Mexico

Last Tuesday we completed our year long partnership with the fourth graders. We celebrated the Mexican culture with food, crafts, singing, games and stories. The fourth graders from Mrs.Straka’s class were our tour guides. Each student was responsible to guide a group of 2-4 Kindergarten students through five centers.

Each child created paper plate maraca using colorful paints, papers and steamers. The original maracas were made from hollow gourds filled with pebbles or seeds. We filled ours with beans.

Each child listened to the story Celebrating Cinco de Mayo and Uncle Nachos Hat.

We learned that the fifth of May is a time for a fiesta, or celebration. The streets of Mexico are filled with food, fun, colorful dresses and sombreros. The children celebrate with candy filled piñatas.

We continued a traveling suitcase which will house a reflective piece of writing for each student about the country of study.

Today we drew pictures and wrote about what we have learned about Mexico. We learned a Mexican dance, read stories, made maracas and ate tortilla chips and salsa.

Mrs. Valente taught all of the Kindergarten students as well as the fourth graders a Mexican dance during Music class. We clapped, and enjoyed dancing with our fourth grade buddies.

We enjoyed a snack of tortilla chips and salsa. It was a little spicy for most of us but it was fun to try a new food! We enjoyed looking over Mexican artifacts and clothing as we ate our snack.

We looked at the flag of Mexico. The flag is a rectangle divided into three vertical stripes with the colors placed in the following order from hoist to fly: green, white, and red. Centered in the white stripe is the National Coat of Arms. The Coat of Arms recalls an old Aztec legend: The Aztec people were guided by Huitzilopochtli to seek a place where an eagle landed on a prickly-pear cactus, eating a snake. After hundreds of years of wandering they found the sign on a small swampy island in Lake Texcoco. Their new home they named Mexico-Tenochtitlan ("In the Moon's navel-Place of the Prickly Pear Cactus"). In A.D. 1325 they built a city on the site of the island in the lake; this is now the center (downtown) of Mexico City.

We would like to thank everyone who helped to make our Multicultural celebrations successful. We would like to thank Mrs. Rahilly, especially, for organizing artifacts, food donations and visitors each month.

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