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Title: El Día de los Muertos
Category: Experiencing another culture
Description: experiencing the
Last week we learned a song that explained what Mexican people do for the Day of the Dead and the students made their own sugar skulls.   El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) has been celebrated in what is now Mexico for thousands of years.  In Spanish class we have been studying about the Day of the Dead for the students to get a feeling for just how different the beliefs of other people can be.  The Aztecs and Mayans believed in reincarnation.  They also believed that the spirits of their loved ones could come back to visit.  They see these visits as joyful times, they ring the church bells (Day of the Dead is now a Christian holiday) and prepare their ancestors' favorite foods.  They dance and make jokes about death at the same time they stay up all night in the cemetery burning candles and incense in memory of their loved ones.  They make skulls out of sugar and decorate them with the names of their departed loved ones and their children.  We have no celebration like this in our culture and it gives our students an opportunity to experience the"otherness" of other peoples' cultural beliefs.  We also compare Day of the Dead to Halloween, a holiday with Celtic roots.  I hope you enjoyed the beautiful sugar skulls that your student brought home.  The students are so creative!    

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