TOWAMENCIN — As you walked through the Spanish hallway on November 1st, you couldn’t help but smell the sweet-scented cakes, see nearby classrooms decorated with brightly colored and sugar skulls, and hear the sound of Spanish music lingering down the halls.

The reason why the day was special was because it was Días de los Muertos.

Días de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a Mexican holiday that begins on October 31 and ends on November 2. The holiday is a day to remember the dead. 

In their Spanish classrooms, students had the opportunity to celebrate Días de los Muertos.

“In the past, every Spanish teacher would do his or her own thing to teach about Día de los Muertos. Señor Vidal and I try to do a group project combining our classes every year and we thought it would be awesome to do something special for this fun holiday. His classes have done something similar in the past so we took that idea and added to it,” said Spanish 3 teacher Señora Atkiss.

The Spanish classes spent about a week planning and organizing their game plan for the special day. On October 31st, they began decorating their cakes and on November 1st, they participated in a scavenger hunt, continued decorating the cake, and dressed up as Hispanic role models.

The questions and answers of the scavenger hunt were all in Spanish, so students from both the Spanish 3 and 4 classes had to work together to translate the words.

Students also had the opportunity to get extra credit points for dressing up as famous Hispanic role models and winning the cake making contest.

The day was a memorable experience for Spanish teachers and students. It was an opportunity for students to learn the history and richness of Hispanic culture.

“I loved watching students from both classes work as a team to create their cakes. I am amazed at how different—yet wonderful—each cake is! I was blown away by how creative everyone was. I also enjoyed watching the students complete the second half of the task which was trivia questions,” said Atkiss.

“I liked how we got to experience the culture and the festivities while learning about it,” added North Penn junior Radhika Khandelwal.

After the day ended, everyone left knowing that they experienced something different that day.

“Judging by the smiles on the students’ faces, I would say it was a success! I think everyone took something away from that day—whether they learned some new facts about the holiday or became friendly with someone they didn’t know before,” said Atkiss.