An Italian Christmas Folktale Literature Unit
When I think about folktales for children, Tomie dePaola always comes to mind. His books are classic favorites loved in homes and classrooms all over the world. The Strega Nona books, The Legend of the Bluebonnet, and Fin M’Coul – just to name a few – are some favorites that have always had a place on my classroom bookshelves. This past week we read dePaola’s version of the Italian tale about La Befana, The Legend of Old Befana.
Do you know much about La Befana? Or are you like me and know nothing? I must admit, this was my first time reading this particular story of dePaola’s, and I really enjoyed learning about this Italian tradition that I knew nothing about!
One of the things I loved and cherished most about living in Europe for four years was learning and witnessing all of the little traditions that enriched the community we lived in. We lived in Germany and still practice some of the traditions we experienced while living there. But being in Germany I knew nothing about La Befana, so when I went to research more about it for this week’s unit, it quickly gave me that desire to go and experience first-hand like we had so many German traditions. We visited Italy while living in Europe, but I would truly love to experience living there and soaking up the culture.
So what is La Befana then? On January 6th, Italians and Catholics all over the world celebrate Epiphany, a Christian feast day to commemorate the visit of the Magi (or Three Wise Men) to Jesus after following a bright star in the sky for many days. It marks the end of the Christmas season. La Befana is a Christmas tradition in Italy based on folklore about a friendly witch who comes into contact with the Magi on their journey to find the Christ Child. La Befana brings them into her clean home for the night and when they invite her to join them on their journey the next day, she refuses due to all the housework she has to do (always sweeping with her broom, of course!). Eventually she has a change of heart and decides to join them on their search, but she never catches up to them and cannot find the child. The tale goes that today she still flies on her broomstick the night before Epiphany, searching for the child, leaving goodies for the good children and coal for the naughty (sound familiar?).
Urbania is known to be the hometown of La Befana, so there is a large festival held there every year with food, parades, people dressing up as her, and music. They even built a house for her there and apparently the post office has a mailbox specially reserved for her letters! I have definitely added Urbania to my travel list for January 6th, if we ever are able to make it back there one day!
I knew we HAD to do more than read this story. There is so much to tie in here! Geography, culture, art… Stories like this excite this mama teacher more than anything else because I KNOW that it has the potential to be an experience. Don’t get me wrong…there is absolutely nothing wrong with storytelling alone! Curling up and enjoying a good book is magical in and of itself. But one of the jobs of a teacher is to help foster a love for reading, and this, my friends, sure does help.
We began by reviewing our continents and where Italy is on a map. I showed my son pictures of our family trip to Italy (sadly he has zero memories of this since he was so small) and showed him some of our souvenirs that we bought from there that we still have.
We then reviewed and read the Christian Christmas story. My son was familiar, but we got into more detail this year focusing in on the wise men a little bit more. We read the Bible passages about Jesus’ birth and watched this short film, which I thought was well done and made it come to life in a realistic way.
Real talk here for a minute. My faith has been deconstructing and evolving for well over a decade now. My personal faith beliefs are in progress, and I consider myself a secular homeschooling parent. Christmas has been very emotional for me for many years as I’ve been navigating through a lot of ups and downs with my faith. I’m not going to get into all of that in this post, but I do want to mention here that if you are in the same boat and find this time of year to be challenging to address with your children, this book – and stories in general – is a great tool to use to do so. Let the story be your guide and fill in the rest with history, traditions, and art and crafts, and/or other tie-ins to make it fun and hands-on. You don’t have to be 100% certain of your beliefs to talk about Christian Christmas traditions and stories. It is okay to treat it as a learning experience and nothing more.
Once we had a good understanding of the Magi, we watched this video and then this one about La Befana in Italy. These are great and show what the real festival is like!
All of these things we implemented prior to reading The Legend of Old Befana helped set the stage for this wonderful story and truly made us appreciate it more. Throughout the week we worked on story elements, grammar, and a vocabulary study. We do these things for every story we read, but I wanted to take things a bit farther this week, so we also tied in some art!
I saw this done by Leah Newton on Instagram and we just had to do it! I LOVE stained glass and I thought this particular piece tied into our story perfectly. My son has really enjoyed watercolor painting lately. For this piece, we traced the star and drew the long lines first, then he used a ruler to draw all of the slanted lines in between. We looked at examples of stained glass and I thought he did a great job! He painted everything and then I went over the lines in marker for him with my bold waterproof art marker. He was so proud of this.
Years ago I read somewhere that teaching elementary grades is 90% theatrics and 10% teaching, and the below photos will illustrate this perfectly. Ha! Yes, I did dress up like an old witch and pretended to sweep the house as my son came up the stairs to start school. He laughed, we made witchy wart jokes…I’m sure he will never forget The Legend of Old Befana after seeing his mother look like this! I also made him some “coal” out of Oreos and marshmallows, but they turned out a little gray and ended up in one large clump. You are supposed to use black food coloring but I didn’t have any so it is what it is, people. They were still delicious!
The next two weeks revolve around Christmas trees, so we will be tying in a science unit on conifers which I will post about soon. Be sure to come find us on Instagram to see what else we’re up to, as I post much more there!
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