Baba Yaga Huts

I love Russian folk tales, and I've always loved Baba Yaga! I think my friend Rachael taught me that it's supposed to be pronounced "BA-ba ya-GA" [rather than "BA-ba YA-ga,"], so that's how we said it. There are tons of Baba Yaga stories. Her little hut on chicken's legs is always my favorite detail. So spooky! We listened to the piece from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition ("The Hut on Fowl's Legs") while we made our huts.

I couldn't find anyone else's ideas online about how to make huts-on-chicken-legs, so I just had to make it up as we went along. We used little boxes from my gift-wrapping cupboard, taped on folded-paper "roofs," wrapped the boxes in paper, and then stuck pipe cleaners through for the legs. A couple of the houses actually stood on their legs, but most didn't. That was okay because the children mostly wanted to hop them around and make them "walk," so they didn't really need to stand up. We cut little doors in the side, and the children drew scary skulls on the fence around the house, or Baba Yaga peeking out the window, or whatever they liked.