Egg Decorators Persevere With Tricky Technique

Try decorating a pysanky egg for the first time and you’ll discover a series of little mysteries.

How do you use the little tool, called a kistka, and the beeswax?

How do you keep straight which parts of the egg will turn out yellow, red and green?

How do you heat the wax just enough to wipe it off the egg - without burning your egg or your fingers, that is.

Confused? At times, so were most of the third- and fourth-graders in Sue Fisher’s gifted class Monday at Seth Woodard Elementary School as they tried to decorate their eggs in the traditional Ukranian style.

But they persevered, and they got plenty of help. Billie Pierce, a Valley resident who has decorated Easter eggs for years, led the class. Several West Valley High School students from Merrie McIvor’s Russian class gave one-on-one attention to the younger students.

Slowly, the little ones learned to scoop a bit of wax into the top of their kistka and then heat it over the candle, until a fine line of wax would run out the bottom of the handheld tool. Then they could sketch flowers or spirals or anything on their egg. Then they would dip the egg into a dye. Then more wax, more patterns and another color.

Fisher’s students kept their patterns simple. Tentative, even.

“I’m just going to make lines,” said Jessica Woehrlin.

“Well, I have a daisy-type flower started,” said Jamie Zink.

One of the high school students, Oxana Ivashchenko, sailed on through her design. A native of Russia, she was no beginner at pysanky.

Some of the teenagers kept their goals more modest.

“I just hope I don’t drop it,” said junior Mark Nance in what sounded suspiciously like the voice of experience.

OK, everyone on stage

Centennial Middle School gave everybody the chance to perform last week in Galaxy, an all-school talent show. There was no end to the sweaty palms, the showmanship and the applause and the sweaty palms in the Centennial gym on Friday.

One group lip-synched their way through the Coca Cola commercial, “The Real Thing.”

A gutsy eighth-grader, Seth Wolther, danced a credible John Travolta imitation.

Galaxy founder, seventh-grade teacher Connie Stacy, said the point of the show is for kids to learn how to work together and to dare to try something different.

Winners were: Barb Sanders’ seventh-grade advisory class in the dance to song category with “Mr. Lee;” Tom Bartalamay’s eighth graders in contest-skit with “Singled Out” tied with Linda Norberg’s eighth graders, doing “The Price is Right.” Erv Parkins’ sixth-grade class won the general skit category with “Fashion Show.”

Shelley Davis’ advisory, with sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders, won the dance category with “Keep On.” Carol Korff’s eighth graders won the skit category with “First Bus Ride.” Connie Stacy’s seventh-graders won in video re-enactment with “Thriller.” And Rick Frank’s class of sixth-graders won the commercial category with “Coke Delivery.”

What did Stacy herself do that was different this year? She was Shirley Temple, in a faculty skit called The Good Ship Lollipop.

But she says the teachers who really put it all on the line were Tom Adams and Phil Williams, as The Blues Brothers.

“We think they should perform district-wide,” she said.

Working for Goodwill

Home-building and construction students at Central Valley High School are working on a new donations booth for Goodwill Industries.

Teacher J.C. Clift said that as soon as beams arrive for the project, construction will move quickly.

One of the real challenges of the project? Moving the 18,000 pound portable building from the shop building at CV to the Fred Meyer Store at Sprague and Sullivan.

Totally awesome robots

The Pacific Science Center sent its traveling technology show to various Valley schools recently.

We caught up with the science center’s Sam Chamberlain at Seth Woodard Elementary School last week. The robots alone were worth seeing.

Picture a classroom of first- and second-graders on their hands and knees figuring out how to program the foot-high robots.

Every success was rewarded with a robot marching off in a new direction.

As Chamberlain told the kids in Jeannie Martin’s SPICE class, “Repeat after me: I am an official Pacific Science Center totally awesome robot programmer.”

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