Category: Parenting

Agladeez – Armenian Lenten Baba tradition

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..:

https://surbzoravor.am/post/view/mets-pahqi-%D5%AAoghovrdakan-sovorutyunnery

https://araratian-tem.am/post/1101

https://www.armgeo.am/en/armenian-national-dolls

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.

agladiz-drawing-pagesDownload
Agladiz onion, outlineDownload
Agladiz apple, outlineDownload
Agladiz potato, outlineDownload
Turnip agladiz, outlineDownload

Activity and coloring pages for Armenian Christmas / Epiphany

Here we are, on the 1000th day of winter break, just now approaching our big celebration of the season – Armenian Christmas. Armenians celebrate Christmas along with Epiphany on January 6th each year – having never changed the date of Christmas like other Christian denominations did. More on “Why January 6th?” here: https://armenianchurch.us/the-lord/nativity-and-theophany-of-our-lord-and-the-feast-of-the-naming-of-jesus/

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.

I also previously posted a coloring page for Christmas, for more advanced coloring.

Krisdos dznav yev haydnetsav!

Armenian Christmas and Theophany, activity pagesDownload

Armenian Advent Calendar Page

Here’s what we’re using instead of the Countdown to Christmas advent paper chain this year. Our youngest is 3 and a total hellion, so there’s no way we can keep a paper chain intact/intentionally used for 50 days.

I’d love something sturdier like this advent calendar from Draw Near designs, but they’re on a different calendar than us so I can’t just buy that one, and I don’t sew well enough to make my own. Maybe someday. For now, sticker chart!!

For more on Armenian advent in general, see: What is Advent? from the Eastern Diocese’s website.

Hisnag calendar, Armenian Advent countdownDownload

Armenian Advent / Hisnag, countdown to Christmas paper chain

Zabel, adjusting the countdown paper chain on our mantel.

Here’s something we did last year to mark advent. It’s a paper chain countdown, with the numbers 1-50 in Armenian. We cut the strips out, taped them together, and then the kids ripped one link off the chain each day until January 6th. I don’t know if we’re going to do a countdown chain again this year or something else (the fast of advent begins today, so we’d better figure something out quickly). If we do the chain again, I’ll add star stickers onto Armenian Christmas and American Christmas… Our kids got to Dec. 25th and it felt like we should mark it in some way on the chain.

hisnag-countdown-chain-2-alternating-colors-1Download
Hisnag countdown chain 2, alternating colorsDownload

^ There are two different versions of the document, with different fonts. Enjoy!

edited later to add… Another Advent countdown, but more manageable = https://hye.home.blog/2024/11/20/armenian-advent-calendar-page/ = on a single page.

Armenian wedding activity pages for kids

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!

Armenian wedding, activity pages for kidsDownload

Coloring pages for Armenian Orthodox Baptism

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

Baptism church 1, Armenian coloring pageDownload
Baptism compilation, Armenian coloring pageDownload
Baptism Bible, Armenian coloring pageDownload
Baptism church 2, Armenian coloring pageDownload
Baptism candle, Armenian coloring pageDownload

Armenian books & stories – voice recordings

Hello, world. Our family has a Yoto player, which is basically a screen-free music player for the kids. It’s like a CD player, but it uses cards with NFC chips to play audio instead of CDs (so it’s wayyy more durable). It’s really user-friendly, kids can operate it by themselves, and it’s great.

One of the things you can do on the Yoto is record your own audio, and create your own playlists. Then you can load that onto a card, so the kids can play your stories whenever they want.

Vartan and I went ahead and recorded a dozen of the Armenian books and stories that we have, and turned them into a sharable playlist through Yoto. Anyone who has the link can add the playlist to their Yoto account and save it onto one of their blank cards.

It’s a combination of books in Western Armenian and in English, but about Armenia or by Armenian authors. We’ll add new recordings to the playlist over time, and it’ll automatically update for anyone who added it to their Yoto account/library.

https://share.yoto.co/s/57iwn6usbAyiDDcyeiBRiY

You should still be able to listen to the recordings from that link, even if you don’t have a Yoto player or account. But if it’s not working and you want the files, feel free to email them too! happy to send.

Coloring pages for Lent 2024

Just the coloring pages from the Eastern Diocese’s “2024 Lenten Calendar for Families” publication. Full credit and kudos goes to the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern). (I wish they’d list the name of the actual artist for these!)

You can download the full calendar with coloring pages here: https://vemkar.us/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/LENTEN-CALENDAR-2024-Web.pdf

But I also scanned in and present to you *just* the coloring pages. I did this before realizing I could use their PDF and only print pages 3, 5, 7… etc. Duh. But since I already scanned the physical copy, I might as well share it.

You’ll want to print in black & white, because I forgot to *scan* in black and white, the off-white background might show up if you print in color. It looks totally fine if you print in black and white, or you know, go ahead and print from their original PDF too. Sigh…

Eastern Diocese Lent 2024 coloring pagesDownload

Review of Bábo: A Tale of Armenian Rug-Washing Day

This book was an unexpected treat. My stepmother brought it home from the library, and I had no idea is existed. (I try to stay on top of publications like this, but am human. Sorry.) AND IT’S GREAT! It’s a hardcover book recommended for ages 3-7, by Astrid Kamalyan and illustrated by Anait Semirdzhyan.

“Bábo: A Tale of Armenian Rug-Washing Day” is SO fun to read out-loud and gives you many opportunities for fun voices, sound effects, and poetic license. It reminds me of all of the other car, truck, and vehicle books I’m reading these days… except instead of “VROOM! beep-beep,” it’s “SWOOSH!” and “pop-pop-pop” as Tato, her siblings, and her neighbor take out the family’s traditional Armenian carpets. The story is very tactical, and touches on all five senses… the feel of bubbles under Tato’s feet, the sound of bubbles popping, the smell of brown soap, and (after work is done) the taste apricot pie. It does a great job of transporting you into a world that (for our family at least) feels very familiar and very foreign at the same time.

That familiar/unfamiliar feeling leads me to a stumble I had with the book: Artsakh Armenian! There are certain phrases in the Artsakh dialect in Armenian, spelled out with English characters, like “Bol-bol loq-loq un ural” (they jumped around). While this is ultimately great, I wish there had been a note about it just inside the front cover, instead of at the end. There’s no single standard for how to transliterate Armenian into English. Eastern and Western Armenians transliterate in very different ways. When I got to that part of the book, I felt like an idiot because I didn’t recognize most of the words, and the transliteration was hard for me to interpret. So personally I would’ve loved to see the phrases written in Armenian characters, next to the transliterated phrases, and not just in the Glossary at the end.

Overall this is a great introduction to Armenians, Artsakh Armenians, Armenian carpets (styles! details! historical information at the end!). The Watertown-based publisher even has an “activity kit” to go along with the book, which is really well-done: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0750/0101/files/babo-activity-kit.pdf?v=1693512063

It seems like they’ve gotten some good press and visibility on the book, which is fantastic in so many ways, especially given what happened/is happening in Artsakh. I hope this book brings awareness to more non-Armenians. From NPR: https://www.npr.org/2024/01/13/1224459521/mop-mop-swoosh-plop-its-rug-washing-day-in-babo & on the list of New York Times best books for kids of 2023!

Anyway, I’m happy to share this super fun read, in case you live under a rock like I do and hadn’t come across it. It’s going on our birthday wish list for sure.

Nareg, not being particularly gentle with a library book.