Multicultural Night: Day of the Dead

I just realized that I hadn't brag about how AMAZING was our annual Day of the Dead celebration!!!!! This is the second year we do it at our campus, and it was so great to see that fellow educators were excited to be part of the committee since the beginning. We had so much fun planning it! Those hours at the Truck Yard on Greenville paid off!!! Thanks, team!!! On Tuesday October 28th from 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. we created a space for parent/community involvement with the school with our Multicultural Night, celebrating the Day of the Dead. 

Through a project that I created on Donors Choose, we were able to count with the supplies and materials needed. Last year I made all the sugar skulls from scratch, but needless to say my house was full of sugar everywhere haha 
So, this year it was great to have the support of friends and family - who I annoyed for a week to get donations - :D thanks, y'all!!!

The night was a BIG success! Some of us did our make up like Catrinas, to get kids excited about the face painting booth. We also had in the auditorium a movie playing to learn about the tradition, as well we had other interactive stations such as: decorating sugar skulls, making papel picado, making paper flowers, creating a skeleton using their name written in cursive, making skeletons using q-tips, playing loteria to win school supplies, enjoy traditional bread and hot chocolate, take pictures in the photo booth, and most importantly come together as a community. 

When I handed out the invitations, I had over 380 people R.S.V.P.!!! I think we had around 300 hundred attendees in the 2 hours that the event took place. Also, we made it to the DISD's The Hub, check it out: http://thehub.dallasisd.org/2014/10/31/celebracion-del-dia-de-los-muertos/

It was really unbelievable seeing not only Hispanic families, but also African American and White so interested in this tradition! I think that it was a lot because of the movie "The Book of Life", so it warms up my heart to keep our traditions alive, and that all these families came to be part of it. 

“La Catrina ronda Silberstein,
ronda y ronda esperando encontrar
a Mrs. Garza y Mr. Freelon distraídos
y al fin podérselos llevar.

Los persigue por los pasillos,
los sigue con mucha ansiedad,
para llevarlos de los tobillos
al panteón para enseñar

Encuentra a Mrs. Garza 
muy atenta en un salón,
la encuentra concentrada 
haciendo una observación.

La Catrina alegremente le dice:
"’amonos wera, ya te tocó!"
Mrs. Garza espantada  le contesta:
"espérame tantito, deja mando la retroalimentación"

Ya se encuentra Mrs. Garza
muy contenta en el panteón,
esperando el próximo Día de Muertos
para ir por el subdirector.”

If you want your students to write poems like the one I did above, you can find some activities in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store: 

On this activity, you only have to add your name (or the studets' names), so it may be a good exposure for the students before writing their own:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Calaveras-Literarias-para-el-salon-Dia-de-Muertos-940352

On this activity the students have to fill in the word that rhymes:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Calaveritas-Literarias-937135

I am working on creating some in English, so I'll keep you posted!!!!

I also created a Unit of Study to implement in the classroom, to compare and contrast Halloween and the Day of the Dead. Being that we are in the States and Halloween is more a tradition here, I wanted to link it to reading skills where students learn about two traditions that they could interact with. 

You can find the Unit of Study in my Teachers Pay Teachers store, I have it available both in English and Spanish:

English: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Day-of-the-Dead-Halloween-Unit-938714

Spanish: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Unidad-de-Estudio-del-Dia-de-Muertos-y-Halloween-951192

¡A este guapetón, me lo llevo al panteón!

Needless to say, Day of the Dead is my favorite time of year. It takes me back to the cool activities that we did with my Elementary teachers and how it brought us together with our loved ones that have past away. What is your favorite holiday/tradition of the year? Let me know how you take a tradition into your classroom, or how you celebrate with your family! 

Day of the Dead / Día de Muertos

As you know, I am a bilingual teacher in 4th grade. We are departmentalized at my school, so I focus on teaching Math and Science. I have been teaching 4th grade Math for 4 years now, going into my 5th year. For Science is a little bit different, last year it was my first year to teach it and I did but very sporadically. This year I started committed to involve kids in doing a lot of science experiments, so here I am... trying to come up with ideas that let the kids experience more than just textbook work or word problems. 

Anyway, I wanted to do like a unit week with the Day of the Dead. Lucky for us, November 2nd was a Friday, so for a week we did different activities related to it. 

I know it is a little bit late for that, since the Day of the Dead is celebrated in Mexico on November 2nd. Anyway, I wanted to share with you what we did to incorporate Math skills like: measurement, practicing multiplication (arrays and facts) and symmetry. 

The Friday before I sent home permission letters, since we respect other religions/cultures and it is understood that some parents may not want their kids to participate. 

We started on Monday by watching some videos about the Day of the Dead, and what it means. The art teacher at my school did an splendid job weeks earlier on explaining to kids what the altars were and did some "papel picado" with them. So, it worked perfectly because some students already celebrate the day with their family and knew what it was about. We read some "calaveras" wich are poems dedicated to a person (alive usually), and present in a funny way how he/she was taken by the death (The Catrina). The Language Arts teacher dedicated the week to write some "calaveras" with them. 

On Tuesday, we started doing our sugar skulls to implement measurement. The kids LOVED IT! It was a little frustrating at times, since it was my first time of ever doing one! It went amazing! I bought the skull mold and the merengue at a store in Dallas, here is the link for it: http://www.lamariposaimports.com  You can find all kinds of stuff for the Day of the Dead! Even "papel picado" that I bought of course and placed in the classroom as decoration. 

If you are not in the DFW area, you can buy the sugar molds and all the material you need to make the sugar skulls on this website: http://mexicansugarskull.com , they even sell the foil paper and the special food coloring you need for the decoration paste. (I think here you can also order some "papel picado")

All the material needed and step-by-step instructions can be found here: http://mexicansugarskull.com/sugar_skulls/instructions.html

Tips
It took us two days to have the sugar skulls ready, you may want to use more time if your students are younger or if you have a complete day with them it may work easier. 

Tuesday
1. We did a rectangle instead of a square, just because I wanted to review its attributes, such as parallel lines and angles. They cut a 5in x 7 in using the back cover of the construction paper packets. They wrote their names on both sides of each cardboard.

2. I played the video on how to make a sugar skull, and set expectations as a class. You can see the video here: http://mexicansugarskull.com/sugar_skulls/index.html

3. I pulled 5 kids at a time to my round table, and walked them through the process of mixing the ingredients. Since they needed a cup of sugar, some students brought a coffee cup of just the complete bag of sugar, so we talked about how a measuring cup is used and why.  They poured the sugar in their own plastic container (a big one!), then they added 1 teaspoon of meringue powder. Once they mixed it completely, they added 1 teaspoon of water (yes, that's enough!) 

4. We packed the sugar mixture in the mold, and then scrap off the extra mixture from it using the cardboard. With the same piece, we placed it against the mold and then flip it really carefully so the mixture stays in the same shape. We did the same for the front half and the back half of the skull. One cup is enough to create one full sugar skull, you may decide to have them do only the front part, but it looks really nice with both. 

5. Let the sugar skulls to dry at a safe place (not humid) for at least 8 hours. We left them from one day to the other, so it worked perfectly. 

Wednesday
I made the royal icing in advanced, as well as the colored royal icing for decoration. With the royal icing we "glued" both halves of the sugar skulls, then we let it dry for the day. 

Thursday
I placed the colored royal icing in ziploc bags, since I did not have icing bags... not a good idea. The kids squished them too hard at time and it got out of it really bad... anyway, it was messy but still the kids loved it. We used foil to put the names of the people they were dedicating the sugar skulls to, and then "glued" it by using the royal icing. They came out good for the first time! 

Friday
We used the sugar skulls to make up situations by using multiplication and division. We used it to represent the operations and modeling arrays. They LOVED it! I put them on display outside my classroom for a week. Of course, they are not eatable... but it is a fun way to use ingredients that are easy to get ahold of and make something pretty and celebrate their culture. 

I also printed some skeletons and they used fabric paint to decorate them. Agains the windows the color really pop out and we arranged them in rows and columns to practice a few multiplication and division facts. 

I am a huge fan of the Catrina, so my lovely boyfriend helped me come up with the name of "Factrina" and made a coloring Catrina using multiplication facts (are you getting the hint of what we are focusing on Math: ;)). 

You can find the Factrina at my TpT account as a Freebie!: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Donaji-Salinas


As well, we made "papel picado" using tissue paper. The original colors are purple, orange and pink, but I only had a few of those in my classroom. So we used what we had available. We included symmetry in this activity, by making half circles, half hearts, half rhombus, half squares, etc.! I played the video before so they could get a gist of what they were doing, then we did what the video shows step by step. 
The video I used is in Spanish, but you can always just follow what she is doing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP-Ms2AWfHM and we only did the first and the second style. 

I found this one in English: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psmc1D2ddQo

Here is how the display table looked outside my classroom. 

We even ate some "pan de muerto", it was a great experience! :)

Hope you like it! :) thanks for reading!

- Donaji