doughnuts

delicious doughnuts decorated by my students

today is fat tuesday. in the area where i grew up, we call it doughnut day or taking you back to my PA dutchified roots...fasnacht day. back in the day, the dutchy women such as my grandmother wanted to empty their pantry of fatty/carbohydrate filled ingredients (ie/ flour, lard, sugar & butter) and made fasnachts (fatty doughnuts) before lent. although i am not allowed to discuss anything religious in my classroom, i do talk about fasnacht day..minus the part about the lenten season. so basically, the kids think it's a day to feast on doughnuts. they love it.

 

fasnacht day also happened to fall during the week that we are learning about the letter Dd. i usually do a doughnut decorating activity for this letter, but was able to tie it into fasnacht day as well. (my ocd brain loves when everything comes together like that...) first thing in the morning, i told the kids  i was going to give them a word that they never heard before and they had to draw a picture to go with it. (kind of like balderdash for 5 year olds) the word? fasnacht.

after several giggles and many of them repeating the word over and over...they got busy on their drawings. here are a few of my favorites:

fasnacht: a boot

fasnacht: a bow for your hair     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

fasnacht: a dreadlocked ninja

fasnacht: a vampire

after sharing our drawings, i told the kids that in the afternoon i was going to tell them what a fasnacht actually was and we were going to decorate some. (this really got their wheels turning...) so after recess, i explained to them that a fasnacht is a type of doughnut. (not a vampire, or a boot, or a dreadlocked ninja...but good guesses!) after they were done decorating their own fasnacht, i wanted them to draw a picture to take home about our doughnut day. i should've known right then and there that i was setting myself up. here is some of their artwork:

i could make my own mastercard commercial with this one:

 

doughnuts: $4.49 a dozen

icing: $1.50

sprinkles: $2.29

 

having your students draw an x-rated art gallery of fun bags to tell about their day...priceless

needless to say, i didn't send these masterpieces home with them. however, i did make a mental note for next year to just type a letter about our fun on doughnut day. (instead of having the children draw a picture about it.) clearly, the students were not the only ones who learned a lesson today. (fail!)