I love sharing different cultures and traditions with my students. By exposing the students to different cultural celebrations, they can engage, learn, celebrate and respect a cultural and traditions that they may or may not have known about. Usually, we examine how different countries celebrate Christmas around the world, but this year I decided to mix it up and examine the Fall holiday, Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead.
Day of the Dead is a Latin American holiday celebrated on November 1st and 2nd. It is a holiday where people remember and honor those who have passed away. Many people celebrate it in different ways. Altars are usually decorated with flowers, candles, special foods, decorative skulls, and most importantly, pictures of loved ones. To start off with the holiday fun, the kids research Day of the Dead and then organize their findings in this mini flip book I created. Be sure to download it for your own students!
My students researched the holiday using various kid-friendly websites and a few books. They viewed some videos and were super engaged with using multiple sources to document their findings. Reading, evaluating and citing different sources is a very important skill to develop for upper grade students.They research the holiday's symbols, food, traditions, cemetery and how altars are created. After the research they create either a Google Slide presentation or write a report on the holiday. After all their hard work and research I reward them with a little fun. As a decoration for this holiday, we created a sugar skull paper craft using this easy Sugar Skull Tissue Paper Sign Craft Kit. After all that work they loved having time to create and decorate, especially after learning how much care goes into decorating for this special holiday.
Another fun activity we did was to use the Color Your Own Day of the Dead Masks. Traditionally, people paint their faces for the holiday. Instead, we decorated these sugar skull masks and the kids we super excited about it. Coloring never goes out of style and these masks were a crowd pleaser!
The students had time to reflect on a family member or pet who has passed; one who they would want to celebrate this year for Day of the Dead. They created these Sugar Skull Picture Frame Magnet Craft Kits.
Each student either brought in a picture or typed out their name to put inside the frame. Instead of creating an altar at home, they instead placed this magnetic frame on their refrigerator as a memorial. This was super powerful and expanded our class community on a whole new level.
After all the research, writing, sharing and creating, I figured it wound be fun to create a class bulletin board to showcase what my students learned. I created this backdrop using Fadeless® Weathered Wood Paper. To make it pop I added "paper flowers", like the ones that adorn the altars for this holiday, using some Orange- and Hot Pink- Tipped Tissue Pom-Pom Decorations that I stapled into flowers. I used the Day of the Dead Mini Skull Cutouts, and Cardboard Day of the Dead Door Border, and a Dia de los Muertos Garland to finish the look.
This was a great week of learning! The class really enjoyed researching, connecting and participating in all of these crafts. It was great to celebrate something new and remember those who have passed.
