“Día de Todos los Santos” (All Saints’ Day) is celebrated on November 1st, but if this date falls on a weekend, the celebration is moved to Monday to make it a long holiday weekend. This is known in Colombia as “La Ley Emiliani”, and it happens with some celebrations. As a result, Monday is a day off for many people in the country.
Growing up in Colombia I remember Día de Todos los Santos as a day to go to church or go to the cemetery to bring flowers and remember the loved ones who are no longer with us. Since I grew up in a big city, I could see that nothing big happened on that day. However, there are other places in Colombia where this celebration has a deeper meaning. I recently became aware of these celebrations.
The Misak People and All Saints Day
For the Misak People in the Cauca Department located in the Andes mountains in Southern Colombia, November 1st (as this article states) marks the first day of the new year, and November 2nd is a day to take offerings to the church and the cemetery.
This fun celebration is also known as “Tintilillo” and is celebrated in some areas of the Caribbean Coast of Colombia. I was able to find some videos, and if you watch them all, you can hear that they have a variety of songs. In some places, they are asking for ingredients to make sancocho and in other places, children are asking for candy.
I am sure there are other places in Colombia that have their unique celebrations to remember their loved ones and celebrate their lives.
This game was created to use with my younger students to review colors. Many of them are into Halloween right now, so this is a good way to keep them engaged. This game is played just like any “Would You Rather?” type of game, where you have a set of questions and students respond to choose what they prefer.
In this case, you might want to review colors first. As you can see in the pictures, there are two little hands. Students can respond by saying “uno” or “dos” or by pointing with their hands. Another option would be to divide or mark your room with the numerals 1 and 2 for students to go stand at to show their answers. You can also replace the numbers with actions like “jump” if you prefer, or “dance” if you prefer. It all depends on your space and how you are teaching these days (remotely or in-person). No matter how you are teaching these days, I am sure this will add some fun to your classes.
Before bringing this game to your classes, make sure that all your students are okay with Halloween celebrations. As a personal experience, a few years ago I had a student in one class who didn’t feel comfortable with Halloween, so in the class, we shifted to focus on the autumn season and still got to use some pumpkins and put emotions in it.
Growing up in Colombia we didn’t have a “Columbus Day.” This “holiday” was called “El Día de la Raza” to celebrate the different races born after the mix of a not a very pleasant encounter. Even though it wasn’t known as Columbus Day, it was still meant to focus on the “great” things Columbus did for us (we celebrated Cristobal Colón, as he is known in Spanish). I have a vivid story of when I was in 3rd grade and Profe Raquel told us that if it weren’t for Cristopher Columbus we would not have been sitting in that classroom listening to the stories of how brave he was to travel across the Atlantic to new lands. Although teachers made an attempt to recognize the diversity in Colombia, it continued supporting the main narrative that Columbus was great and brave. I never remember hearing of all the bad he did to the people who were in the territories where he landed until later when I was in bachillerato (high school).
In the last decades, countries like Venezuela and Nicaragua have opted to change the name of this holiday to “El día de la Resistencia Indígena” to honor the struggles the Indigenous people went through during the colonization period and to acknowledge that these struggles are not over. Other countries have joined this movement too!
As language educators, we can’t continue supporting the sugar-coated stories about Cristobal Colón. This is an invitation to make space and time in our curriculums to have these conversations and show the true story. It doesn’t matter if it takes some class time to have these conversations in our students’ first language. Children might also be having these conversations within their homerooms, so this can be reinforced in Spanish class.
A teacher friend that I admire and has been working hard on bringing this work to the classroom is Fran, also know as The Woke Spanish Teacher. Her curriculum is deep in Anti-Bias and Anti-Racist (ABAR) education and she works on this all year round. When doing this type of work in the classroom, it is important to know your students and also their developmental stage so that the material can be tailored to their age group. This is something that I am currently working hard on and something Fran knows how to do really well.
Here is an example of what Fran does with her students:
But before bringing these topics to the classroom we have to do the work. We really need to educate ourselves. There are several trustworthy sources on the internet. Here are some that I recommend:
Just like this post on Instagram, as a language educator, I need to be intentional and not just acknowledge other cultures at designated times on the calendar.
Adding extra things to spice up your choice boards is definitely not necessary. In fact, I don’t do it every time a create one because it can be time consuming.There is no need to worry if you haven’t added Bitmojis, GiF’s or other things to your boards. Sometimes I feel like adding a little fun since right now I am not seeing my students, I am just creating asynchronous lessons.
In my recent board I added my dog Macondo as a helper to give instructions to my kinder and first grade students. It was fun to put him on my boards!Below I am sharing the steps I followed. I divided them into 3 parts hoping to make it easier for you to follow.
You will need to:
Part 1
Choose a picture of your pet or any other picture of an animal.
Download the app “My Talking Pet.” There is a free trial period.
Open the app and upload the picture.
Once the picture is uploaded, the app will show you some dots to mark the eyes, mouth, and ears (see picture).
Add the voice (Once you have added the voice, that app will ask you for different options to save it. I downloaded mine to my computer).
Part 2
Upload the video to the Unscreen.com website. This will remove the background and the sound. Save this video because you will need it later!
Part 3
Use the video you downloaded from “My Talking Pet” and upload it to the online audio converter siteto extract the audio. Make sure to download the audio as mp3.
Save the audio file to your Google Drive and rename it.
Make sure that you set the audio file link to the Google setting “anyone with the link can view” so it is accessible for everyone when they open your choice board.
Insert the link to your audio file directly onto your Google Slides.
Lastly, add the video you downloaded from the Unscreen.com website.
Open Google Slides in “presentation mode” and enjoy seeing your pet or animal give instructions to your students.
I was excited to search for different Halloween songs on YouTube and was also surprised to find so many new ones! The Halloween versions of the Baby Shark songs definitely win!
Watch video here.
