Today we looked at the holidays that different cultures celebrate at the end of October.  Traditionally, in America we celebrate Halloween.  Halloween, however, has its origins in Europe and we took a trip down our collective memory lane this morning to discover how we evolved from the pagan traditions of the 1700’s to the trick-or-treating we participate in today.  The History Channel provided us with some entertaining and educational videos to learn about how our current traditions came to be.

When we were done learning about the history of our traditions, we took a trip South of the border to Mexico to learn about Dia de los Muertos.  We learned about the symbols of the holiday and how it is celebrated.  We spent some time comparing and contrasting the two celebrations.

Finally after all of our research, we created our own versions of the highly decorated skulls used in Dia de los Muertos celebrations.  We looked at images of how to decorate the skulls and what the symbols represent and got to work being creative!