Show your child pictures of Mexican jewelry, which tends to be forged from silver and studded with turquoise and agate. Show your child how to cut apart a cardboard tube from a paper towel roll to make a cuff and then have him paint it with silver metallic paint. Have him stud the bracelet with beans, either in their natural color or painted. This gives your child a piece of wearable jewelry at the end of the project.
Sugar skulls are a common decorations and treats for the Day of the Dead, when Mexicans remember their ancestors and their deceased relatives. Mix 2 1/8 cups sugar, 2 heaping teaspoons of meringue powder and 2 tsp. of water until they have the consistency of damp beach sand and pack them into skull molds. Lay a sheet of cardboard over the open side of the mold, flip both mold and cardboard and allow the skull to slide out of the mold. Allow the skull to dry for four hours before decorating it with colored frosting.
Show your child pictures of Mexican pyramids at Teotihuacan. These stepped pyramids rise as high as 20-story buildings. Give the child a box of sugar cubes and some glue and have her build a pyramid out of sugar cubes. The glue holds the sugar cubes together but makes the final product inedible. You can also scatter single sugar cubes near the base of the pyramid to represent houses.
Yarn painting is an art created by the Huichol people of Mexico. They use yarn and beeswax to create intricate pictures. Give your child a piece of cardboard, a pencil, glue and bits of yarn. Ask him to draw a simple image on the cardboard. Apply glue to a small portion of the picture with a brush. Then ask the child to lay the yarn flat on the glue, coiling or twisting it so that it covers the cardboard. Continue until the cardboard is fully covered with yarn.