Guidebook to Lithuania
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Programme: LIFELONG LEARNING PROGRAME Sub-programme: COMENIUS Action type: PARTNERSHIP Working language of the partnership: EN – English Project title: Learning through developing interdisciplinary projects Projects acronym: LeaDer – int PROJECT COORDINATOR SCOALA NR.4 „ELENA DONICI CANTSCUZINO“, PUCIOASA, ROMANIA Adress: Str. Republicii, n 123 Pucioasa, jud. Dambovita, Romania Phone / Fax: +44245 760 587 E – mail: [email protected] Website: www.scoala4pucioasa.ro PARTNERS PROFESIONALNA GIMNAZIYA PO TURIZAM “DR. VASIL BERON” Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria Adress: 10 Canko Cerkovski Str. Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria Phone / Fax: +359 62 62 15 16 E – mail: [email protected] Website: http://vtpgt.com KAUNO LOPŠELIS – DARŽELIS „EŽIUKAS, KAUNAS, LITHUANIA Adress: A. Mapu str. 12 Kaunas, Lithuania Phone / Fax: +370 37 42 34 43 E – mail: [email protected] Website: www.darzeliseziukas.lt ABUŞAĞI İLKÖĞRETİM OKULU (ABUSAGI ILKOGRETIM OKULU) Adress: ABUŞAĞI KASABASI GÜLŞEHİR/NEVŞEHİR TURKEY Phone +903844297422 Email [email protected] 1 AUTHORS Kristina Anuškevičiūtė, Project manager Lijana Budrienė, Preschool group pedagogue Vilmantė Sidabraitė, Teacher`s assistant, editor of the book Children from „Šermukšnėliai“ preschool group Funded by Lifelong Learning Programme (Comenius) of the European Union This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. 2 Table of Contents Preface ........................................................................................................................................ 4 What Is Lithuania? ..................................................................................................................... 5 How Does Lithuania Look Like? ............................................................................................. 10 The Life In Ancient Times ....................................................................................................... 18 Lithuanian Festivals .................................................................................................................. 20 Culture and Art ......................................................................................................................... 28 Sports ........................................................................................................................................ 32 Museums ................................................................................................................................... 34 Kaunas ...................................................................................................................................... 37 Main Facts About Kaunas History ........................................................................................... 41 Kaunas Kindergarden “Ežiukas“ ............................................................................................. 44 Goodbye and thank you for reading! ........................................................................................ 47 3 Preface Dear Reader, Thank you for taking your time to get acquainted with our home country Lithuania and beloved city Kaunas. Our team made this book with help of children of age 5 to 7. It is their voice you can hear and their thoughts you can read further on. These texts presents our Motherland from the point of view of children. We hope you will enjoy this guide and learn great lot of things! 4 What Is Lithuania? It’s so good to be in our kindergarten. All of us sit on a carpet with our teacher and talk about Lithuania – the center of Europe. Our neighbors are Latvia, Poland, Russia and Belorussia. And one of the most important things we have – it’s our Baltic Sea. Paula exclaims: “I was near the Baltic Sea. I enjoyed so much swimming and sunbathing”. Our teacher asked us do we know the origin of the name of our country “Lietuva” (Lithuania). For me this word resembles with the word “rain” (which in Lithuanian language means “Lietus“). But the teacher explained that really nobody knows exactly how it occurred, there are even several versions. Some scientists say this word origins from the old Celtic “Litavia” which means the country of coats. The others say that it origins from the name of the local river called “Lietauka”. Our teacher asked us do we know what the flag is. We thought that it is a simple piece of a colored cloth. But she explained that each color has its own meaning. The yellow color means the sun, the light and the welfare. The green one is for the beauty of the nature, freedom and hope. The red color is for the earth, courage and the bloodshed for motherland. 5 Making of the flags These children decided to draw castles they have seen in Lithuania. 6 In order to recognize a country or a town, people create a special distinctive sign, called coat of arms. I painted our coat of arms and asked the teacher why the horse is white but the ground is red and who is sitting on a horse. The teacher explained that the coat of arms of Lithuania consists of an armored-clad knight on horseback holding a sword and shield and is known as Vytis ("the Chaser"). He is chasing enemies from the homeland. Now I know that the Lithuanian coat of arms is one of the oldest national coats of arms in Europe. I also know that Lithuania celebrate its birthday, the same as I do! The difference is that instead of “Happy birthday!” everybody sings the national anthem. When we listened all together to our national anthem, my friend Ignas suddenly exclaimed: “I’ve heard this song on TV while watching a basketball game with my dad!” “I do think this horse is very pretty and I do not want it to go to fight and I am very happy that wars are over and everything is fine now. “ – said Emilija. She continues: “I want to have a pony someday and I could call it Vytis like on the coat of arms and it would be marvelous! And my brother could get some armour and I would let him play with my pony. And I know that in the old times horses were very important to people, because they had no cars and no machines to help them, so horses helped to work on the fields and travel. And also in songs I heard strange names for colors of horses. They say “širmas“ and it means grey, or „sartas“ and it means kinda brown, and they say „obuolmušis“ and that means grey with white spots! And the word sounds as it horsey have apples on them, how funny is that!”. 7 If you look at the map of Lithuania you can see five big spots. I wondered what do these sports mark and my teacher explained that these are the five biggest cities of Lithuania. And the biggest one is the capital of our country – Vilnius. We live in Kaunas, the second - largest city of Lithuania. Klaipeda is a port town, Siauliai is well known for its Hill of Crosses. Panevezys is the fifth largest city 8 I was wondering what will happen if suddenly all money disappear all over the world? My friends answered that we will not be able to buy food and probably will die but our teacher explained that nothing similar would happen. We would start living the lifestyle of our ancestors. In those old times people used to pay for the goods in gold, silver, copper alloys. And later they learnt to make money from those metals. Emily said that her grandfather has silver and golden teeth. We call our money “Litas” and “centai” . There is famouse very nice and good people who did something really great and huge to Lithuania, and there is something pretty on the other side, like a big bell or a city or a sea at storm on the other side. My mother and father works hard to ear money and I want to grow up fast and help them. I want to be an aviator like Darius and Girėnas, they are on 10 litas, and they flew over an Ocean long time ago when planes were not so good.“ 9 How Does Lithuania Look Like? Ignas says: “Once a summertime I went with my mom to our village and saw through the window a lot of green color, a big buzzing tractor and a huge yellow, yellow meadow! My mom explained that those are special yellow herbs people make oil from. But there were not only huge meadows, I saw some hills as well”. Kernavė hill – forts. There are hill forts in Lithuania left from the old times. People built castles on the top of those hills long time ago. I can tell you legends about some of those castles. The famous one is the castle of Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas. Nowadays Gediminas Tower is the only one remaining part from the whole castle. I love those legends, they are so interesting! Let’s read it together: 10 “One day Grand Duke Gediminas, ruler of Lithuania, went hunting in the forest of Sventaragis' Valley. The hunting was very successful. Before Gediminas realized how late it was getting, night fell and he had to spend the night in the forest. During the night he dreamt about a large wolf in iron armor howling with a voice of a hundred wolves on a nearby hill. In the morning, puzzled by the dream, Gediminas sought out the help of Lizdeika, a local sage, to interpret the dream for him. Lizdeika told him that the wolf's iron armor and loud voice meant that a powerful fortress would be built on the hill and that its fame would spread far and wide. Gediminas promptly gave orders to build a fortress on the hill and moved his headquarters to this new site. The city of Vilnius, the current capital of Lithuania, grew up around it. The name of the city was