Q es de Quetzal

While Chiquita's literal Hispanic heritage comes from Peru, as her mom I want to add a little of my love for the Guatemalan people into her experiences.  A while back we read "People of the Corn", a picture book about Mayan culture and did a corn craft.  When I bought that book I also bought "Guatemala ABCs" by Marcie Aboff and I'd been meaning to do a craft to go along with the book (we've read it several times) but hadn't gotten to it yet.

Since we'd reached Q in our Bilingual alphabet series it was the perfect time!  Spanish has a lot more Q words than English, but quetzal was an ideal craft.  The quetzal is the national bird of Guatemala and shares it's name with Guatemala's currency.  The bird has been hunted for it's beautiful long tail feathers and is very rare, living in the northern region of Coban.  Though I've never seen a real live quetzal, it's image is pervasive in Guatemala.

While Chiquita was flipping through the Guatemala ABC book, I cut out the pieces for our quetzal.  I cut out a capital Q for the body and a lower case q for the head (they have small heads) from green.  From red I made a half circle the same size as the capital Q for the belly.  Two long crescent-shaped tail feathers from green and a little orange triangle beak completed the quetzal.

I sat down with Chiquita and we looked at the map in the book and talked about where Guatemala is in relation to where we live, and Peru, where Papapa lives and even Frances where the primas (cousins) live.  Then we looked at the Q is for Quetzal page and Chiquita helped find the big and little q-s on the page.

Then I showed her the cut-out quetzal, disassembled it and compared the q-s to the ones in the book.  Chiquita (with my help), glued together the quetzal bird and added a googly eye to finish it!