Cinco de Mayo for FHE

Cute as always. :)

I'm pretty sure I told you that Sport has been working on the International Activity patch for Scouts. He just loves having the most patches on his vest. And that means he wants to earn them all. Some of them are a lot of hard work, but some of them are really fun. That is the case with the International Activity patch.

Ready to play.

We had to learn about 4 different countries, in 4 lessons. That made for a month of Family Home Evenings although it took us a little longer since we decided to throw a few other things in the middle. We tried to eat ethnic food, learn a bit about each country's history, flag, and people. And because my degrees are in literature, I found a folklore story from each one. Last but certainly not least, we played games and did crafts. That's my second favorite part.

We saved Mexico for our fourth and final lesson so we could coordinate it with Cinco de Mayo. We did the food and the fiesta on Sunday for Gamer's birthday, but we saved the games to share with the kids on Monday. I put Prima Donna in charge because she always does a stellar job. Our third country was Japan and we hadn't shared a game from there either, so I asked her to plan a game from each country. She did a bunch of work and they turned out to be so fun!

Bet you can't get mine!

The first one we played was from Mexico. Prima Donna made us each little "sombreros." They really looked like folded paper boats in bright colors, but they served the purpose. She attached each one to a length of yarn, with a paperclip. We had to put the sombrero around our necks and let it dangle down our backs.

The idea was to try to steal other people's sombreros without losing your own. It was fun and exciting! The last two standing were me and Prima Donna. I thought sure she would beat me since she is younger and so much faster. Unfortunately for her, she swung around to get mine and hers flew to the front of her body and I quickly snatched it before she could do anything. We all ended up panting and laughing and agreeing that if Bossy were here, she would have won easily. She is way more competitive that we are!

The perfect Samurai.

The other game was from Japan and it was kind of like Pin the Tail on the Donkey except that it was Add the Face to the Sumo Wrestler. Players were blind-folded and then handed the parts of a face one at a time with the instruction on what the part was like "nose" or "eye." We started with Baby Doll and she made a silly face. Then it was Curly's turn and he did a good job. After that Scout did a similarly good job, not perfect, but definitely recognizable.

I figured that was a good time to mix things up. After Prima Donna had the mask on Sport, I turned the face upside down so all his features were wrong. It got everyone laughing (except Sport who was a bit miffed) and we decided that was a good time to break out the last box of Girl Scout cookies.

It was a good end to a great day.