Hiyaaaa, I made these activity pages back in 2022, when the Eastern Diocese was doing a virtual pilgrimage to Jerusalem (you can still find videos from that event online, like this tour of the Holy Sepulcher). We wanted to participate, but thought we’d have to entertain our 4yr old at the time, during the video calls, so I made all of these activity pages to keep them engaged/so they could participate in their own way. Ultimately my parents took the kiddos that day, so we participated in the virtual pilgrimage un-distracted. But the pages remain! Now my kiddos are doing a virtual pilgrimage as part of their summer camp, so I dug these pages out in case they want to use them, and figured I’d share with you all as well. 🙂
Agladeez! It’s a thing. This time last year, Hagop came home from school with a new song stuck in his head. “Agladeez, Agladeez…” (this one). Vartan hadn’t heard the song before, and I wasn’t sure if Hagop was actually singing in Armenian, or incorrect Armenian, or full out gibberish. Turns out, real Armenian, real thing. A few days later, he came home with a puppet/doll they made in class, out of a dowel, popsicle stick, burlap outfit, and a potato for a head with 7 feathers sticking out. His teacher emailed us a brief explanation. I googled, but there’s pretty much nothing about this in English with Western transliteration, so hi, hello.
The Agladeez (or Agladiz) has seven feathers, representing the seven weeks of Great Lent, Medz Bakh. Every Saturday evening after Paregentan, you remove one feather from the Agladeez, counting down to Easter.
From Hagop’s teacher, “It is traditionally is made on the Monday after Paregentan, on the first day of Great Lent (medz bahk). The Agladeez was hung from the ceiling to remind everyone not to break the fast. It has seven feathers on its head, each one representing one week of lent. Each Sunday, please remove one of the feathers, this way the Agladeez will become a calendar showing how many weeks are left until Easter.”
Here are two sources about the folk tradition, in Armenian, but translate plug-ins in your internet browser should give you a good idea of the customs..:
Here are a few quick coloring pages I made for my kids, because Hagop was briefly obsessed with this idea last year. Last year, I just sketched them out and we colored them. This year, I made black & white digitized versions (woo! I’m learning!). We colored them, put googly eyes on, glued feathers on top. Fun times were had.
I put together a dozen or so activity pages for my kids to do over the next few days, anticipating lots of time in church. While I’d love for them to focus on the service and icons and hymns… they’re 3, 4, and 6, and I’ll be watching them solo while family serves in other places, so back-up activity pages it is. They’re geared towards a younger set of kids. Mine haven’t tried these yet, but they’re similar to the wedding activity pages I made a few months ago, which were a hit.
My brother-in-law got married this past weekend, and they had invited a lot of kids to the wedding. I made a bunch of activity pages and coloring pages to keep kids occupied during the service and speeches, etc. A lot of the wedding activity pages you can find on Etsy or other sites are for Americanized weddings, and I wanted things that felt a little more appropriate for an orthodox wedding. The ones I made for my brother-in-law and his new wife (yay!) were more customized to their names, occupations, etc. But since I made them, I’ll share them!
Here are a bunch of coloring pages I made, adapted from some coloring pages at our nephew’s baptism. The original pictures were pretty protestant-ish? Definitely not Armenian or Orthodox (because such things don’t exist), so I figured I’d just redraw them with a little twist.
They’re not perfect drawings, because I’m still doing these by hand instead of with any drawing software (which could guarantee equal line weights for example). But it has been ages since I posted anything, and the whole point of this website was to get resources out into the world instead of in a folder in my basement, so here you go.
I have been quiet on here (busy summer, rough re-entry to school with the kids), but I’ve been much more active on Instagram – finally started an account there, seemed like a better place to post art. If you’re interested, you can find me there too: @kalynbabikyan
Lighting isn’t great, so you can’t see how the glitter pen turned out at the end… but I really like some of the shapes on this one. Made this a while ago as a comission.
“Red Sunday” is the fourth Sunday of Eastertide (so, the third Sunday after Easter). We celebrated it this past Sunday. Here’s a description, from our church’s bulletin:
RED SUNDAY – The ascription “Red” is traditionally thought to reflect the brilliance of red flowers, which blossom at this time of year, symbolizing the new life given through the blood sacrifice of Christ. This Sunday’s Gospel (John 5:19-30), emphasizes the life-giving word of Jesus. Like Green Sunday, it has become a custom on this Sunday for clerics to wear red vestments and for the church to be decorated in red. The name “Red Sunday” seems to have no ecclesiastical origin or significance but may have been, like Green Sunday, a popular designation related to a spring festival and the new season, as at that time of the year the fields were adorned with red and green.
And here’s a quick coloring page I made for the day:
This is a screen capture of the coloring page. Click the actual file for a full colorable version! 🙂
Holy week! Phew and hooray. Armenians celebrate Easter the same week as Catholics and many other denominations of Christians, though we’re offset by a week from Eastern Orthodox folks and some other Oriental Orthodox. I don’t know why any of that is, and I am too tired to look it up and write anything coherent. BUT not too tired for art, of course, so here is another coloring page based on an Illuminated Armenian manuscript page.
Tuesday during Holy Week we focus on Jesus’ Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. From the Eastern Diocese: “The parable of the Wise and Foolish Maidens (Matthew 25:1-13) is the focus of Holy Tuesday. Ten maidens waited for their bridegroom (in the custom of that time and place, the bridegroom would fetch the bride from her parents’ home to bring her to his own). Five of the women foolishly took their lamps with no extra oil and when the bridegroom was delayed, could not go out and meet him. The wise maidens went prepared and joined him in the marriage feast. Similarly, we must pray and wait, in a state of perpetual preparation to receive Christ.”
Hye Home 
