 This is Jessica. We're super excited today to be crafting it up with you. We're going to be doing piñatas for the Manos a la Obra Vida Latina program. We're going to get started and Jessica is going to start talking to us about piñatas and the history of them. So piñatas are a tradition that date back up to 700 years. We first witnessed this as Marco Polo came to China and he saw the Chinese decorating cow figurines with different colorful paper and filling them with seeds. They used this to break the figurines and celebrate the coming of the new year. Marco Polo brought the idea back to Europe and from then they kind of modified the idea of the new year. Instead of celebrating that, they used it to celebrate Lent. The Italians were the first to coin the word piñata as their version of the piñata was made out of clay pot, which is what piñata means. Now, from Europe, the tradition came all the way back to the Americas as the Spanish brought it with them during their colonization. However, they were surprised to see that the assets already had a very similar tradition. Asset priests would take a clay pot at the end of a stick and decorate it with colorful feathers. They would fill this pot with goodies to celebrate the birthday of their god of war, Guido Pochli. So the Spanish saw this, took the opportunity and remodeled by this tradition by placing seven spikes on the clay pot representing the seven deadly sins. So this would help them introduce religion into the asset life. So now Evelyn's done telling us about how we use piñatas today. Thank you, Jessica. So Jessica gave so many cool like facts and history about piñatas. We know piñatas today and she mentioned the piñatas that have the seven sticks that point out and look like a star. Those are kind of the piñatas you think about, but there's endless possibilities today of what piñatas can look like. We're very lucky if you live in the LA area, we have the LA piñata district. If you ever go down there, I strongly encourage you to walk down that piñata district and you'll see rows and rows and rows of different piñatas. It's a really beautiful scene to see, but there's unicorn piñatas, Christmas-themed piñatas when that time comes around. There's so many possibilities and we're very lucky to have this craft and we also, in your kit, you'll be able to make your sandia, your watermelon piñata. And then, you know, once you're done, you can create anything. Like we have this hamburger that's not part of the kit, but you can make at home. You can make a cat Halloween's coming up soon, right? You can make some pumpkins, but we're going to get started. You will need your cereal boxes to find, so start looking around your home. If you might have some, you know, you might have finished your lucky charms and you get to now create it into piñata. Jessica is going to start us off on the first steps of this. We do also have our lucky instructions that were made by a wonderful staff member. Shout out to Sheridan, but we're going to get started and she'll show you what's inside your kit as well. So your kit will include some tissue paper, some blue construction paper, ribbon, an activity sheet, the history of piñatas, a trace out for the watermelon, and your instructions. So let's get started. Step one, you get your cereal box. You're going to need two for this whole project. So we're going to take apart our cereal box. There's a little tab here to make it easier to take it apart all the way to the bottom. And here's our first box. We're going to need our second box for the strips. This is going to be for a watermelon shape. So we have our trace out here. Go ahead and cut that guy out. So we're going to use this shape on our cereal box and do it on both sides. It should look like this. So once you do cut it out, you should have two little guys shaped like this. So now we're going to take our other cereal box and line the strips at about an inch to an inch and a quarter. And we're going to cut them that way. Feel free to use another cereal box to measure it out too. It should also look like this. Once you cut those out, you'll have your strips like this. And Evelyn's going to help us with the next steps. Okay, cool. Now we have our watermelon cutouts and you should have some strips. You will only mainly need about two strips for your piñata. But we're going to get started. What I found to be the easiest was to get some tape. You will need a lot of tape. So have that on hand. That'll be your best friend to make this. And you're going to go around and add the tape. So the sticky part will be facing what you want to be the inside of the piñata. So I have it like this. So I added the strip and then I stuck it as I went. And let me show you. So here's the strip and the sticky part is facing this part because we'll stick it inside. And you're just going to be going up. And right here where we added that second strip, it'll need a little extra support. So we'll add extra tape on there. So we'll just keep going around and then we'll do a bend. A bend right here for this curve that we have coming. And you can be aligning it as you go. We need one little piece. I ran out of strips. Jessica, can you hand me a strip from over there? Okay, so we're going to keep going. Well, I can kind of cut this out. I think up to here, right? We're going to cut a line. Try to curve it. I still have some extra. I'm going to cut that out. Perfect. So then this edge looking good, looking good. Okay. I'll add that extra support I added for that middle part here. Kind of like the base. Now we just have to add this kind of like a little box, a triangle box, the lid. And you'll also just go around and add some tape. And you're shaping it as you go. I like to do kind of like the corners and so we can have it set in stone while I then go make it more firm and sturdier. So this does require a lot of tape. If an edge is popping out, usually I'm just going to trim it, have like the shape of it. So we added a bunch of tape. I'm still adding a lot because I want it to be really firm. So when I add the tissue paper, it looks really great and sturdy. Now we're using small tape here, but if you were to want to make at home maybe a big size piñata, you might use cardboard paper instead of cardboard instead of a cereal box and maybe duct tape instead of small tape, right? So you would adjust that to make a large piñata. We have the shape of our piñata. Okay, so we're going to move on to the next step. Still adding tape. I like a lot of tape on it. We're going to move on to our next step, which is the tissue paper part, which is really important, right? It makes the look of the piñata. I have here and you should have some green and some red. So how did we get to this fringe? Let me show you. So you have your tissue paper. We're going to fold it in half and we're just going to keep folding and then fold that in half. Okay, and then we're going to fold that. So then you want to put three fingers and kind of measure it. So it should be about three fingers length and cut that. So cool. Leave it folded because we're going to make some lines. Don't go all the way. Just leave a top because we'll be using this to glue. So we'll glue that and then this fringe will be hanging down. So we're just going to keep cutting it. And then when you open it, you should have such a beautiful fringe. And we're going to add that to our piñata. So I'm going to make this my front and we're going to glue it. So you'll just add a bunch of glue. Now for the sample that we had, let me grab it actually. We have the green, right? So that'll be at the bottom and we want to always start from the bottom up making our piñata. So we're going to add some green. I added about two, three rows here, but I was thinking it would also look nicer with a couple more greens. But it's totally up to you how you want your piñata to look like. I'm going to start adding some green and show you guys what that looks like. So you have your long strip of fringe and you're just going to... So the thing about the piñata being a watermelon, it curves, right? So you're going to go curving and you'll notice some bubble air gaps. Don't worry about those because we're going to layer another, you know, a line of fringe and that's going to cover it. You won't even notice. It'll all be covered up and it'll look super cute at the end. So we do have the sides. I did fringe the sides and add some there, but I didn't do the back. It's totally up to you if you want to. This is cute to decorate. I'm going to hang it on a wall so you won't be seeing the back. But if you want to, you can totally do that. I think we have enough tissue paper for you to do that. So feel free to do that. But I'm going to do the sides too, right? So let me grab my glue again. We're just going to fold this this way. Yay, it's looking like a piñata. Nice. So then I'm going to, I like to do it either right on top of the green or a little above to add, oh no, my glue. Let's grab another glue stick to add more, you know, more fringe to it. I want it to like fluffy, a fluffy piñata. And then I'll add this on top. Now I'm going to add a row of red to kind of show some, some colors on there, right? And don't forget when you're doing, do your sides and you'll do all the way up, the sides all the way up till you reach the corner. And it'll look like this. And then the back, if you'd like to. But I'm going to add some red. And I got that cut up too. Same way, you'll also fold it. We have the red layer. And then you can see, you can no longer see like those bubble air gaps we saw in the beginning. So that's the same. Don't worry too much about this top part because we're going to go covering it as we go. Cool. So we're also going to talk about, you know, what does a watermelon have? It has seeds. So we added those and you're going to get some black paper, construction paper you have around. And you're just going to cut those seeds up and do it too. However, you know, I added a bunch of seeds, but you could add a few seeds if you like or no seeds. Maybe you like a seedless watermelon. Look at this seed that I just made. Okay, I'm going to have to make some adjustments because this is a weird looking seed. Actually, let's make it a little smaller. But yeah, you're kind of just adjusting as you go. And then you'll just glue it, right? And glue it on there a little bit of glue. I'm going to add another seed, like here. So cute. Just keep adding the seeds. And then same thing, you'll add your eyes and your smile with construction paper. But we hope you had fun. Oh, don't forget, if you're going to want to be hanging your piñata, you're going to use that string. And your best friend, Tape, will do the job sticking that on. I added a lot of tape, as you can see. But then you'll have a hanging piñata ready to, I don't know, you can even add candy on it. Candy in it. We have some candy. But you could add candy or you can just leave it in your room and decorate your room. Gift it to someone if you'd like. It'll make a great addition to any bedroom, I think. Thank you guys so much for joining us. Please make sure to check out the other Vida Latina programs. For any further information, make sure to go to www.lbpl.org. See you next time. Bye.