La Bandera Mexicana (Mexico)

Who doesn’t love Serendipity? If you remember we had one of these moments when we learned about Greece, with the bedtime book we were reading. Well, this time it wasn’t about a book. I should start by saying, since I’m not sure I have yet, that the order of our “travels” was predetermined by a draw from a hat. We wrote down the names of some countries that we wanted to visit and dropped them into the hat. Then as the kids pulled them out, I wrote them on the calendar. As it turns out, September is a very important month in Mexico and Mexico happened to be our country for September. Serendipity.

It was in September that the Mexicans, at the urging of Father Hidalgo, revolted against the Spanish and embarked on a ten year war, ultimately earning them independence. September is recognized as El Grito de la Indepencia.  So, already we knew we were on the right track with Mexico being in September, even though I had briefly wondered if maybe I should switch it to May, you know Cinco de Mayo and all.

The first order of business as always, was the flag. We got super spoiled when we did the flag for The Netherlands. Australia came along and was a bit harder, but Mexico was by far the hardest flag attempt so far. I was so nervous about pulling it off, and not offending any Mexicans that I almost skipped this part, but I thought that skipping it seemed even more offensive than trying and not doing well. Besides, it is part of the overall project that we make a flag for each country, so we pulled out our supplies and opened up a picture of The Mexican Flag on the computer.

Then we started measuring and cutting, soon we were on to gluing. Then for the final steps, we decided to fill in smaller parts using fine tipped markers. 

Aiden gluing.

Eliana gluing.

Small details to be glued on to flag.

Aiden gluing the details.

Comparing our flag to the real thing.

Flag complete.

The end result was surprising and while we didn’t replicate the flag exactly, I thought we did alright and was I happy that we didn’t skip it. I think even my Mexican friends would be proud, or at least not shaking their heads at us.