town directly below.
And in that little town everyone remembers the Christmas Eve 1910 as “The Night It Rained Toys”.
When Mrs. Claus arrived back at the North Paul, Santa just said, “Better to give away extra toys than no toys at all”.
Russian Christmas Dishes
1 goose, 10 cooking apples,5 slices white bread, cinnamon,1/2 glass (1/2 cup) cream, 1 tbsp salt.
Peel the apples, remove seed coats and dice the apples. Spread over the diced apples the white bread soaked in cream, as well as cinnamon and salt at the edge of a knife. Mix the filling. Fill the goose well washed and rubbed with salt and pepper both inside and outside. Sew the bird up, butter it and put into the oven to roast for 30 minutes at 220°C (428°F) then reducing the heat to 150°C (300°F). Roast the goose until tender (approximately for 3 hours) often pouring it with the drippings of boiling water.
Roast Duck
1 duck, 4 cooking apples, 0.5 tbps salt,3 glasses water.
Thoroughly wash the duck outside and inside and fill it with the washed and dried apples, sew up, rub with salt and put on the griddle or frying-pan placing down the side that will be the top when served. After pouring a glass of boiling water cook first on one side and then on the other, frequently pouring over and, if necessary, adding water. Serving the duck, remove the apples and arrange them around the duck.
Stuffed Suckling Pig
Suckling pig, 1 tbsp salt, 2 onions, 8 sweet pepper corns,100 g (1/2 cup) butter, 2 loaves white bread,1 glass (1 1/4 cup) milk, 4 eggs, 1 tbsp flour,6 glasses (6 3/4 cups) stock or water,1.5 glasses (1 3/4 cup) stock.
Clean the pig thoroughly. Boil the lungs and heart until tender together with raw liver after removing the outer skin and veining. Grind the chopped meat through a colander and add 20 g (1 1/2 tablespoons) of butter rubbed until foamy, loaves of white bread well soaked in milk, eggs, salt and 4 ground pepper corns. Mix all well and fill the cleaned pig’s cavity with the mixture. Sew the pig up. Grease it with butter and put into the oven for 1 to 1.5 hours frequently pouring it with boiling water of stock. Garnish with soaked paradise apples, red whortleberries, greens and salads of fresh vegetables.
Pelmeni
(Poached Pasties with Meat Filling)
For the dough: 2 glasses (3 1/4 cups) flour, 1 egg,5 tbsps cold water, 1 tsp butter, saltFor the filling: 0.5 kg (1 1/4 lb) meat (pork and beef in equal proportion), 2 or 3 onions, 1 tsp salt, 2 or 3 tbsps water, black pepper, nutmeg to taste.
Put the beef and pork through the food chopper after trimming off sinews. Add onions (also put through the mincer), salt, spices and cold water. Sir thoroughly and set aside. Form a hill of sifted flour on the board. Break an egg into a dump/pot made in the middle. Add a little water, salt and then mix the flour with liquid carefully – at first with a knife and then with hands – and thoroughly knead the dough. It should be resilient. Add to the dough 1 teaspoon of butter, knead once again and cover for 5 to 10 minutes by a hot bowl or saucepan. Then roll out the dough into a thin cake, less than 2 mm thick. Cut the dough leaf into rounds with a thin glass or a mould, touch the edge of the round with a wet finger dipped in ice-cold water to make the edges paste up better. Put a teaspoon of filling in the middle of each round, fold it over and thoroughly pinch to make a crescent shape. Boil the prepared pelmeni either in a usual meat and bone stock or in salted water. Season the stock or water with onions, bay leaf and paper and add salt.
Meat Jelly
1 pig’s head, 4 pig’s legs, 1 calf’s tail, 1 carrot,1 parsley root, 10 black pepper corns,5 sweet pepper corns, 5 bay leaves, 1 or 2 onions,1 garlic bulb, 1 l (4 1/2 cups) waterfor 1 kg (2 1/2 lb) meat.
Singe the head and legs, clean, cut into pieces, pour water and boil together with the calf’s tail for 6 to 8 hours over low heat until the amount of water reduced twice. Add onions, carrots, parsley and salt 1-1.5 hours before the end of boiling. Then take the meat out, separate it from bones, cut into small pieces and put in another vessel, mix with minced garlic and a small amount of ground black pepper. Boil the stock with remaining bones for another half an hour, salt it, strain and pour it over the boiled and prepared meat. Cool the dish down. Serve the meat jelly with mustard, horse-radish and crushed garlic.
Christmas traditions in Russia
In Russia eve of Christmas, on January, 6 refers to Christmas Eve, ”Kalyadki”. This day is a final day of the Christmas post. Up to the most evening service the church offers to hold the strict post. Christmas Eve in the Christian world is considered a family supper.
The word Christmas Eve occurs from a word "Socihvo”. Without meat or milk dishes, obligatory for this evening: porridges (wheaten, rye, barley, buckwheat, pea, later even rice) were prepared. In this porridge nuts or a poppy were added.
Such dish as "Kutya"(Red fruit jelly) was cooked on commemoration of a birth of the child.
In olden times in the center of a table there was a dish “Kutya” and other dishes which should be equal to twelve (on number of apostles). Except for “Kutya” on a celebratory Russian table there were pancakes, aspic, fish, meat jelly, a dairy pig with porridge, honey gingerbreads, - by opportunities of a family.
On Christmas Eve, under Christmas, people did not eat all the day long before occurrence of the first evening star, symbolizing with itself a Star which was in the sky when the Baby was born. In temples in these celebratory evening hours there was a solemn service... Despite of a church origin of a holiday, in Russia the custom ”Kalyadki” - singing Christmas songs under windows was kept.
Word “Kalyadki” has a pagan origin. “Kalydki” symbolized worship the Sun giving fertility and pleasure, songs about natural phenomena - month, the sun, a thunder-storm, wished a crop, happy marriages.
Now some of these traditions have changed. Most people celebrate New Year’s day and have a free of work day on Christmas -January 7.
One more package is here in our school....
Dear friends! We enjoyed your cards greatly! We were very surprised that the people of different ages prepared them. The yellow postcard by a small boy Ashton is so nice. Thank you very much for sharing French culture and Christmas recipes!
четверг, 4 декабря 2008 г.
Your parcels have found us!
пятница, 21 ноября 2008 г.
Seasons
четверг, 20 ноября 2008 г.
Winter in Our Region
The climate in our region is strongly continental with big variations of temperature during one year. For the central and southern regions where most of the population lives long winters and short, hot summers are characteristic. The territory of Krasnoyarsk Region experiences conditions of three climate belts: Arctic, Sub-Arctic, and moderate. While in the north there are less than 40 days with temperature higher than 10 °C (50 °F), in the south there are about 110–120 such days.
The average temperature of January is −36 ℃ (−32.8 ℉) in the north and −18 ℃ (−0.4 ℉) in the south. The average temperature of July is 10 ℃ (50 ℉) in the north and 20 ℃ (68 ℉) in the south. Snow covers the central regions since early November till late March.
In the first picture you can see old Russian footwear which are popular with small children, some old people and hunters. They are called "valenki". They are made of wool and very warm for cold weather. When the children play in the snow they wear "valenki'. But now you cannot see them very often.
суббота, 15 ноября 2008 г.
Winter has come to our town
пятница, 31 октября 2008 г.
We played a funny game: "Catch a bun!"
Sometimes it wasn't easy to catch "a treat'(a tasty bun).
Halloween, or Hallowe’en, is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31. Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, ghost tours, bonfires, costume parties, visiting "haunted houses", carving Jack-o'-lanterns, reading scary stories and watching horror movies. Irish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century. Halloween is celebrated in several countries of the Western world, most commonly in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Puerto Rico, Japan, New Zealand, United Kingdom and occasionally in parts of Australia.
A jack-o'-lantern (sometimes also spelled Jack O'Lantern) is typically a carved pumpkin. It is associated with the holiday Halloween, and was named after the phenomenon of strange light flickering over peat bogs - jack-o'-lantern. In a jack-o'-lantern, typically the top is cut off, and the inside flesh then scooped out; an image, usually a monstrous face, is carved onto the outside surface. At night a light is placed inside to illuminate the effect.
We cut horrible faces in the pumpkins and put candles inside.
Halloween at Our School!
Hello to Our Partners of the Project!
среда, 29 октября 2008 г.
Making Christmas Cards
Hello to all teachers and students in our group!
We are so excited taking part in the Christmas Card Exchange Project. We are getting out maps to find your locations and looking for information about your traditions in the Forum. Some of us bought Xmas cards and some others decided to make them by hand. We are going to send the cards in the mid of November.
Our Christmas cards are on the way.
This is what we have to say.
We wish you all a lot of cheer.
Not only for the holidays but for the whole year!