Take a Break: Dia de los Muertos Food and Coloring

Food! Glorious Food! This holiday offers all sorts of lovely treats. Chocolate, sugar skulls, tequila and Pan de Muertos or Day of the Dead Bread decorate altars, along with foods that those being remembered enjoyed in life. Pan de Muertos, a yeast sweet bread, is molded into bones, skeletons or other shapes relating to the holiday. Below are several recipes to try.

Pan de Muertos (recipe is given in Spanish and English)

T’ant’a Wawas (Andean All Saints’ Day Bread)

Because Halloween is a much bigger holiday where I live, I have come across some interesting Halloween treats that lend themselves to Day of the Dead. The best collection I’ve seen is from Our Best Bites. They have some easy ways to make bones and interesting looking fingers. They also describe how tonic water, when exposed to a black light, will glow in the dark. If the mood hits you, you can make Jell-O look like it’s radioactive.

More than anything, make foods that were special to those you are remembering.

Coloring
A very calming activity, there are some fun things to do with pages that you color. For the mandala patterns, you can cut them into four sections and have people color just a portion. Then assemble them to make unique art pieces. It also works by coloring the entire mandala, then cutting them into four pieces and reassembling. If you put a lattice pattern, use simple construction paper, between each reassembled picture, you create a very interesting quilt pattern.

Some of these coloring pages can be used as patterns for sand paintings, outlined in last week’s post.

Sugar Skull Mask Will work for mandala project

Skeleton Coloring Picture

Day of the Dead Skull

Skull and bones mandala

Teacher packet

I came across the Missoula Mandala Project 2009 Celebrating Day of the Dead while looking for coloring pages. This large community mandala was made using sawdust.

If you are needing more information about Day of the Dead in general, go to the first “Take a Break” post this month.