Brazilian Carnival Creations: Making Masks

While most South American countries are Spanish-speaking, the people of Brazil, the continent’s largest country, speak Portuguese. This is because it was people from Portugal who, in the late 15th century, explored and settled in the eastern side of South America, which is now Brazil.

From the colorful book Festivals of the World: Brazil we learn about one of South America’s biggest celebrations, Carnival. When the Portuguese came to South America they brought their Catholic beliefs with them, just as the Spaniards did. Each year before Easter the new inhabitants practiced Lent, a solemn 40 days of personal sacrifice. They always enjoyed four days of celebration leading up to Ash Wednesday. This celebration has grown into a magnificent festival that takes place annually. While many towns and countries across South America take part in this celebration, the most famous Carnival festival takes place in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro, where people come from all over the world to join in the fun.

During Carnival people dress in brightly colored costumes with lots of gold and silver detailing and wear masks and headdresses with magnificent feathers and plumes. Participants ride fantastic floats and fill the streets, singing and dancing in a parade.

The headdresses of the dancers remind us of the Native American headdresses that the chiefs wore hundreds of years ago. The costumes also show the influence of the African people who were brought over long ago by the Portuguese to help harvest sugar cane. Today the costumes and headpieces have become so intricate and ornate that they can weigh 50 pounds!

We decide it would be fun to make our own Carnival creations. Here’s how we made our Carnival masks:

We gather some goodies from our craft drawer. Pom poms, feather, gems, sequins and stickers. And lay out our art mat….

We found these plastic masks at Walmart, but you can also cut them out of cardboard or a paper plate.

The kids layout their feathers.

We tape them together before taping them to the inside of the mask.

The scouts get to work gluing and decorating their masks.

CZ cuts tissue paper into a fringe.

And adds it to her mask…

We use these 3D puffy paints from Elmers to add some details

And let the masks dry.
CZ:

HZ:

AZ:

And then give them a try. As a mask:

And as a headdress:

Ready for the party!

Native American Storytelling

Long before the introduction of the written word, native americans were sharing stories and marking their history in various ways. In Mexico, stone carvings and decorated clay pieces told tales through a sequence of images. In Hawaii, hula dancers strung moves together to create a story. And in the North, native tribes carved long logs into totem poles.

To find out more about totem poles we picked up Totem Pole by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith. We learned that they almost always featured the animals whose spirits the native americans prayed to. They could be displayed like a family crest and were generally read from the bottom up.

We decided to construct a couple with toys from our playroom.

First with trex blocks

And then with ice cream scoops…

AZ drew a quick totem pole. Hers tells a story from top to bottom.

Can you “read” it?

And CZ made one out of words:

Tribes
Outdoors
Territory
Everlasting
Marked 

People
Outstanding
Love
Environment

To get a picture of a real totem pole we didn’t have to go far. Check out the tall one in our school’s courtyard…

We also learned a bit about native american folktale, and read two nice tales, as retold by Tomie dePaola.

The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush

And The Legend of the Bluebonnet.

We discovered that these early stories focused on nature and survival, but their message is still very relevant today. We also learned that native american children were given their names by others based on their personality and deeds.

The scouts took a moment to name each other and came up with:
She-Who-Loves-To-Play
Little Sweet Tooth
King-of-Trains

And We’re Off! Week 1 – North America

We started the first day after a long afternoon of fun in the sun so I was a bit worried that it would be hard to keep the scouts’ attention. How wrong I was!

We lay out our stack of books from the library and the fabulous children’s world map by Eeboo that I ordered last week. It’s laminated and whimsical — kid-friendly all around. That said, the scouts weren’t particularly interested in it at first, but as soon as we started talking about the explorers and their journeys from Europe to what is now North America, the girls perked up. They were quick to trace the course that the ships may have taken and were interested in the ways that the English, Spanish and French had influenced the parts they explored and settled in.

We used the book Exploration Into North America as our guide, and I thought it was a great source because it focused quite a bit on the Native Americans and not just the European Settlers. The girls took notes in their journey books and will post some of their favorite facts tomorrow 🙂

The Native American story was particularly interesting to us because we live in a small town on the coast of New England and many neighborhoods, roads, and landmarks have Native American names–including our school! My oldest daughter had recently read a biography of Sacagawea and was happy to share her story. We looked through the book North American Indian and it was neet to see the many ways that early american life was actually quite similar to ours today. The Native Americans even had a sport much like lacrosse! One big surprise was the portrait of Pocahontas. The scouts were quick to note that she looks nothing like the Disney princess!