Snacks That Teach Spanish {Review and Giveaway}

Have you ever thought of a snack that brings some excitement to your Spanish class? I just found a great one! Dick and Jane Educational Snacks are the perfect snack to share with your students. They are not only educational, but made of wholesome ingredients and are nut free, which means they’re safe to have in your classroom if you have any students with allergies to nuts.


I also have to say that the cookies are deliciosas. I ate a whole box while writing this review! This product will add a lot of fun to your classes and students get good brain food while learning new vocabulary in Spanish. Each cookie has a clear and simple picture with bilingual writing to accompany it, which helps everyone understand the vocabulary.

Each box contains some of the most common vocabulary words explored in Spanish classes. Cookies are produced in categories such us family members, greetings, weather and seasons, animals, fruits, numbers from 1 to 10, and more! So far you can find 50 words and 10 numbers, and Dick and Jane aim to expand the range of vocabulary to 360 words. The  more the merrier for us, the Spanish teachers 🙂


How to eat these yummy cookies while learning?

These yummy cookies can be used to introduce, review, or reinforce vocabulary in your classes.


Mini-Lotería

To play this game you will need to download the free call-out cards here for you to announce one vocabulary word at a time. Once you have the cards ready, distribute two or three cookies to each child in the class. They can eat a cookie only when you call that item from your call-out card. A student can win once she devours all her cookies. To make it harder, you can also tell students that they have to wait to eat until you call the names of all the vocabulary on their cookies. They can saylotería, and then enjoy the cookies in one yummy moment of indulgence!

Download cards HERE

Sentences

Post different sentences on the board. Distribute the cookies among the children and invite them to complete the sentences according to the vocabulary represented on their cookies. Again, they can only eat them after they complete the sentence.

Guess the word!

Cover a cookie with a napkin and have your students guess the word. You may use the call-out cards from the Lotería for this game. Students can earn a chance to eat a cookie when they guess the word.

Spell the words

What a great opportunity to review the alphabet in Spanish. Ask your students to spell each word in the cookie before eating it.




If you would like to learn more about Dick & Jane Educational Snacks, visit their website. Stay up to date with them and tuned in for more fun on their Facebook page.

The Giveway!
If you would like to have 10 boxes of these fun, yummy, and educational snacks (yes, 10 boxes!), here is an opportunity for you to win them and bring more learning to your class. Just enter below to participate. The winner will be announced on Saturday, November 23rd, 2013. United States only.

¡Buena suerte!
Carolina

10 Cultural Games to Play in Spanish Class

I am always looking for ways to bring some culture to my Spanish class. One way to do it is through the use of traditional games. Below I am sharing links of some games that can be easily used in foreign language Spanish classes. Just click on the links to learn more about each game.

1. La Thunkuna (Boliva)

2. La Pirinola (Mexico)

3. El Patio de Mi Casa (Latin America)

4. Nerón, Nerón  (Nicaragua)

5. La Gallinita Ciega (Latin America)

6. El Ratón y el Gato (Latin America)

7. Juguemos en el Bosque (Latin America)

8. Color, Colorcito (Spain)

9. Pase Misí, Pase Misá (Spain)

10. El Semáforo (World)

Have fun playing!
Carolina

Las Molas {Cultural Exploration}

Las Molas {Cultural Exploration}

Every year I do this project with my second grade classes, and they are amazed at how beautiful and well crafted Molas are. I like to pretend that we are taking a trip together to the border of Panamá and Colombia to visit the Kuna-Yala people so we can learn firsthand about their art.

I use a map to locate the city and country where we currently live, and I use a paper airplane to travel from our homebase to the lands of the Kuna-Yala.

I also love using Google Earth to show pictures of the Kuna-Yala people and the places they live.

Many live on a small island in Panamá called San Blas, and they also live in small villages in Colombia in the “Darien Gap.” They speak the Tule language, and some of them speak Spanish. They are famous because of their art which is called “Mola,” a term which also means clothes in the Tule language. The Kuna women are the ones in charge of making the molas that are part of their clothing. I take this opportunity to share pictures of a few molas with the children and ask them to describe them by naming the colors they see.

I observe the pictures with my students and share with them the fact that molas are made of three layers. Two of the layers are the same shape, but with different sizes, a small shape and a big shape, laid on top of one another to expose the different colors. Then, simple shapes are used around the main part of the art to decorate it. All the layers are usually of different colors and are sewn by hand.

The “Make Your Own Molas”  Art Project

In this project we will use the same basic technique, but instead of sewing, we will be using paper and glue.

You will need:
1. Construction paper
2. Glue
3. Scissors
4. Mola templates. Grab them HERE!

 

Once you have the template, print them on pages of different colors. Have your students cut the shape out and they will look like the ones on the pictures below:

 

 

 

Putting your Mola together

1. Glue the bigger template on the blank sheet of paper (red on top of blank yellow here).

2. Glue the slightly smaller fish (red here) in the fish shape of the template.

3. Glue the smallest fish (yellow one here) on top of the small fish (red here).

5. Use a different color and glue strips and dots of paper on the other shapes (green bits here).

6. Add some shapes to the fish (green strips here), and you will have a beautiful Mola!

Download the template HERE!
Happy crafting!
 
 
 
     

My Classroom: Make Over – Home Edition

I used to be a traveling teacher, visiting classrooms all over the school, carrying heavy bags with everything I needed for class. After a few years of traveling, my school decided that I needed a room to settle and put a stop my itinerant ways 🙂 I was so excited, but I forgot that to keep a classroom efficient and effective also takes time and energy. Somehow, it doesn’t just happen magically!!

I decided to call this post “My Classroom: Make Over – Home Edition” because in the end, my classroom is the place where I spend most of my waking hours during the school year, maybe even more than my own tiny house.

This picture shows how everything looked when I first moved my stuff in:


First, I felt challenged to decide what theme I wanted in my classroom, and I finally decided that it was better to keep it simple for my sanity and my student’s clarity of thought. I find it overwhelming when teachers put so many decorations in the room that cause children to get distracted – staring at colorful eye candy but not paying attention to the teacher or classmates. This is especially true for me, since I’m basically a big distractable kid, and I get attracted to whatever is around me in my environment. When there’s too much, my head spins! So, I focused on what I needed to make a safe space for learning a foreign language with minimal distraction but still enough color and cultural elements.

This is what my room looks like now:

Flags that represent Spanish speaking countries.

A place to keep binders and folders for students’ work.

Family photos to share with my students.




A place with pictures of important personalities and books about Spanish speaking countries.


A little peace “garden”

Classroom materials with labels

Art from different places in the world

A homemade puppet theater for my younger students


Useful phrases in Spanish

Monsters mimicking conversations about the calendar in Spanish.

Reminders in Spanish.


Maintaining one’s classroom is a work in progress. I am sure I will rearrange it a few times before I optimize every single space for my students.

Happy teaching!
Carolina