Alfombras de Guatemala: A Guatemalan Carpet Craft for Spanish Class
If you are looking for a hands-on craft project for your Spanish class, here is one to try out.
I recently visited Guatemala and saw the beautiful Easter carpets made in the streets. The Easter festivities in Antigua are world-famous. There are something like 25 processions throughout the Lenten season. For many of these processions, Guatemalans make beautiful carpets that the procession will then walk over and destroy.
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See the video in Spanish I created during my time in Antigua to learn more:
The carpets are made from natural materials like grasses, pine needles, plants, and fruit. The most colorful and intricate carpet designs are made with coarse sawdust that is dyed many different bright colors.
In the Semana Santa Museum in Antigua, visitors could try out making their own carpet with large cardboard stencils, just like the locals used. No glue or adherent is used, but the carpet creators often spray the carpets with water to prevent the sawdust from blowing away.
I wanted to experiment and find a way to have students make these unique Guatemalan carpets in class.
I do want to be clear that these carpets are part of a Catholic procession. Less than half of the carpets I saw actually had religious motifs on them, but you should learn about this celebration and decide if it’s right for your students and your teaching situation before doing it.
I tried three different ways to make carpets and will explain a few tips for each version.
Guatemalan Carpets Coloring Pages
First, basic coloring with markers. Students can choose to color a design from my resource here or they can create their own carpet design on a carpet template. The advantage of just using markers is less mess and, assuming you have markers in your classroom, no need to buy extra materials. You can also do more intricate designs.
Using glue works well for making thin lines of sand, but the lines end up a little bit raised. Using a glue stick works best for covering larger areas and ensuring that the sand lays flat. The sand should be put on one small area immediately after it is covered with the glue stick because the glue stick dries quickly.
Making a carpet with sand adds a unique element and is similar to the sawdust the carpets are actually made of. A word of warning though, even with neat bottles, the fine sand does make a mess so have a hand vac or wet cloths on hand.
Guatemalan Carpets Craft with Paper
Originally, I wanted to buy actual sawdust and dye it. Unfortunately, thicker sawdust is actually quite expensive, so I went with plan B: hamster bedding. I found this white paper bedding that I dyed with a little bit of water and food coloring. For about $11 there would have been enough paper bedding for multiple classes to do this project.
Dying the bedding was a bit of a pain. The color looked nice but it took a long time to dry. Even microwaving it did not speed up the drying process.
Fortunately, I realized that you can buy pre-dyed hamster bedding in lots of bright colors, like the bag you see in the photo below. This eliminates a step and the colors are nice and bold.
Use glue as opposed to a glue stick with these paper bits. You may also want to pull the paper bits apart a little before flattening them down.
So there you have it, three versions of a Guatemalan carpet craft to bring this colorful country to life in your Spanish class.
If you want a no-prep lesson for your intermediate or heritage students, grab my resource below that includes the coloring pages and templates, plus a reading and photos.
