My First Pinata
As a child in the sixties I went to a Grammar School in a part of 
Southern California that had more orange trees than houses. As our housing development grew, schools for the area were being built. The high school, Mission Viejo wasn’t even completed on plans. Since there wasn’t an elementary school in the area, we were bused to an old Spanish styled mission for classes. It was there that I heard about and saw a piñata for the first time.
I was in the third grade then and our teacher decided that a fun class project would be to make a piñata. The idea was to make a paper Mache piñata ou
t of a balloon and newspaper. The teacher did most of the work; we just tore up the newspapers in strips to use for the paper Mache cast. First she blew up a large oval balloon for us to paste the strips of paper onto. Oh what a mess we made! Each strip of paper had to be pulled through a paste of water and flour that she made. We were getting so messy that she pretty much took the project over and we just watched, our little eyes in awe of this balloon getting bigger and bigger and thicker and thicker.
Each couple of layers had to dry before adding another. If I remember correctly, it took a few weeks to complete with just a few minutes each day to spend on it. Finally it came time to paint and just like the flour paste we got into, we made a complete mess with the paints as well. If I recall correctly, they were tempura paints so luckily they washed out of our clothes. Each student had a turn at painting the first coat of paint. The first coat was a solid color bright yellow. After that dried, a few days later, we each got a chance to apply a brush stroke or two of another bright color. By the time we were done, that piñata had every color of the rainbow on it!
The teacher took the piñata home one weekend and returned to school with it hanging by a rope. We also noticed that right above where the rope went through there was a hole and the piñata sure weighed more! We later discovered it was filled with candy.
Finally one day after a standardized testing session, the teacher announced that it was time to play with the piñata. While we had been engrossed in our test, she had the school janitor hang the piñata from the monkey bars in the playground. We all lined up in the playground waiting our turn to swing at the piñata. One by one, we were blindfolded, with bat in hand and the teacher pointed us towards the piñata. A few of us did serious damage to it, but it was one of the bigger girls whose targeted swing split the piñata open. Of course we all went running, picking up as much candy as we could. I can’t remember any group activity as a child that was as much fun…