Saturday, October 31, 2009

Halloween Party, homeschool style: The Dead

Photos from our fabulous Halloween Party. Our unsuspecting invitees learned a lot about the Celtic, Greek, Egyptian, and Mayan traditions and beliefs about death.

I don't seem to be able to make the pictures match up with captions nor get them in any kind of order, so you'll have to figure it out.

We made four corners of our house, each set up to explain the four different traditions. We made poster sized pictures of the different gods from each regions: Persephone and Hades; Osiris, Isis, and Anubis; Michtlantecutli; and Morganne. Mi'ita wrote up explanations of the gods, legends that accompanied them, descriptions of their beliefs in the afterlife, and other such. When possible, we added pictures or objects. We made the most hideous papermache Cerberus that I have ever seen. We spent two weeks on it and all I can say is that it's finished and does indeed have three heads.

I built an ofrenda for El Dia de los Muertos, my favorite of the cultures. Every year I set up an ofrenda, a table filled with pictures of our dead family members (and cats) with candles, skulls, papel picado, flowers, butterflies, and other symbols of the tradition or objects important to our loved ones. We made luminarias, too, and set them outside with our pumpkins. (We also carved a turnip, which is what they do in Ireland, not pumpkins.) I made sugar skulls for the children, too, and they got to write their names on them in icing and decorate them.

I served dishes from the four traditions we were studying: pomegranates from the Greek legend of Hades and Persephone, humus and baklava from Egypt, pan de muertos from the Mexican Mayans, barmbrack from the Irish Celts. Barmbrack is a loaf of sweetbread with dried fruit baked with little trinkets inside. Each trinket means something and if you find a trinket in your slice, it prophesizes what you should expect in the next year. Mi'ita got the cloth, which means poverty. A coin means wealth, a button means that you'll never marry, a ring means you'll be the next to marry, etc. We also made jello red blood cells just to toss in some science.

We also made a full sized coffin out of cardboard just to toss in some fun.

Mi'ita had a great time at the party, as did all the other kids. I gave them a "quiz" at the end. I wrote up about 40 questions that our captions all over the house answered. We broke up into teams and each team had to go find out the answer to their question and then come back for another one. Mi'ita couldn't be on a team, since she knew all the answers, but she could assist by showing the teams where to find the answers. They did really well and enjoyed it! I thought it might bomb, but they kept coming back for more.

Unfortunately, trick-or-treating didn't go as well. Some kids stayed and trick-or-treated with us. Others went off to trick-or-treat with their families. Mi'ita was disappointed with who left and who stayed, nor could she agree with everyone else's consensus on where to go. So by 6:30 we left everyone else to their devices and came home with a teary girl. Too much sugar, too much party, too much stimulus, not enough flexibility.

Ah well. We accomplished what I wanted to accomplish: a huge amount of information about different cultures around the world, a taste of different foods, and fun.

























3 comments:

  1. I don't know, I *like* your Cerberus! :)

    Truly sorry we couldn't come. Sounds absolutely fascinating. I know nothing about the Irish traditions; what does Morganne do?

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  2. She is the goddess of war, considered tricky and not particularly nice. She has nothing to do with Samhain. They don't really have a god associated with that holiday, but every other culture had a god to study so I didn't want to leave the Celts out. Samhain is the Celtic New Year, the most important festival of the year, and they (used to and probably do somewhat) extinguish their family fire and go to the community meeting place. There the Druids built two big bonfires and everyone was blessed by walking between them. The Druids also believed that the line between the dead and the living was the thinnest at that time of year (a common theme for lots of cultures.) The dead and otherworld beings could come visit, and while some of them are your family and friends just coming for a visit, others are not so nice and would try to steal you and take you back with them. The Druids dressed up as these otherworld beings (witches, hobgoblins, etc) to confuse them. That's where costumes came from.

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