К чаю бабушка разрезала тёплую булку и намазала на неё масло.

К чаю is a very common Russian expression meaning for tea, with tea, or to go with tea.

The preposition к normally takes the dative case, so чай becomes чаю.

Here it is not about movement toward tea in a literal sense. It is an idiomatic way to say that something is prepared to be eaten or served with tea.

Russian word order is much more flexible than English word order.

Starting with К чаю puts that idea in the spotlight first: as for tea / for tea, grandma... In other words, it sets the scene or context before introducing what grandma did.

A more neutral order would also be possible, for example:

Бабушка разрезала тёплую булку и намазала на неё масло к чаю.

But the original sounds natural and gives к чаю a bit of emphasis.

Those are past tense feminine singular forms.

The subject is бабушка, which is a feminine singular noun, so the past-tense verbs must agree with it:

• разрезал = he cut

• разрезала = she cut

• намазал = he spread
• намазала = she spread

So бабушка разрезала ... и намазала ... means grandma cut ... and spread ...

Both verbs here are perfective, which means the actions are viewed as completed whole events:

• разрезала = cut up / cut open / cut into pieces, completed
• намазала = spread, completed

This fits the sentence well: grandma finished cutting the bun and finished spreading the butter.

If you used imperfective verbs such as резала or мазала / намазывала, the focus would be more on the process, repetition, or ongoing action, not on the completed result.

So the perfective forms make the sentence feel like a simple completed sequence of actions.

Булку is in the accusative singular because it is the direct object of разрезала: grandma cut the bun.

Since булка is a feminine noun, its accusative singular form is булку.

The adjective must agree with the noun, so:

• nominative: тёплая булка
• accusative: тёплую булку

So:

• тёплую matches булку
• both are feminine singular accusative

Because the meaning is onto it, not on it in a static location sense.

Russian often uses:

• на + accusative for movement or placing something onto a surface
• на + prepositional for location on a surface

Here butter is being spread onto the bun, so Russian uses на неё.

Compare:

• масло на неё = butter onto it
• масло на ней would mean something like the butter is on it

So на неё is the correct choice for the action in this sentence.

After many prepositions, Russian third-person pronouns gain an initial н:

• её → у неё, к ней, на неё
• его → у него, к нему
• их → у них, к ним

So after the preposition на, you say на неё, not на её.

This is just a regular grammatical pattern that learners have to get used to.

Because in this construction, масло is the thing being spread, so it is the direct object of намазала.

Russian commonly allows this pattern:

• намазать что на что
• to spread something onto something

So:

• намазала масло на булку
• here: намазала на неё масло

That is why масло is in the accusative form. Since масло is neuter inanimate, its accusative looks the same as the nominative.

There is also another common pattern:

• намазать что чем
• to spread something with something

For example:

• намазала булку маслом = she spread the bun with butter / she buttered the bun

So both are possible, but they structure the sentence differently:

• намазала масло на булку = focuses on the butter being put on
• намазала булку маслом = focuses on the bun being buttered

Булка can be a little tricky because its exact meaning depends on context and region.

Very roughly, it can mean:

• a bun
• a bread roll
• sometimes a small loaf of white bread

It is not quite as broad as хлеб, which is the general word for bread.

In this sentence, тёплая булка most naturally suggests a warm bun / roll / small loaf of bread, something you can cut and spread butter on.

Yes, that is the natural reading.

The conjunction и itself just means and, but in a sentence like this, with two perfective past-tense verbs, it normally suggests a sequence of completed actions:

1. she cut the bun
2. she spread butter on it

So English would naturally understand it as cut ... and then spread ..., even though Russian does not explicitly say then.

Because и is joining two verbs with the same subject inside one simple sentence:

• бабушка разрезала
• и намазала

This is a compound predicate, not two separate clauses with different subjects. So no comma is needed.

A comma would be more likely if there were a separate clause or a more complex structure.

Russian has no articles, so it does not have direct equivalents of a, an, or the.

That means words like булка and масло can mean:

• a bun
• the bun
• some butter
• the butter

The exact interpretation comes from context.

In this sentence, an English translation might naturally use something like:

• Grandma cut a warm bun and spread butter on it for tea or
• Grandma cut the warm bun and spread butter on it for tea

Russian leaves that choice to context rather than marking it with articles.