Día de la Hispanidad/ Columbus Day

We haven't even recovered from the celebrations of the European Day of Languages, and here is the next big day already: el día de la Hispanidad or Columbus Day on the 12th of October.Every pupil knows that they speak Spanish in Spain, but how about the rest of the countries and how did the language get there? 

Next week, in my lessons we will do the following activities:

Watch a short animation of the trip

Here is a very good link to the animated map of Columbus's first trip. Take a look at the other menu options as well, it is a great page that explores his trips and life.

 

 

Watch the "History of the Spanish Language"

 

I found this video on Facebook a year ago, it is a good summary of the history of Spanish. After the video we discuss what they remember and I ask questions for stickers!

 

 

The Europe/America exchange: feely bag

 

Blindfolded volunteers will have to taste/touch/smell  the following items that were brought to Europe from America and viceversa:

 

from America:el tomate, la patata, el chocolate, la piña, el chicle

from Europe: el trigo, el café, el caballo, el cerdo

There are more items on the web page suggested above!

 

 

 

Flags:

 

Make the flags of the Spanish speaking countries! Look at our bunting, we have almost finished our flags  (and got a bit overexcited with the pom poms...).

 

 

Any other ideas? Please feel free to leave a comment!

 

 

A happy chocolate taster:-)

 

Pancake Day again:-)

We almost finished our pancake flapbooks from last week! We will send the images to our Spanish penpals who will decide which one is the yummiest. The lucky winners will get lemons!:-)

 

 

 

Tomorrow is Pancake Day so I have thought of some activities we will do in different levels/contexts.

 

Flip the pancakes!

 

One pupil flips the pancakes and everybody else will count them in Spanish. When the pancake falls, another pupil will come out and we will just continue counting from the previous number. It is going to be a team competition between boys and girls. We made bean bag pancakes with my little daughter, we always have our PPA time together on a Monday morning:-) We didn't find beans at home but dry pasta works just as well.

 

 

 

 

Find the pancakes!

I can't play this game in every classroom because I don't have a break before all of my sessions to prepare for it, which is a shame because I know how the pupils like searching for my hidden treasures. I will hide pancakes with numbers written on them and the kids will have to stick them on the whiteboard next to the right number. 

Arrange the pancakes!

A race to see who is the quickest to put the pancakes in the right order (increasing or decreasing).


Pass the parcel frying pan!

 

In some of the classes this will be my starter, we will have to create the sentence "Me gusta el limón." I will stick the pancakes on the frying pan with blu tack. Those who pick a word when the music stops will have to come out to the front and make up a living sentence. Then one by one I will send the words to sleep by turning the pupils around and the rest of the class will have to remember the sentence with the gaps until there are no words left at all.

 

 Throw the pancakes!

Every pancake will have a number on, the pupils will have to stand at a distance and throw them into the frying pan. We will add the numbers together at the end. I read this idea on  http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/pancake-day.

 

 

Me gusta...

I was browsing on twitter half asleep last night and found this gem, thank you Janet Lloyd  for tweeting it:-) We will practise "Me gusta/no me gusta...., pero...."  sentences with pancake fillings.

Happy Pancake Day!

Pancake Day flapbook

 

We spend every Sunday afternoon with our family best friends and cook the evening meal together. Today we made pancakes for dessert and I got inspired to make a pancake flapbook in class next week in preparation for Shrove Tuesday (4th of March this year). 

You need a piece of card and some paper strips, I used 5 of them. On the outside we'll draw our favourite fillings and on the inside we'll write the names in Spanish.

 



 

 

 

 

27/02/2013: We made our pancakes! We changed the title to

Me gusta(n)...,  

¿Te gusta....?

Rellenos de crepes

The children will have to finish colouring them at home, but they have all  drawn and labelled their favourite pancake fillings.

 

 

We'll also make a class survey: "What's your favourite pancake filling?"

 

Enjoy:-)!

 

Speed dating

What a day! After the big storms last night there were fallen trees, road closures and diversions, I had to drive like James Bond to get to school in time, so I really had my heart in my throat, as if I was going on a date. I didn't have enough time to rearrange the classrooms, I managed to do half of one, I made up single tables with two chairs. I placed my home made little fortune cookies on the tables and put some heart balloons up for the right atmosphere:-)  I put my PP up on the screen and we were ready to go....

 

Speed dating

 

The children had 2 minutes to ask each other questions, they could use mine or they could make up their own. I told them that they could change identities and I gave a demonstration at the front of the class: I was Dora the Explorer and my partner was Bob the Builder! They found it was hilarious to change names, they were Peppa Pig, Tinker Bell, etc. Some of them were 95 years old, some were just 1 or 2. I clapped every 2 minutes, they had to change partners then. When I asked for feedback, they said that it was a great activity because they spoke Spanish to each other. This made me realize that I don't give them enough opportunities to actually have conversations with each other, so I will make a great effort from now on to make sure they get to speak to their classmates. We play lots of games as a class, we write a fair bit, now the focus will be on conversations. There were lots of giggles while doing this activity, be prepared!
Thank you for this idea, Creative Language Class!!! (fantastic blog here)

Fortune cookies and cocktail stick hearts

 

The preparation of this activity took me an hour and a half last night......guess what, I left half of the biscuits in my car, half a mile away from the school. I had to run in my short break to get them and just arrived in time for my year 6 class.

The learning objective for today was to create sentences with time expressions in our topics: daily routine (Year 5) and school (Year 6). I printed out  2 sets of sentences like "Me despierto a las 7." and "Leo en la biblioteca a las 11". I made fortune cookies for Year 5 and cocktail stick hearts for Year 6. At the beginning of the activity I told them that they had to find their better halves, or as they say in Spain, their half oranges:-)  (la media naranja= the better half). They found that very interesting and funny!They walked around the classroom saying their sentences and when they found their better halves, they could eat the hearts. We laughed a lot, boys were with boys, girls with girls even though the cookies were given out randomly.

 

Love is in the air:-)

 

Everybody who came out to play or do an activity had to put my big pink sunglasses on or had to hold a heart balloon! We learnt to say "Te quiero", the kids wrote it down on small post it notes and they will give them to somebody tomorrow:-).

We haven't finished celebrating love yet, in April we will talk about "el dia de San Jordi", the Catalan Valentine's Day, when boys give roses to the girls  and girls give the boys books. What a great opportunity to write our own minibooks!

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you!
Erzsi

Fruit recipe project: Heart shaped Valentine messages

Heart shaped fruit with  Valentine words

 

I just can't get enough of Valentine's Day:-) I have already written a post about it here, but I keep looking for new ideas for shorter lessons, longer lessons, big kids, small kids, etc... As you know, I am participating in a fruit recipe book project with my Spanish partners Natalia and Sandra, and this time I wanted to create something romantic to celebrate Valentine's Day.

I bought lovely heart shaped cookie cutters in M&S, and also a big melon, strawberries, apples, bananas and marshmallows, because there is no better motivation than marshmallows, I found that out a few weeks ago.... To add more romance, I took in paper plates left from my wedding (we were on our farm in a barn and the guests preferred eating the cakes without plates:-).

I wrote expressions on the whiteboard : "Te quiero.", "el día de San Valentín", "el día del amor" and  "14 de febrero". The pupils had to write one expression and learn it and then decorate their plates with a heart shaped fruit.

This was a very messy and demanding activity, I couldn't have done it without my teacher helpers, thank you Mrs Rice, Miss Tittle and Mrs Krajewski, you will definitely get free copies of the book!



 

 

 

 

And if you think that I have finished thinking about Valentine's Day, then watch this space, tomorrow I am going to blog about the big ones' lessons, speed dating in Y5 and Y6! I came across the idea on the Creative Language Class blog here.

Fruit recipe project: Our flag and some snails

Year 3 and our partner class in Valladolid are working on a fruit recipe book. After last week's Spanish flag bites, it was time to make our own flag! We used blueberries, strawberries and marshmallows. The kids loved both designing and eating it.

The mandarin snail idea was tweeted to me by our partner school's head teacher. I copied the instructions from  the Little Cook website. Simple but so funny!

Next we will make fruit faces.

Fruit recipe project: Spanish flag bites

Last summer I "met" Natalia on the eTwinning website. She is a full time teacher in a primary school in Valladolid. Her groups and my groups "work together" on a weekly basis, we send letters, cards, videos and lots of emails to each other. Natalia has become a real inspiration to me, her enthusiasm, her new ideas and her sense of humour  have taught me so much. A few weeks ago she came up with an idea: a bilingual cookbook with fruit recipes! First I just thought that I would politely tell her that I don't have the time for this in my short Spanish lessons (45 minutes and 30 minutes), but then I started to do some research online and in my kids' cookbooks and found quite a few things we could make without cooking at the end of the lesson. I am hoping that the children will bring in recipes from next week to make it a real cooperation. We will make videos and a cooking competition, too! We are very excited.

I had lots of ideas in my mind before my first introduction lesson last Tuesday and went to Asda to buy all these:





After hours of experimenting with what would be the simplest fruit creation, I just decided to make "Spanish flag bites"  and only took the pineapples and strawberries in. I cut them in the school that morning to keep them fresh and put them in two plastic boxes.

 

The kids used toothpicks to make the flags, it only took them a few minutes and they really enjoyed this short introduction activity.

 

Wish me luck with the Union Jack next week:-)!