Bilingual Easter Printables & TpT Sale

I'm losing track of the days now that our normal routine has been thrown out the window. Even though we already homeschooled, the days were easy to recognize based on when I was required to go to town to take my son to his taekwondo classes, Civil Air Patrol meetings, and homeschool Co-op classes.

So the point is that Easter has snuck up on me. I can't believe it's less than a week away. And one of my children has a birthday this week. This quarantine, while extremely necessary, is really hard on kids who were hoping to celebrate birthdays with big parties and lots of friends, but now have to spend it like any other day at home. To find ways to celebrate both, I'm looking everywhere online to find ideas for activities we can do here as a family.

And if you find yourself wondering what to do with the kids this coming Easter weekend, don't forget that I do have fun printables for your little ones to color. Or make cascarones!

PLUS EVERYTHING in my TpT store is on sale Monday and Tuesday, April 6th & 7th.

Enjoy!

Bilingual Easter-Themed Activity Sheets for Preschool

Boost your child’s literacy and math skills with this fun, Easter-themed packet! This multicultural packet contains images of both the Easter bunny and cascarones.

Easter Book of Words

Introduce your young students to the vocabulary associated with Easter. This little booklet lets them color in the picture, then read and write the words.

Easter Book of Colors

Help your preschooler or language learner to learn their colors with this Easter-themed coloring book!

Bilingual Easter Counting Mats

I hope you enjoy these free counting mats for children learning to count from one to five. So much fun, they can easily be used with ANY small objects...decorations, buttons, beans, Easter-themed stickers, etc. Or your little ones can just draw their own shapes or pictures to fill in each row.

Cascarones Bilingual Minibook

This mini-book is a brief history of the popular Hispanic craft of making cascarones. This book includes coloring pages of items related to the history of this craft, as well as brief descriptions in English and Spanish that are easy for young children to understand. At the end of the book are simple directions in English and Spanish for making cascarones. Contains three language versions.

Decorate Your Own Cascarón Bilingual Activities

Roll the dice and decorate your cascarón using the options provided. This file now contains 3 dice activities with directions.

A One-Page History of Cascarones

This is a one-page history of cascarones. From where they originated to how to make them, this informational text is written for students in 4th - 8th grade. Includes a 7-question comprehension quiz plus answer key.

Cascarones Activity for Earth Day

© Can Stock Photo - glenkar

Did you have any cascarones left over from your Easter weekend? Probably not, but just in case, I thought I would share this one activity that is perfect for celebrating Earth Day.

(If you're wondering what cascarones are, check out this post that talks about the history of this creative tradition.)

Either way, growing seedlings inside eggshells is a practical and organic way to garden and welcome spring. It's also fun! I have attached a video below from Miracle Grow (no paid promotion - I just looked up videos and liked this one best!) that gives the simple directions for growing seeds (herbs, perennials, annuals, shrubs, trees, vines - you name it!) in an eggshell.

Our chickens lay a lot of eggs and we grow a LOT of seeds. So this is a perfect activity for our family.

Don't waste your money on expensive trays. Just use what you probably have available in your kitchen - eggs and egg trays.

How to make eco-friendly planters from eggshells

The directions are simple:

1. Save your eggshells from your normal meal schedule, being careful to crack the eggs on one end (the big end!) so that most of the egg remains intact. 
2. Wash the eggshell thoroughly. 
3. Use a pin, thumbtack, or small nail to poke a few drainage holes in the opposite end.
4. Fill your eggshell 3/4ths of the way full with potting soil.
5. Drop your seeds inside the egg. (You can do just one seed, but I think two(2) seeds is best so that you have a backup if one doesn't sprout!)
6. Cover lightly with more potting soil being careful to leave a lip of eggshell around the top so that the soil/seed don't wash away when you water it.
7. Place your egg tray full of planted eggs in a sunny windowsill where it will be warm and get plenty of light. 
8. Water every few days depending on how quickly the soil dries out. Those seeds love the moisture, but not a soggy environment!

Once your seeds sprout and are a good two or three inches with at least two leaves, you can transfer your seedlings to a bigger pot. Be sure to gently crack the eggshell apart so that the roots can grow and spread in the new soil and not become root bound in the eggshell.

The great thing, too, is that eggshells can benefit the new plant. They provide calcium carbonate, which the seedling uses to build healthy, strong cell walls.

Other Earth Day Activities

You may also enjoy these other Earth Day activities and printables.

• Earth School
• 5 Simple Ways to Celebrate Earth Day at Home
• Free Earth Day Acrostic Poem Activity
• Free Download: Bilingual Earth Day Puzzle Cards
• Bilingual Earth Day Activities for PreK - 1st
• 5 Latino Children's Books to Celebrate #EarthDay

Happy Earth Day!

How to Make Confetti Eggs (Cascarones) Videos

A few years ago, I wrote a post sharing a brief history of cascarones - how they originated in China and were introduced to Mexico by Empress Carlota. 

This year, I stumbled upon several awesome video tutorials for making cascarones. Different families make them different ways, and I love seeing the variety. So I thought that I would share some of my favorite videos with you. I know many of you are doing this at home with your children or in your classrooms with your students!

If this is your first time making cascarones, these three videos are great tutorials. 

Video Tutorials for Making Cascarones

My friend, Yvette from Muy Bueno Cookbook, made this awesome video last year about making cascarones with her kids. You can visit her website to print out the directions. 

If you'd like to see more videos from Muy Bueno Cookbook, you can subscribe to her YouTube channel.

Now this video from Tiny Teachers has absolutely stolen my heart! These sweet girls have got it down pat! Teresa and Liana have some other great videos online, too, so check them out. :)

From these two girls we go now to Abuela's Kitchen! She shows us the way she grew up making cascarones (and she's pretty funny, too). This video is mostly in Spanish, but I think that's not a problem for most of you. If I remember correctly, it has subtitles in English.

You may already know her from her YouTube channel that has 238 thousand subscribers!! It's full of videos of her sharing traditional Mexican recipes. (UPDATE: Sadly, I believe that she passed away on Christmas Day in 2021.)

Articles & Blogs Featuring Cascarones

If you are looking for additional decorating ideas, here are a few places that I like to pull up so I can be amazed and inspired by other people's creativity:

• Re-invented style has these hand-painted eggs on display.
• Mexican Easter Eggs—Artelexia-style
• Call Me Grandma has these beautiful cascarones on her blog
• and Anna on Flickr (@arctexas) has this inspirational photo

Cascarones Printables for Kids

Here's one last resource for those of you searching for printable activities to share with your kids. My TpT shop has several cascarones-themed activity packs for a variety of ages, including the ones shown below:

Other posts you may enjoy...

• Resources for Holy Week & Easter
• Guatemalan Alfombras During Semana Santa
• And if you have any eggshells left over, then here is one idea of what you can do with them!

Enjoy, my friends!

New Bilingual Minibook On the History of Cascarones

Easter is less than two weeks away, so I just wanted to remind you about my bilingual minibook on cascarones. The little booklet includes black-and-white images for your children/students to color in, as well as a brief description of the history of cascarones. Your kids will learn where cascarones originated, what they originally carried, and who introduced them to Mexico. There are even instructions on how to make your own cascarones included. The bilingual pages include full text in both English and Spanish.

You can find it here in my TpT store. 

(If you'd like to just read a brief history of cascarones, check out this post, which has the full story.)

This post contains affiliate links.

You can also check out my Decorate Your Own Cascarón Bilingual Activities, which has three roll-the-dice and decorate your cascarón using the options provided. 

But if you are looking for a no-prep printable that is better suited for older children, my One-Page History of Cascarones may be for you. This reading passage talks about where they originated to how to make them. This informational text is written for students in 4th - 8th grade, and includes a 7-question comprehension quiz plus answer key.

Craft Supplies

If you are looking for supplies to actually create your own cascarones at home, here is a list of the items that we typically use. 

• eggshells (carefully cracked on one end, emptied, and rinsed)
• food dye, OR
• an Easter egg dye kit
• tissue paper and/or crepe paper
• hole punch
• scissors
• glue

Other posts you may enjoy:

• Resources for Holy Week & Easter
• Multicultural Easter Basket Ideas
• Free Download: Spanish Verbs Easter Egg Activity
• Guatemalan Alfombras During Semana Santa
• Cascarones Activity for Earth Day

A Brief History of Cascarones

At the insistence of a friend, I finally got my act together and helped my kids make cascarones this week. To be honest, it was our first time to do so. But we had so much fun! It really got me to thinking, though, about who invented them and when. 

Do you know the history of cascarones? Because it is very interesting. And after learning the story behind these "Mexican Easter eggs," I'm finding them even more fascinating.

This post contains affiliate links.

What Are Cascarones?

First off, in case you don't know, cascarones are brightly colored/decorated eggshells that are filled with confetti. They may be simply made by children or elaborate, hand-painted masterpieces by artists. Here in the States, they are used during celebrations, typically around Easter. In Mexico, they are popular during the time of Carnaval. But really, people may use them during any festive occasion.

Where Did They Come From?

According to historians, cascarones originated in China. It is rumored that Marco Polo first brought them to Italy, and on to Spain, and they eventually made their way to the Americas. In the beginning, the eggs were quite elegant and valuable; instead of confetti, they were filled with perfumed powders, making them popular with high-society women.

They became quite popular in Mexico in the 1860s, after Emperor Maximiliano's wife, Carlotta, introduced them to the country. In Mexico, the powders were replaced with confetti and given their name "cascarones," the plural form of "cáscara," which means shell in Spanish.

Today, the tradition of making and using cascarones to celebrate is mostly popular in the Southwestern United States, though areas of Mexico still use them. Many say that good fortune falls upon the person who has un cascarón cracked over their head - and smashing one on someone's head is actually a sign of affection. Young adults often use them to engage in mild flirtation.

Printable Activities

I've created a bilingual minibook for elementary-aged children with this history. It includes coloring pages and even directions for making your own cascarones. It's a fun little resource for parents and teachers.

Older children, may enjoy this one-page reading passage (and it comes with a 7-question comprehension quiz for use in the home or school classroom).

I also have this fun Decorate Your Own Cascarón Bilingual Activity. 

Children's Books

You might also be interested in these books:

Fun Videos

• Whistlefritz has this delightful video of a Spanish song featuring cascarones. Great for Spanish learners and bilingual families!
  
  
• You might also love these How to Make Confetti Eggs (Cascarones) Videos

How Do You Make Cascarones?

There are many sites with directions on making cascarones, so I'm not going to give you step-by-step instructions in this post. But if you are looking for video tutorials on how to make cascarones, I have a few you'll love! They are fabulous!!

But I will share with you a quick photo tour of our adventure in making them:

First, we drained the eggs by making a small hole and then washing out the empty shell.
Then we colored them using a traditional egg coloring kit.

While the colored eggs were drying, we spent ages making confetti using
colored cardstock and a hole punch.



Hours later and with sore hands, we finally had enough confetti and eggs!

We made a simple funnel from some recycled paper, then added two spoonfuls of confetti.

A little glue around the edges of our hole....



Followed by a nice tissue paper "cap"



A few stickers and other embellishments, y ya! The cascarones are done!
(A few were lost in the whole process. Empty eggshells are a little delicate - especially when handled by little fingers.)

Supplies for Making Cascarones

Here's a list of some of the supplies we use when making cascarones.

Easter Egg Dye Kit 
(I like this one because it comes with sticker that the kids can use)

Tissue paper in assorted colors

Elmer's School Glue

Biodegradable Paper Confetti

What if I have shells left over?

If you wind up saving more egg shells than you have time to dye and fill, here's a great idea on what to do with them!

Other posts you may enjoy...

• Resources for Holy Week & Easter
  
  
• Guatemalan Alfombras During Semana Santa (shown above)
  
  
• Ways To Celebrate Día de los Niños, Día de los Libros/Children's Day, Book Day