I am from Louisiana, and we visit as often as we can to see my family so it is important to me to keep the tradition of Mardi Gras alive in our home. This year, I tried to involve Laken as much as possible in those traditions, while creating a few of our own as well!
We made our first Mardi Gras lapbook:
Here are the links I used:
A look inside the completed flaps. I love that there was no writing! And I also chose to use both links even though there were duplicate questions. This was good for my preschooler. My favorite is the flap that shows what the three colors of Mardi Gras represent. Laken used dot markers to color it. The whole inside of the lapbook took her less than 30 minutes to complete.
The back of our lapbook: King K craft (found here in first link). She actually did this the first day we worked on our lapbook. It took about 30 minutes to complete by itself, and she requested a lot of help with cutting and coloring (not a big fan of coloring these days) so that was all we did with it that day, and then we left it to dry.
Decorate your own King Cake. I've never decorated my own King Cake before, ever. I was a little disappointed at first, because it's not what I was used to; but then welcomed the opportunity for us to enjoy this first together. This was messy fun for Laken, and a new tradition!
And it turned out beautifully!
We looked at masks at Jo-Ann's craft store so Laken had an idea of what Mardi Gras masks were all about. Then I set up this invitation to make a Mardi Gras mask with a template I found in the first lapbook link. I walked away while she glued the gems on, and was really impressed by the symmetry of the way she placed them when I returned. We talked about the different ways we saw feathers on masks, and she chose to put hers like this. I held them in place as she picked them out, and glued them on. I suggested doing three sections of purple, green, and gold glitter; but she wanted to put them all over. I enjoy getting a chance to work with her on a craft while still giving her control over the design, and I love our finished product.
I also used the heart shaped template from the same link to do masks for Valentine's Day, but they still make great Mardi Gras masks too! Mardi Gras fell just two days before Valentine's Day this year, and I tried not to overlook one or the other. It was nice when I could tie them together. I made the mask on top, and Laken made the bottom two.
Eventually, the idea came to me to try using salt dough to mimic the look of a porcelain mask.
Here's the recipe I used:
1 c flour
1/2 c salt
1/2 c warm water
Knead the dough for 10 minutes, and let it rest for another 40 minutes.
Make sure you roll your dough out on your parchment paper. I didn't the first time, and was unable to free it from my cookie sheet to put it on parchment paper before going in the oven. From there, I just free handed it. It's a lot easier than it looks! Bake in the oven at 200 degrees for 4-5 hours until hard.
The invitation to decorate, which took less than 10 minutes after a six hour preparation. It was well worth it, though.
Fabulous! We had quite a bit of leftover paint so we painted some more heart masks, too.
This was fun. We put purple, green, and yellow paint on a piece of paper in a bin; and added Mardi Gras beads. Then, you just shake until your heart's content!
I made red beans and rice for Mardi Gras so I took the opportunity to change out Laken's sensory bin. I always have a sensory bin with some kind of grains and/or legumes in her kitchen for her to play with. It gets used frequently. This one will stay for quite some time still.
Do you do anything special for Mardi Gras? If so, or if you just love some of the ideas you've seen here, we'd love to hear about it!
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