The most beautiful sardine of Lissabon

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

In the begging of the summer, Sweden celebrates the arrival of the warm season. My country has  also a very important summer party.

Portugal receives the month of June  with a big and colorful fest in the honor of three portuguese saints. This celebration it calls Santos Populares (Popular Saints).

On this party the loving couples offers to each other an extremely aromatic plant with romantic prose and poems written in a card. In one of the nights a big parade comes down along the city´s streets. People dance, talk and eat grilled sardines.

Sardine is one of the strongest symbols from Lisbon. A few months before the celebration, the Lisbon City Hall launches a competition for the best sardine of Lisbon. Anyone interested can create a fantastic sardine and sign up for the competition. The 5 winning sardines get famous around the whole city and appeared in the party advertising.

I showed some pictures to the group about the celebration and talked about the competition. Then I asked, “What if we try to create our own sardine and sign up to the contest?” Everyone of them seemed to be very excited about it, “Jaaaaa!” ("Yeeeeesss!”)

"Good! Because I brought a huge sardine for us to paint! I think if we work all together we’ll create the most beautiful sardine of them all!”

“Ja, vi kommer att vinna!” (“Yes, we will win!”) said one of the children.

The sardine was made outdoors of the pre-school. When the whole group went to the playground I placed the sardine on the floor and prepared the colors, papers, paintbrushes and glitters to start the creative work. They could paint with different kinds of brushes and colors. Some of the children used the hands to spread the ink into the sardine. They also used colorful paper to decorate the fish. Two of the children ornamented the eyes (giving two eyes to the sardine was an option of the group).

At the end of the activity, the big sardine was no longer a long piece of white paper. Now it is ready to participate in the contest and to be famous around the whole Lisbon. The children were really proud about their work. During the afternoon they had been talking about the contest and how good it would be if we wan.

Now we’ll have to take a picture of our masterpiece and send it to the jury. Who would say that the most beautiful sardine of Lisbon it was made in Sweden?