Friendly reminders

• Holiday potluck: December, 15th 9:15am

Agradecimientos

• Thank you to Holda, Lucas’s mom for giving the children the opportunity to make pan de muerto!
• Thank you to our room parents Jill, Arlo’s mom and Erika, Lucca’s mom for helping with the the Dia de Muertos activities.

 

One of the most typical and well known celebrations in the entire Mexican territory is without a doubt the Day of the Dead celebration. Throughout the country, in small isolated towns as in the large cities, the Mexican people pay to death and to their departed. With a mestizo past, not unlike the inhabitants of this country, these festivities are the result of an intermarriage of the way our indigenous ancestors and the Catholic religion from our Spanish roots viewed death. Life, for the inhabitants of Mesoamerica, was just a fleeting moment. Death was an awakening of a dream in the present enter the world of the dead and appear before different gods, depending on the type of event that took their life.

Every year, Live Oak class celebrates Día de Muertos with a procesion and a meaningful ceremony. After introducing this holiday with a few children’s books, we involved the students in building the altar with three levels: underworld, earth, and heaven. Each day we focused on an activity crafting decorations for the altar. Papel picado was the first one, and they enthusiastically worked together in a big team.

We also made paper sugar skull puppets, colored altar and skull pictures, and built funny skeletons with Q-tips. Their favorite activity was definitely decorating their own sugar skull.

 

Cempasuchil.

The cempasuchil flower is the main flower for Día de Muertos. Cempasuchil comes from the Nahuatl (the language spoken by the Aztecs) and means “twenty-flowers”, and refers to the many petals of the flower.

Cempasuchil legend:

Xochitl and Huitzilin loved each other very much. They spent lots of time together, and hiked everyday to the top of the mountain, and offered flowers to their god, the Sun. The Sun loved them too.

One day, they heard enemies were coming to take over the town. Huitzilin had to join all the boys to defend their town from the enemies. He had to say goodbye to Xochitl and they both cried with sadness. Xochitl kept visiting the Sun and begged to see Hutzilin again. One day the Sun told Xochitl that Huitzilin was not coming back, but there was one way they could be together. The Sun shone its rays on Xochitl, and she became a cempasuchil flower. Huitzilin’s soul was turned into a hummingbird, and would visit the cempasuchil flower everyday. With Xochitl as a flower, and Huitzilin as a hummingbird, they could be together forever. The legend says this is why hummingbirds love marigolds.

 

Pan de Muertos

Holda, Lucas’s mom, came and showed us how to make Pan de Muerto. Everybody got their own dough to work with and make their bread. They rolled it into a ball, and shaped the bones that go on top. The children had a great time kneading and shaping the dough, as well as sprinkling flour on it to make it less sticky. When everyone’s bread was ready, Holda took it home and put it in the oven. Later that day, she came back with warm, fresh baked Pan de Muerto. We enjoyed it together and everyone loved it! It was so yummy!

About a month ago, Rebecca brought caterpillars on some fennel branches from her garden. We put it in a habitat and observed it eat the fennel, until it made a chrysalis. Then we waited while it slept, and finally, this week the butterfly came out! We took it outside and released it. It was a magical moment to watch it fly!

We loved seeing everyone on VIP day! The children were so excited, and it was wonderful to see them proudly showing their school and classroom to their families. We saw a lot of smiles and everyone having fun playing games, reading stories, and even dancing!

Thank you everybody for joining us in celebrating and honoring our loved ones for Dia de los Muertos! It was great to see and hear all the families talk about their departed loved ones. The altar looked beautiful with everyone’s pictures and sugar skulls. The children did a great job in the procession and dance, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

We will miss you next week! We hope you have a cozy and restful Fall break, and a great Thanksgiving if you celebrate it!

Griselda, Niki and Katt