Russia is a very large country, spanning across the two continents of Asia and Europe. It has a rich folk-art tradition. In old Russia, among peasants, "Matryona" or "Matriosha" was a very popular female name. The Latin root "mater" means "mother." This name was associated with the image of a large, round-figured mother of a big peasant family. Consequently, Matryoshka became a symbolic or figurative name, and was used specially to refer to the brightly painted wooden figurines made in such a way that they could be taken apart to reveal smaller dolls fitting inside one another. In this article, the author describes how her third-grade students hand built "nesting dolls" out of clay.