FieStA!

 

My school teaches the Core Knowledge Sequence and over the past few months we've been studying Ancient World Civilizations. The kids and I have loved it!  We have learned so much.  We started with Mesopotamia and Egypt, then we learned about Ancient American Civilizations including the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas, plus a little bit on the Conquistadors and Columbus.  We finished up by learning about Mexico past and present and culminated with a big Fiesta on Friday.  (You can get the FIESTA sign pictured above, plus another one, and the MEXICO letters below for FREE HeRe). It was a blast!  And a ton of work, but fortunately this whole week is Spring Break (Yeah!) and I have awesome parent volunteers who helped a ton.

The kids made these adorable serapes to wear for the fiesta, (thanks to my team-members for the idea)!  I pre-cut the strips and a parent pre-cut all the grocery bags.  The kids were SO cute wearing them.

 For one of the activities the kids wove these colorful placemats.

And painted these festive sombreros. They looked super cute trying to balance them on their heads. They loved wearing mine too!

One of their favorite craftivities (and mine too) was this mini, personal-size pinata.  They were SO simple and SO cute.  Essentially it's a toilet paper roll, cut in half then rolled into a cone shape, filled with candy (M&Ms in our case), wrapped in green tissue paper, then twirled with frayed red crepe paper.  I think the original idea came from Family Fun.  Check it out! 

 

They also made these pretty tissue paper flowers and craft foam tacos. Both super easy to make.We also made little easter egg maracas, but I forgot to take a picture of those.

And as if all the activities weren't fun enough we had TWO pinatas full of candy and toys that we broke open once all of our craftivities were done.  Needless to say, the kids were ecstatic. 

 And with the help of the blindfold and a few dizzying turns, all the kids got three cracks at the pinata!  For the second one we opted out of the blindfold to speed things up. :) 

 

 And of course, just for fun I couldn't resist making this mini paper parasol wreath to hang (Inspiration: Pintrest - Thank you!).

We finished the Fiesta with a big Mexican feast of tacos, quesedillas, empanadas, chips, salsa, guacamole, etc, etc. then we had a Spanish-speaking father and his employee from Mexico come and speak to us.  The kids were enamored to hear the father translating in Spanish and relaying our special guest speaker's message.  It was a real treat!  Happy Fiesta!  

Hasta Luego!

Here are a few more things we did in class before our Fiesta: