Colourful time ....

Carnival (Maltese: il-Karnival ta' Malta) has had an important place on the Maltese cultural calendar for just under five centuries, having been introduced to the Islands by Grand Master Piero de Ponte in 1535. It is held during the week leading up to Ash Wednesday, and typically includes masked balls, fancy dress and grotesque mask competitions, lavish late-night parties, a colourful, ticker-tape parade of allegorical floats presided over by King Carnival (Maltese: ir-Re tal-Karnival), marching bands and costumed revellers.

King Carnival

This year K and L dressed up in various costumes on Carnival days and we visited the big Carnival floats in Valletta. Unfortunately the weather was not good and the parades got cancelled. But we enjoyed as much as we could the happy atmosphere created by children and all the young at heart.

Dressed up as Spanish girl and Superhero

Visiting Carnival floats

Huge Spiderman float

Dessed up as Angelina Ballerina and Lazy Town Superhero Sportacus

Carnival float dedicated to Elvis

K and L with a famous local Carnival float creator

more Carnival floats

more Carnival floats

with friends near King Carnival

more Carnival floats

This is the song for the Carnival in Malta

Innu tal- Karnival

and this is a funnier version but with pictures related to the Carnival

Innu tal-Karnival - Chipmunk version

The food related to this period are

prinjolata

perlini

  

Look here for interesting Recipes and information

To keep in theme with this colourful time of year K and L did some craft.

To end it all up mum and dad attended a Gran Ballo in a Venetian theme and it was a wonderful experience.

Widnet il-Bahar - Malta National plant

Every month K and L's school chooses a topic for the children to work on. They also have to produce a craft or writing related to the topic. This month it was about Malta. This is a vast topic so for this project we worked on the National plant.

Widnet il-Baħar - Maltese Rock Centaury 

This is the National Plant of Malta and in Maltese it is poetically known as Widnet il-Baħar (ear of the sea). It is endemic to Malta, possibly dating back to the era before the ice-ages.

K and L worked on a Craft activity of the plant which they loved doing.

Fist they did leaf rubbing 

Next they inserted a dry flower stem of an actual flower

Crepe paper was used to do the flower

Paper flower glued to the craft

Final product

The school also created 5 books about Malta for the children to read. One of them was actually about Widnet il-Baħar. Here is the link to the book about Widnet il-Baħar. The text is in the Maltese language.