The last few years, we’ve done prayer chains to mark the passing of time and create a little family ritual around Lent. The prayer chains are cute, but they weren’t labeled by DAY/date, so it was easy to lose track of where we were in the 40-day Lenten countdown. So this year, I made a version that has actual numbers on it! And commemorations, and what day is what kind of info! It’s specific to 2025, but I’m uploading the Word doc version instead of a PDF, so if you’re coming across this in some later year and I haven’t made an updated version, feel free to download and edit it yourself. The doc might give you an error about “printable edges” but it should still work.
In making this Lenten countdown (count up?) chain, I also made a few doodles copying patterns from Canon Tables in Armenian manuscripts. If anyone has separate need of those, here are the pictures:
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.
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!!
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.
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
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.
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.
Made these for the kids to color in. Trying to get them into the activism spirit young 😜. You’re also welcome to use them. Print these on 11×17 paper and have at it.
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!)
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…
