Skip to main content

Mardi Gras!

If you know me very well then you know that I celebrate pretty much every holiday I can. I love finding out about different cultures, people, and ideas. I spend a lot of time researching a holiday and its traditions to make sure we celebrate it in as much of an accurate and authentic way as we can. I try to find picture books, crafts, and recipes to make it meaningful and memorable. If there is a local festival or activity then we attend that as well. Its great because most months have something going on in them and it makes planning Social Studies really easy.

Mardi Gras was on February 28th this year, although we learned that the celebrations, feasts, and merry making typically start about 2 weeks before the day on the calendar going all the way through Mardi Gras and ending on Ash Wednesday . We had our party on the 28th but took a few days before to learn about it and get ready.

I added some really great books to my holiday collection. I realized that I didn't have any books about Mardi Gras so I Googled and read reviews and settled on 2 books that sounded like they would give the meaning of the traditions of Mardi Gras and help explain the holiday as well as the cultural meaning behind some of the traditions. The books I got were really great and encouraged great conversation. I love a beautiful picture book that inspires curiosity and makes them want to learn more.



I also found a couple books at the library that talked about traditional Louisiana food. They didn't have information about Mardi Gras in them but it was nice to have a few books that talked about Louisiana and the cuisine since that's where we were focusing our Mardi Gras lesson. We talked about how other countries celebrated Mardi Gras and Carnival, but our focus was New Orleans. A quick internet search brought me to a you tube reading of these 2 books which are songs. When I read them I didn't know the tunes so we had to find out what they were. 


  
We started the Sunday before by making Mickey Beignets. I know its not traditional but I wanted to make them like the ones we had in Disneyland on our last trip. My daughter couldn't have them due to her allergies so I thought it would be fun to make some for her. I even used the recipe from this website that claims it is the one Disneyland uses. I used Ener-G egg replacer to replace the egg and it worked great.




Then we served them in paper bags with powdered sugar... Disney style! The kids loved them as you can see by the very happy faces. They only get donuts once a year on Mardi Gras.




My husband and I had ours on a plate complete with a café au lait.


On Mardi Gras Day we started the day by reading some of our books and doing a coloring page I found on the Crayola website. We then went out with our friends for a bit to do our weekly nature hike. When we came home we turned on Spotify and found some great Mardi Gras Jazz music and made our Cajun inspired Jambalaya dish.


I also made Mini king cakes. This year I kept it simple by using refrigerator cinnamon roll dough. I did make my own colored sugar since it is hard to find nut free sprinkles. We didn't have a baby but my daughter had a little figurine that stood in for it. I had my husband stick it in one of the cakes after they were cooked and cooled. Then I served one to everyone so no one would know who had the baby. 



My son found the baby as you can see by his very large forced smile. He was a little confused as to why it was in there. We had so much fun and cant wait to celebrate again next year. Laissez les bon temps roulez!!  
  



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bug Homes

This week with  Mother Goose Time we learned all about Bug Homes. We talked about bugs that use plants as their homes, live in dirt, make hills, webs, and hives. This was such an interesting week especially for my older daughter. She had so many questions and these topics sparked so many conversations. I think our favorite day was about hives. We learned so much about bees and we even did a fun experiment. One activity we did was the Honeycomb activity. This was an invitation to create project so I set up everything that they would need and then let them create. This helped my son with his fine motor skills because we used little hexagon stencils to draw the picture, It also gave me a chance to have him verbally tell me what he included in is picture. He did a great job and retained quite a bit of information. I loved that after the project was over he was able to tell me what was going on in his picture. He included the hexagon cells of the honeycomb, them he ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mother Goose Time Our Way

When I first started homeschooling I wrote out schedules and times for when we would do certain subjects and activities. I pretty much drove myself crazy trying to keep up with our strict schedule. I felt stressed and most of all I felt like I was failing. I've come a long way since then. Our homeschool is so much more relaxed and homey feeling. I think the biggest change I made is going by a routine instead of a schedule. A schedule is so rigid and gives you this feeling that you can't stray from the schedule. A routine, for me anyway, is so much more flexible, and  Mother Goose Time has fit in so seamlessly with our routine. In fact I will be a little sad when my kids are to old for this program because I love the way Mother Goose Time enhances what we do each day. Our morning routine pretty much starts off the same each day. We start with what I like to call Breakfast and books. This is the time that I introduce the Daily Topic for the day. Mother Goose Time provides a Da...
Post a Comment
Read more

Black Tie Not Required

World Penguin Day was this week on April 25 and conveniently we had a day about Penguins in this months  Mother Goose Time box. I switched a few days around so that we could do the Penguin Day on World Penguin Day because what better way to celebrate this adorable birds special day then to learn all about them. We started off the morning by reading the suggested story in the Teacher Guide which gave us some really good information about penguins. After reading the story we used potatoes as eggs and tried balancing them on our feet like the daddy penguins do. It was pretty hard and we gained a lot of respect for those amazing dads! After this we played the Penguin Moves game from the Teacher Guide. It used the included pocket cube and the cube cards. This game had us waddling, hopping, and sliding to different letters and numbers as review. This was a lot of fun and a great way to get the wiggles out first thing in the morning. They especially...
Post a Comment
Read more