Spring is here! This is a great time to share some of the unique traditions from other countries.
Here are a few ideas to get you started. I hope you also share your ideas too.
Egg Hunt
To get students out of their seats, my Spanish 2 students made an Egg Hunt for my Spanish 1 class.
In a small group, they had 5 plastic eggs with a symbol drawn on them (stars, hearts, dots, stripes, or you could do colors). Each group researched a different country. They wrote one fact on a slip of paper in Spanish and put it in the egg. One fact had to be the name of the country. When they had a fact in each egg, they hid them around the room.
The other class came in, were grouped, and assigned a symbol. Their task was to find the 5 eggs with their symbol and figure out the traditions for that country. After they did this, they shared their findings with the class. Some groups started looking up the traditions on YouTube.
Cascarones
We make earth-friendly Cascarones. We decorate the egg shells with markers and fill them with flour and birdseed. On Viernes Santo, we go outside and break them. For some reason I end up the messiest at the end of the day.
Semana Santa
This Pinterest link has many great videos to show in class about Semana Santa and so much more (especially French resources). Thanks to Mrs. Misiano for sharing this link on Edmodo.
Sunny Earth Academy
How do you teach about the spring traditions?
I have in the past done a modified “Las Fallas” celebration. As a mini project, I have the students make a clay figure, a paper mache figure or pinata of one of the ninots and falles. They get to make celebrities, etc (I don’t let them do people in the school as we do destroy the figures and the ninots are supposed to be people that are being criticized). I had them explain, in Spanish, why they chose the person that they did. Then, instead of lighting them on fire like they do in the real celebration, I got permission to take them outside. We propped up all their ninots and then each student got a 15 second turn using my super soaker on their own ninot. They had a blast and had a pretty good understanding of the festival. When it was over, I had them reflect on the celebration in their journals.
Love it!! We have a fireworks festival called “Thunder Over Louisville” to celebrate the beginning of the Derby festivities. I have them compare the events. But now I’m really excited about doing this!!
Let me know how it goes! The students have a blast – they even pay attention when it isn’t their turn for the super soaker because they like to shout OH when one is destroyed in a particularly awesome way (some of the more poorly made ones practically implode when the water touches them!)
Growing up we always used to make cascarrones, but the flour was never used, as it’s messy on the hair and everything else….those were the “naughty” ones.
A Mexican student today told me that they throw raw eggs at each other. 🙂 Then cover each other in flour.
My Year 2 (age 6-7) children make a procession of Nazarenos: http://spanishstpauls.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/nazarenos.html
que preciosos!
That poor plant in the photo just died. 🙁 Spring break got to it.
mi llamo katya