Honoring our Ancestors

​When introducing the concept of ancestors to the children we explained that ancestors are relatives and family members who are no longer living. They can be our parent's parents and all our relatives all they way back to pre-historic times.

Honoring ancestors is an ancient tradition still practiced all over the world. 
Some do this as a way to cultivate family value and kinship. Others believe the deceased have a continual existence and ability to influence the physical world even after they are gone.

 Fall is the most common time of year for these ancestor celebrations; the light is waning, plants are returning into the ground and lore says "the veil between the worlds is thin."

This Fall our community is celebrating with many ancestor feasts where we prepare food inspired by our family heritage, listen to ancient stories from their lands, and create art to honor the lives and myths of our ancestors culture.

We love to cook at the Children's Garden! For more details on all the learning benefits of cooking with children please see our previous blogs:

Cooking with Children

Top 10 Benefits of Cooking with Kids

​​Cherokee Three Sisters Stew and Corn Muffins

We acknowledge with the children that this land we love, learn, and play on here is the ancestral homeland of the Cherokee people, who were some of the first people to have lived here.

To honor some of the children's Cherokee ancestry we listened to the Legend of the Three Sisters and prepared a delicious 3 sisters stew of corn, beans, and squash with corn muffins.

We listened to more Cherokee stories and learned some simple Cherokee words for some of the animals in our area.

Mexican Chili with Quesadillas and Guacamole

The kids helped grind the toasted cumin seeds with the mocajete, seed and chop the peppers, and prepare the quesadillas and guacamole.

While we cooked we listened to the classic Mexican folk song "La Bruja"!

Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a holiday of Mexican heritage where families welcome back the souls of their deceased relatives for a big reunion and is a big celebration in our old neighborhood in Austin, Texas.

We made sugar skulls from clay and painted them. In Mexican cultures sugar skulls signify a person who has died. The name of a deceased loved one is written on a skull and placed in an altar that is created by the family. The purpose is to honor their spirit during the Day of the Dead festivities. 

These colorful smiling skulls help to acknowledge and celebrate that death is a part of life rather than the end of it.

We went for a search for Mexico on the glowing globe!

We also enjoyed this washable coloring map as we located and colored different countries that our ancestors came from.

Eastern European Borscht

Borscht is a beet soup from Ukraine, Poland, and Russia and a nutritious way to honor our Eastern European heritage.

The kids loved this slavic folk tale of a magical and prophetic burning bird which is both a blessing and a curst to it's captor.

Viking Gruel Cookies

We honored our Northern European heritage with a cookie twist on a classic Nordic gruel of oats, crushed hazelnuts, and berries.

We danced to ABBA, read some of our favorite Elsa Beskow books, and added more art to our Ancestor Mural.

German Chocolate Cake

To celebrate our German heritage we listened to Bach as the children arrived, prepared this classic chocolate cake with upgraded healthy ingredients, and then danced the polka at our dance party!

This is one of our favorite story books by German author, Daniela Drescher.

And we added Epona, the horse goddess, to our ancestor mural, who was praised in Old World Germany around 200 AD.

British Baked Beans on Toast

We made this classic British Breakfast and Irish Potato Pancakes to honor our Celtic heritage, then listened to kid-freindly stories of the Green Man, Cerridwen, and the Morrigan.

Irish Potato Pancakes

Italian Minestrone with Pesto Pasta

We made a tasty minestrone with all these beautiful peppers and eggplants donated to us from Mama Hannah! Then added Venus to our mural and read about this famous goddess as well as the comical 'Strega Nona' to celebrate our Italian heritage.

Bolivian Chipilos

These fried plantain patties were more delicious than any Halloween candy! We added a little cinnamon, a little salt, mashed them up, and then formed them into patties to fry up in coconut oil. Yum! Huge thank you to Mama Arica for donating the plantains!!

We have been practicing our Spanish in storytime with Ben Bear and learning about the seasons with Mama Annalise in Spanish class!

Ancestor Mural

All the groups collaborated in the creation process of our ancestor mural! We have many more countries and cultures to continue to add!

Historic Field Trip

Remember how last month we discovered that Grandmother Magic Maple tree is around 200 years old? That started the conversation of "What was life like here when Magic Maple was a little sapling?"

​We visited the Zebulon Vance Historic Site to find out!

We were guided on a History Mystery tour as we passed around historic objects to try and guess what they were used for and visited dwellings from the early 19th century.

Science Class!

In the Garden

We have been harvesting greens for our lunch every day and casting seeds for our winter cover crop.

Pumpkins!

Music Time!

Sweet Friends!

See you next time!