Original Publish Date: February 1, 2012
Valentine’s Day will be here soon! In the past, I usually bring in Corazones Dulces (Conversation Hearts in Spanish) and try to do an activity. This year I found a picture on Pinterest from an elementary teacher and adapted it to Spanish.
1. Buy the Corazones Dulces. If you can’t find them around town, Amazon has bags of them.
2. I show a picture of my example of the Candy letter to my love Antonio Banderas so they can figure out what it’s saying. (modeling) They could jot this down on a white board.
3. Then each student (or put them in pairs) gets a box of candies. I give them time to just look at them, but I tell them “No los comas.” 🙂
4. Next they write their own Candyletter. I have them take a photo and email me. You could also just walk around. Very few students will avoid this activity. I like to have the pictures to show to the other class or make a bulletin board.
5. If you want, they could give their cards to someone else without the candies in place to see if they can fill in the answers. However, this means lots of fingers on their candy. I usually just let them have their candy, and eat it too.
Qué “dulce” <3
Love it! I got a huge bag last year and we read them and passed them around, and some still ate them (gross!), but this love letter is such a good idea. It takes using simple words or phrases and turns it in to a higher level proficiency!
AHHHH!!!!! I forgot to use the subjective. Espero que SEPAS… Well I’m at home now so I’ll fix it tomorrow. Dang subjunctive. 🙂
Adorable! I have bought the Corazones Dulces every year since 2006, and have used commercially-purchased St. Valentine’s activities from different sources. But, I really like this idea. Thank you for sharing. 🙂
Well Megan just cleared out all the candy from Target! I just wanted to throw this idea too. If you can’t get the hearts, you could use google images of them and cut them out. Paper doesn’t taste as good, but still a different twist to writing. 😉
This is so cute but also requires higher level thinking. We’ll be doing this activity in Spanish 5 tomorrow, maybe I’ll let my Spanish 4 classes in on the action too. Thanks for sharing. Love your blog.
I’d love to see some photos of what they create! Kara.parker@jefferson.kyschools.us
Thank you so much for this idea Kara! I just bought my corazoncitos today at Target. I´ll be sure to send you photos of my Spanish 1 students at work with their letter.
Saludos desde Detroit!
I was wondering how to simplify this for Spanish 1? Ideas?
I did this activity with level 1. They didn’t use the subjunctive. Maybe they could just describe with the hearts?
I´m providing them a rubric with a checklist of essentials. I´m using this adorable video as a hook for the activity (as a candygram would need a hook).
Oops… here´s the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYGD9NcNldU
I love this idea and definitely trying it out w/ my Spanish 1’s this year! My plan is to give them the phrases they don’t know ahead of time (el diccionario de amor…)- of course this is not ideal but they are still very novice to figure out some of these phrases on their own. Have you ever had them glue the hearts on the paper and keep it? Not all my students have phones so I don’t know how I’d have them take photos… Any thoughts?
They could glue and keep them or give them the option. I’ve passed around my camera before too. Mine wanted to eat them, so that’s why we did pictures. Instead of a dictionary, maybe they can learn the words with you by looking at e-cards. This is writing, so I definitely suggest to give them lots of meaningful input before they do it.
How would you this with a Spanish 1 class?
Perhaps you could do a matching activity where you provide some translations for the corazones? Once in a Spanish 1 class, I gave some out as treats along with a list of English translations. As they looked and ate, they had to pick out their favorites and make their own on paper. I had a bulletin board set up where they had to put their hearts in the right “box:” amor, amistad (or for the anti) o corazon roto.
I am all set up to do this next week; however, when I look at the Dulces, I realize that some are written with “short cuts”. Would anyone be able to tell me what the following mean: TQ (te quiero?) TOM, SMPA, GRAA, SRT
Gracias de antemano!!
TQ (te quiero) TOM ???? SMPA (simpatica) GRAA (gracias) SRT (señorita)
Maybe TOM is TQM? Te quiero mucho.
So I just did this with my 1st period very low 1’s. I couldn’t find the corazones in Spanish, so I used English, thinking it would turn in to a translation exercise., But what they did with them was hilarious- Spanglish rhebus’s, where they used the forms they know, ser, eres etc. and put in the hearts in English into the phrases. Turns out there are a lot of very romantic boys in a group that I would never have guessed it from! :). In a way I think they were very creative. My other 1’s groups are much higher level and should be able to follow my plan :).Thanks again for excellent inspiration.
Muchísimas gracias!! My students loved this activity today!
The Brach’s candy can only be found in certain Walgreens stores this year. I had spoken with a rep from Brach’s when I couldn’t find them at my usual source.
you can find these Spanish Candy hearts in the Teacher’s Discovery catalog.
Love the candies idea and we are using canned frosting to glue the candyhearts on the valenitne!