Fried Tortillas

Tonight the children made their own Mexican flour tortillas from scratch. We then fried them and topped them with home made refried beans and tomato salsa. This project week is not making anyone thinner!

Day of the Dead Shrine

This weekend Mexicans will be celebrating day of the Dead; a festival that celebrates the lives of dead ancestors. We made a traditional shrine like those made in Mexico. The shrines have photographs of the dead ancestors and everything their spirits will need to join in the celebration on Earth. Objects include foods and drinks, salt to ward off evil spirits, soap, comb, mirror and jewellery for the spirit to prepare themselves with, candles to light their way, and flowers to guide them to the shrine. We added our home made sugar skulls and Day of the Dead bread.

Day of the Dead Bread

The children baked these traditional Day of the Dead sweet breads ready for Day of the Dead this weekend. They were delicious!

Sugar Skulls

The Mexican festival of Day of the Dead is celebrated this weekend. The children made these traditional sugar skulls. They are easy to make. Just mix about 3 cups of sugar with an egg white. Then pack the sugar mixture into skull moulds. You can scrape off excess sugar with a credit card! Turn them out and bake in a cool oven (about 90C) to dry them out. Use icing pens to decorate them.

Mixing sugar and egg white

Pressing mixture firmly into the moulds

Excess sugar scraped off

Turned out skulls ready for decorating

We made a few chocolate ones as well.

Mexican Chilli Chocolate Chicken

The children cooked this traditional Mexican dish of chicken cooked in a chilli and chocolate sauce. They served it with Mexican chilli and mandarin salad.

Both recipes are from this book.

Sculpture By The Sea

Today we went along to Bondi Beach for the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition. Here are some of our favourites along with some nice views along the cliff tops.

Colourful Mexican Houses

We have used colourful Mexican houses as inspiration for these artworks. First the children cut out some house templates from card. We made the roofs flat like many houses in Mexico.

We then used the templates to make the images of houses nestled on a hillside. The children took care to rub out parts that wouldn't be seen because they would be covered by the buildings in front.

The children used watercolours to paint their hillside village.

Pacifica Gods

Today we went along to Casula Powerhouse for the Pacifica Gods Festival and exhibition. We got to see some traditional Pacific Island's dance and music performances along with the Pacifica Gods exhibition. We also tried Tongan Pig Spit Roast.

The children took a clay workshop where they created Pacific Islands style masks. I'll show you photos of that when we get them out of the kiln.