Recently our principal told us we had to cancel our annual Fall Festival, because the school cannot spend money on activities that are not educational. Ok. Good reason. But I really enjoyed it! Ivonne, the Spanish teacher at my sister school, came up with the idea of having the festival be about Día de Los Muertos. Viola! Now it’s educational! Then I had memories of previous festivals at my other schools. Teachers did all the work and cleaning. Ugh. Somehow this topic came up during my Spanish 2 class last week. One student asked, “Can WE plan a Muerto festival for the school?” She gave a wonderful argument why (we know about the holiday already, we can put this on a college application, we are upperclassmen, you won’t have to do anything, etc.). So I “gave in” and allowed them to proceed. 🙂
The first day they planned. This website gave them a good start: http://www.tohonochulpark.org/PDF/DayofDeadActivity.pdf They selected several booths and assigned them to the students. Each booth will have a trifold with cultural information and an activity. They thought of ways to get other classes involved as well.
OFRENDA: This is a display that was a paper memory wall for students to write a “note” to people they have lost. We are including a photo of the founder of our school.
PAPER FLOWERS: Here they can make the flowers and put them on a hair clip if they want. They may include papel picado patterns here too.
LA LLORONA: First I showed them the wikipedia information in Spanish. They figured put most of it. After they learned about the story, they wanted it to be part of the festival. They asked the drama class to reenact this story. They will perform it twice during the festival.
FACE PAINTING: Some student artists are painting faces in traditional calavera styles. The art class is helping a little with this.
PHOTO BOOTH: They asked our photography class to take photos. They are including a box of cultural clothing and a cardboard cutout. They will charge $1 for prints or students can take the photo with their phones for free. There will also be pictures of La Catrina in different art forms.
FOOD: Of course this is needed! They are selling skull suckers, chips and salsa, and something else. The food/nutrition class is working with us on this. They chose to donate the profits to an organization. So sweet!
MUSIC: Here there will be drums to play the chant “Chumbalaca.”
TRIVIA: After they have visited other booths, they can answer 5 questions. Once they get them correct, they win skull beads.
They have been frantically researching, finding the cheapest products (lots of math!), decorating the tri-folds, and working with each other. I’m so proud of them. Each day I try to start with something cultural in Spanish so they are getting some language too.
Any advice? Have you done this before?
Omgoodness! What a fabulous idea!
This is an awesome idea! Love your blog. Our Arts Festival is in the Spring, actually about the first week of May, but something like this then and reinforce that Cinco de Mayo is not that big of a deal. We lost a beloved substitute teacher last year and I’m sure that the students would want an ofrenda for him. Muchas gracias!
I meant to say that something like this could reinforce…
This is awesome! Our key club puts on a Safe Trick or Treat each year and our Soceidad Honoraria Hispanica participates each year – these are great ideas for us to incorporate into our booth! Thanks for sharing!
What a wonderful learning activity! You always have such great ideas! Thanks for sharing!!!
Great idea! I’ve had students make oferendas and papel picado in honor of Día de los Muertos, and they love it. What a great way to build community in your school!
When did they start the planning?
Thursdays of last week.
This looks like SO much fun! I teach at a really Really REALLY small school (120 students K-12) and sometimes I feel so out of touch. I was so thrilled to find this blog so I can learn from some fabulous teachers! One activity we do in my classes is decorate sugar skulls. They are really fun to make and kids look forward to it each year. I have always made the skulls myself, but after your inspiration to “not do all the work,” I am going to enlist my high-school class to help. Thanks!
Our local Spanish teachers (myself included) are involved in planning the Dia de los Muertos festival in our city for the local families. We have a pretty diverse population of students in our area and we all teach at different kinds of schools (public, private, magnet, etc.) so we always have an interesting turn-out. The first year we participated in this, my classes made art decorations. Well, almost every school did that same thing! Never again! So, last year, each of my classes decided on and created an ofrenda for a celebrity (or local celebrity) to display at the festival. There was such a wide range, it was so great to see! For example, one class chose an actual actor/singer (can’t remember who), but another chose the former custodian for our school. He died a few years ago from cancer and he was a beloved part of our school family. He was before my time, but it was really sweet how they incorporated all the different things that represented each person’s life. Not sure if it is happening yet this year, but I hope so! I always offer bonus points (which I rarely do otherwise) to those to attend and bring back proof they went!
Wow! That’s community!
Sounds like an ambitious project! Where will the festival be, and when?
At my school every level of Spanish does something for Día de los Muertos. Spanish 1 usually decorates calaveras. Spanish 2 decorates skeletons as different professions, and then has to describe them in Spanish. They also do a research project on a famous deceased Spanish or latino person, do an oral report in English, and decorate a tombstone to create our own classroom panteón. Spanish 3 classes each decorate an ofrenda and the students have to do an oral presentation about the decoration they brought and about a person in their family that they choose to honor on the ofrenda. Spanish 4 students do research projects about the symbolism of different things associated with muertos– pozole, cempaxochitles, papel picado, calaveras de azúcar, etc. Spanish 5 is taking a trip to see a Muertos exhibit at a local museum and, hopefully, writing plays to perform for the middle school. And, some or all of these elements are usually incorporated into a contest and the winning class gets a fiesta. (As if the whole muertos week were not already festive enough.)
I like to show my classes these videos: http://bilinguish.wordpress.com/?s=muertos
The hands-down favorite is always the AzCentaral video that shows how to make an ofrenda to Barry White.
I got chills when I read this! Your kids are so motivated and creative! I want to come to the festival. You must post videos and pictures of the festival!
I’ll definitely put some pictures! I hope it turns out half as good as they are trying!