The Day of the Dead

We don't shirk away from the topic of death in our house. In fact, it seems to enter most games being played and most discussions we have: 'When you die Mummy, I will be sad for a whole day'. All of us have varying theories on what happens after we die; that we come back as a selection of animals sometimes slugs (Gil) and that we become stars in the sky (Ferdy).

This Friday we decided to have a death day, partly due to the imminence of Halloween but also because we got sent a video by our friends who live in Mexico, of their shrine to all the people they had known in their lives. I really like the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead, in which they honour their dead relatives and friends by creating shrines with photographs and their favourite food and drink.

We discussed how different countries celebrate Halloween, and then we also talked about the people/animals we know who have died. As of yet, Ferdy's only actual experience of death is when my Mum's dog Rory died but I also told them about my lovely Grandmother, Amma, who died about 15 years ago. We read a few books tackling the concept of death including Goodbye Mog, Michael Rosen's Sad Book about the death of his son, and Waiting for Wolf by Sandra Dieckmann which beautifully covers the stages of grief a fox goes through when his wolf friend dies.

Then we had to cheer ourselves up with Ferdy reading us some Halloween jokes, and by making Halloween gingerbread.

'What do you call a fat pumpkin?'
'A plumpkin!'

'What plant likes Halloween?'
'BamBOO!'

Two of Ferdy's favourite jokes which he wrote for his writing today.

Naturally a day about death is not a true day about death without mentioning Star Wars, so we did some brilliant Star Wars yoga.

And concluded with some Star Wars maths and singing Happy Death Day..