The Amazing Race through the Arts: From Plock, Poland to Gera, Germany to Takaoka, Japan

The Foundation for Arts and Music in Education of the Wabash area will host its fourth annual FAME Festival on March 27, 2010. The festival will take place at the Honeywell Center in Wabash, Indiana.

The FAME foundation was founded in 1987 to foster and perpetuate creativity through multicultural arts education.

The theme this year is centered around the countries of Poland, Germany, and Japan, each having a sister city to Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The 2nd 9 weeks group of fifth graders each made a poster representing the FAME festival's theme. Each poster refers to Poland, Germany, and Japan in some way.

One of the Blair Pointe submissions will be made into a professionally printed poster which will be used around Peru to publicize the FAME Festival.

For more details about the Foundation for Art and Music in Education, or the FAME Festival, please visit their website: www.famearts.org

Dia de los Muertos

The Day of the Dead

The Day of the Dead is a holiday celebrated in Mexico and by Latin Americans living in the United States and Canada. The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died. The celebration occurs on November 1 and 2.

This year, two groups of fifth graders learned about the Mexican culture by studying The Day of the Dead, and creating two common Mexican symbols.

CALAVERA is Spanish for "skull." A popular calavera around Day of the Dead is CALAVERAS DE AZUCAR, or "sugar skulls." These are used to adorn altars and can be eaten.

A mask that is made to resemble a skull is also called a CALAVERA.

One group of fifth graders created their own Calaveras with cardboard, oil pastels, marker, and glitter.

They then sculpted the bones to use as a border decoration.

CALACA is a Mexican name for skeleton. It is a figure of a human skeleton used for decoration during the Day of the Dead festival.

Calacas are usually shown as joyous rather than mournful figures. afterlife.

They are often shown wearing festive clothing, dancing, and playing musical instruments to indicate a happy afterlife.

This reflects the Mexican belief that no dead soul likes to be thought of sadly.

This group of 5th graders created these 3D Calacas out of pipecleaners, lots and lots of masking tape, paint, and cloth.

The students had to make the clothing and props for their calacas by themselves! We used a lot of hot-glue!