Catching up with lessons, excursions & other minutia

After we learned about the Ojibwe and their homes and land it was time for day of the dead. We did the typical day of the dead activities. We made pan de meurto. I liked the recipe we used this year better than any I had ever tried. It was easier than the others, and when you added the glaze it smelled & tasted like fresh doughnuts. I think I will make it again soon, but call it something else. We decorated with simple fold & cut papel picado. I still have not taken them down. I think I will make some red & green ones for Christmas. I thought it would be a good time to start learning spanish. We already knew some basic phrases, colors, numbers, and things like that, we need to learn more so that we can speak it conversationally. We are learning it through songs & movement. We take the words & phrases from the songs & make large cards with the words on them and hang them up. We try to use the new words in everyday life.   I decided since it was day of the dead that we would learn about the mud houses of the Aztecs. Day of the dead has it’s roots in Aztec culture. The Aztec commoners lived in simple one room homes make of pole frames covered in mud or mud bricks. They usually had a thatched roof.   The Aztecs used cocoa beans as money we discussed this very briefly, as we will be going back to it deeper when we do a measurement block on money. Th Mexicolore  website has a really wonderful page about cocoa as money. 3 cocoa beans would have been worth one avocado. I told my daughter the story of how the little blue frog brought cocoa to the people. We made a hot chocolate whisk called a “molinillo” from a piece of dowel & copper wire. All you do to make one is coil about 4 feet of wire around a dowel that is smaller than the one you are using for the handle. This will make your wire look like a spring. You need at least 3 of them. Then you just wrap the coils around the dowel/handle and wire on tightly. 

To make hot chocolate in the traditional way you rotate the molinillo between your two hands placed palm-sides together.  The twisting motion frothes the chocolate. We made hot chocolate in this way while singing a  traditional chant..

Spanish	English
Bate, bate, chocolate,	Stir, stir, chocolate,
Tu nariz de cacahuate	Your nose is a peanut.
Uno, dos, tres, CHO!	One, two, three, CHO!
Uno, dos, tres, CO!	One, two, three, CO!
Uno, dos, tres, LA!	One, two, three, LA!
Uno, dos, tres, TE!	One, two, three, TE!
Chocolate, chocolate!	Chocolate, chocolate!
Bate, bate, chocolate!	Stir, stir, the chocolate!
Bate, bate, bate, bate,	Stir, stir, stir, stir,
Bate, bate, CHOCOLATE!	Stir, stir, CHOCOLATE!

You can hear this chant & others for free at the Texas State Library Archives website.

“Chocolate”  is about 1/3 down the page. This is a great resource for anyone wanting to add spanish to your curriculum or circle time.

We made some easy ojo de dios, or God’s eyes. The Caron website has a nice tutorial if you would like to see how to make them.

My daughter kept asking me “where” these different people we are learning about live. This continued to be an issue. She could not reconcile what their  natural environment & climate was with where they were located. To me this was a huge issue that needed to be addressed.  I decided we needed a map. I printed out a map of North America, or “Turtle Island”  as many indigenous people called it. It was a completely blank map that we could color & fill in as we like. When we study a group of people and their homes we draw their house on the map where they live/d. You can print out a map in just about any size up to 7ft (I think). The one here is 3ft x 4ft. It prints out on regular printer paper & you just tape or glue it together.

The next people we studied were the Cherokee. We did not do any traditional school work with this group. Instead we went to where they lived (and still live & thrive). We went to the north Georgia Mountains. I love it there. We went to many little areas and saw the amazing sites. We went to Tallulah Gorge. This gorge is HUGE. I think they said 950ft. We were lucky enough to be there when they let the water loose. There was some really nice white water, and the kayakers were taking full advantage of it.  They have a small, but very nice museum, and info center. They had a great deal of information on the Cherokee inside, as well as some myths & legends you could read next to pictures & displays.  Outside they had a wonderful blacksmith by the name of David Little doing demonstrations for visitors.  David is a man of many talents. He does black smith demos, makes unbelievable lighting fixtures, rehabilitates birds of prey and works at the Hike Inn at Amicalola Falls, an Inn you have to hike 5 miles on foot to get to. While driving around we discovered a beautiful old water powered mill right outside of Helen, Ga on the Chattahoochee River call the Nora Mill Garnary Grist Mill. It has been there since 1876. They grind all kinds of grain with very old french burr stones that are powered by the river you see in the pic below. This was a perfect thing for a 3rd grader to see as it ties into so many of our lessons.

 While we were up there we went to a great little music festival called Hemlockfest. It is a 3 day camp out festival  put on every year to raise money to help save the hemlock trees which are being utterly devastated by a beetle. The proceeds go to university labs trying to save the Hemlocks. It was a great little festival. This was the view as we walked down the drive toward the festival.

Once we were in the festival it was alive with music & good cheer. The weather could not have been better. This festival is wonderful. They even had canoes you could take out onto the lake for free.  They had a tepee set up at the far end of the lake that you could go inside of.  That’s my husband playing violin on a rock by the lake.The sign read “western plains tepee lodge..come in, sit down, tell stories.” 

They let you bring your dog.  I have been to many music festivals, and this is the only one that is dog friendly. We heard Col. Bruce Hampton, and the Quark Alliance play on Saturday night, and all I can say is wow!! Great show…..I really loved this little festival. I will definitely be back next year.

Shortly after we came home we went on a field trip to Cypress Gardens in Moncks Corner, SC. This was a nice field trip. We all went out into the black water swamp on boats. They have a buttefly pavillion, and aquarium too. I managed to capture this wierd little butterfly with my camera.

Here’s another of the same species in larva form….

That is what we have been up to the past few weeks. We are still working on our shelters block. Right now we are learning about tepees of the plains.

Day of the Dead necklace tutorial

Super cute day of the dead necklace tutorial. The skulls are from salt dough, and the flowers are tissue paper. Most of us have all the stuff already on hand. What a sweet job Alpha Mom. This would make an awsome garland as well.

Day of the Dead celebration at the museum

We went to the annual dia de los muertos celebration at our local art museum. The museum hosts several cultural festivals through out the year.

They had several crafts for kids like calavera masks, papel picado cutting, and pre-molded sugar skulls for the kids to decorate. There was a mariachi band roaming around, and we had the pleasure of listening to them while my daughter decorated her sugar skull in the art studio. There was a traditional dance troupe called Ballet folklorico, and an Aztec man who told a story & did  a traditional dance while several children played all of his rhythm instruments. There were 2 offrendas set up. One honored Frida Kahlo, and the other was a more traditional one from the Aztec culture of Mexico. It was a great day. I am very thankful to museum for providing a great celebration to participate in each year.

Free Day of the Dead recipe pack

Vegan Culinary Experience has offered up a free recipe pack.

 Here is what they say baout it in their website.

Download our special Halloween & Day of the Dead set! Click on the image to get the following holiday recipes: Spider Cookies, Black Widow Creme Pie, Witch’s Eyeballs Macaroons, Greenblood Kiwi Punch, Pan de Muertos, Sugar Skulls, Calabaza en Tacha, Pineapple Atole, and Mexican Hot Chocolate

Skeleton cookies: great for Halloween or Dia de Los Muertos

My Paper Crane  made some skeleton gingerbread cookies. I want to make some too! She links to a recipe in her post.

Calaveras masks, and other free Day of the Dead resources

We found these printable calavera masks to color inside the free 31 page PDF offered by AZ Central. The very top of the mask is cut of, but you can just fill it in with sharpie. The packet had information on Dia de Los Muertos, as well as word searches, coloring pages, and a Large skeleton you can print, cut out & put together.  We colored them in & went over some of the lines with glitter glue. Instead of making masks we mounted them on black construction paper and used them as decorations. You could print several out & make a day of the dead calavera garland.

Hp is offering a free Day of the Dead party pack you can print.

Hereis another calavera mask to print.

Librarypolooza has a free craft packet that has several crafts.

printable full size australopithecus skeleton to print for Halloween or Day of the Dead

We printed out a full size version of austaluspithecus to use as a skelton Day the Dead. Austaluspithacus was only the size of your average 5 or 6 year old.  This is a free PDF download you can get here. We made simple tissue flowers to go around her head, and drew her skull like a calavera. This was great opportunity to relate this holiday to a science lesson, while doing a fun craft project too.

 

We also make a few simple papel picados by folding a rectangle of tissue paper in half 3 times, and cutting simple shapes from both sides. We made sure to leave a couple inches at the top that we did not cut so that there would be a nice solid piece to glue, & fold over the string.  We attached some long strips of tissue to the bottoms for extra prettiness, since we had so few papel picados.

Pan De Muerto: a bread of the dead recipe

One of our favorite things about Day of the Dead is making bread of the dead, and drinking spicy hot chocolate. Try this simple recipe from global gourmet. It is much easier, and better than the one we had previously posted here.

http://www.globalgourmet.com/food/egg/egg1096/panmuert.html

Day of the Dead papel picado pattern resources

Day of the Dead is officially this Saturday & Sunday, NOvember 1st & 2nd.

I have never felt it really important to celebrate a cultural holiday on the exact day. Sometimes you can’t because of scheduling conflicts. There is nothing wrong with celebrating a holidayon a day that is just near the actual calendar holiday. That being said, I wanted to share some of the great papel picado resources I had found.

http://www.storyboardtoys.com/releases/Papel-Picado-Pattern-Simple.pdf

This one has one nice, but pretty simple pattern, and instructions. It is a PDF.

http://www.nps.gov/archive/tuma/PapelPicado.html

a couple of simple patterns & a brief history of the craft of papel picado

http://www.csupomona.edu/~plin/punched_paper/patterns.html

the patterns here a gorgeous, but a bit more complex

http://www.hsv.k12.al.us/dept/etv/geometry_pdf/gcms_program6.pdf

this one has a simple pattern on page 7 of the pdf file

http://www.librarypalooza.net/download/library_latino_style.pdf

this is a very nice 5 page pdf with papel picado, and several other day of the dead crafts.