Hispanic Heritage Month is the perfect time for us as a familia to share our Hispanic heritage with little one’s friends at school, and with our community.
About Hispanic Heritage Month
Although Latinos are the second-largest, and fastest-growing minority group in the United States in our small Southern community we don’t have a large Latino presence. This is our opportunity to educate others on the beauty and richness of our heritage so they too can embrace diversity. This is significantly important due to all the negative media towards Latinos that we see daily.
Monica from Mommy Maestra sums it up in her post on Why We Need Hispanic Heritage Month:
“Hispanic Heritage Month is a vitally important observance for the United States, perhaps now more than ever. According to the U.S. Census, there are 53 million Hispanics in the country. And yet every day media reports show an increasing hostility toward Hispanic immigrants and Spanish-speaking families as they are used for political platforms, promoting stereotypes and ignorant backlash.”
Therefore, we need to continue to instill pride in our bilingual and multicultural children. Particularly since we live in a community where Latinos are far and few.
Hispanic Heritage Month in the classroom
In little one’s classroom, he only has one Hispanic friend. She too is bilingual and her parents are from Mexico. Since they are the only two Latino and bicultural children in their classroom. I approached her Mom so her daughter could participate in a special presentation activity on sharing their heritage. I thought it’d be cool for them to do it together! The activity includes: reading a book, talking about where their family comes from, and gifting their classmates with a mini-piñata.
Hispanic Heritage Month Books
Children’s Book
The book they both read was F is for Fiesta by Susan Middleton Elya. It’s perfect for the occasion and has enough words in Spanish for the children to read aloud, and enough words in English for their monolingual classmates to understand. The book highlights the Hispanic culture through the use of the Spanish alphabet.
Hispanic Heritage Month Classrom Activity Presentation
They both made a tri-fold. Little one helped cut out and glue the pictures. We also included a picture of us with the familia in Puerto Rico and another one of his Abuelo from Ecuador with both of us. He was so excited about the presentation! His friend and classmate shared a similar tri-fold with pictures and information on Mexico.
Special Treat
For the treats, we made mini-piñatas filled with Mexican candy. We made them out of toilet paper rolls and wrapped them with colorful party streamers, and ribbon to carry.
This was a fun activity to put together! I am also grateful to my son’s friend’s mom for going along with my crazy idea and helping me make the min-piñatas while our children played in Spanish. Here you’ll find 50 Hispanic Heritage Month Inspired Crafts for Kids that you can make with your students or kids.
Community
I reached out to the director of our local library to bring awareness to Hispanic Heritage Month. What I initially had in mind was to volunteer to set up a table with children’s books on notable Hispanic figures, and information on Spanish-speaking countries. In our conversation, I mentioned having celebrated a Hispanic Heritage Month Fiesta last year in our home. She loved the idea, and a fiesta was planned! I was thrilled to have my name mentioned as a special guest in “A Celebration of Hispanic Culture.”
The children’s book Abuela by Arthur Dorros was read by our child, and I had a PowerPoint presentation in which I talked about where our son’s Abuelas were from both Puerto Rico and Ecuador, and valuable information on Hispanic Heritage Month.
We had two different crafts: papel picado, and plastic bottle maracas. In the background, I was playing both Lucky Diaz De Aqui y de Alla and Mister G’s ABC Fiesta CD. The guest was also treated to freshly made churros fried on the spot!
I am beyond happy with our participation in celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month at the library. We had a great outcome, and our son surprised me by wanting to read the book in English/Spanish all by himself to a room full of people. I am also thankful for the emotional support my husband, and dear friends gave me with their mere presence. I am also eternally grateful to the director of the library for allowing me the opportunity to share the beauty and richness of our Hispanic heritage with our community.
It is my hope that we’ve planted the seed of knowledge about our Hispanic culture, and heritage in the hearts of the children in our son’s classroom, and in the community. Thus bridging the gap of ignorance, and prejudice toward the unknown with a newfound knowledge that embraces diversity.
Looking for more ideas on how to bring Hispanic Heritage Month to your classroom, or homeschool?
Decorate this month with this beautiful and gorgeous papel picado banner:
Or use these posters to decorate your bulletin board:
For younger kids, try this fun memory game:
For older kids, try these digital games out:
Love all the activities you planned! Sounds like lots of fun. You should be very proud of yourself for being such a great ambassador of our Hispanic heritage.
This is just so awesome! It's neat to see that the library was so excited to welcome you and your culture in to share with everyone. What a treat to your community you are!! Did you make the churros?
Also! Those mini pinatas are adorable. How fun for your son's class. 🙂
Hello dear! We truly had an amazing time! The churros were premade (frozen) all we had to do was fry them on the spot. The director actually fried them. 🙂
Gracias Mariana Llanos! I like that! Great ambassador of our Hispanic Heritage. 🙂 Thanks for commenting!