I don't know how it happened, but somehow I found out that tonight is Mardi Gras. It was about...oh...say, dinner time. And I decided since M was going to be gone late at a meeting, I wanted to have a Mardi Gras party.
First, I had to tell my kids about Mardi Gras; they have never heard of it. So we ended up having a mini homeschool unit where we learned about Twelfth Night, Ash Wednesday, Lent, and...
Pancake Tuesday! Sorry, IJ. This wasn't on your chart. I just have to go with my spontaneity sometimes. Boy, do I love Wikipedia. We learned that carnival is from the Latin words
carne and
vale, which mean
meat and
goodbye. And of course we learned that
mardi and
gras is French for
Tuesday and
fat. I showed them Louisiana and New Orleans on the map. We read about how different cultures celebrate Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday/Pancake Day and they really liked the story of the woman who was so busy frying pancakes, she forgot to go to church until she heard the bells ringing. She ran down the street in her apron with a pancake in her frying pan. To this day, people have pancake flipping races running down the street in housewife gear.
While the kids made sparkly crazy masks
(and the school didn't think I could use that collage and glitter kit for a million things this year) for their costume parade, I made
New Orleans Banana Flapjacks and smothered them in chocolate sauce (
high fructose corn syrup!). They dressed up as a crazy clown, a clown with a sparkly mask, and a strange monkey thing. F was a wizard. IJ tried to be a vampire because I am halfway through the best scary book I've ever read- Dracula-and he wanted to scare me. Too bad he can't scare me better than I can scare myself. Every time I woke up last night I covered my neck. Anyways....my costume was...the pancake flipping housewife. What else could I be?
And what children's version of Mardi Gras would be complete without a Princess and the Frog movie night? They finally understand the whole parade/Mardi Gras wedding thing now.
As the movie was starting and IJ was still packing away his chocolate banana pancakes (
made with white flour and butter-gasp! talk about fat!), I continued the history lessons and placed the movie in its historical context. When I got to the jazz music, IJ informed me he does not like jazz, only rock n' roll. "Jazz is the grandfather of rock," I told him. He doesn't care. There is no electric guitar or heavy drums in that old-fashioned jazz music. I must speak to his father about his horrid taste in music!
Or maybe not.
Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. I think I may continue this lesson and see if we can give up the sweets for the next 40 days...
