La Castañada (in Catalan – Castanyada) is a festival that marks the end of summer and beginning of winter. It is celebrated traditionally on November 1st as the bellringers needed lots of food to keep them going as they rang the bells on All Saints Night for All Souls Day, and their families brought them roasted chestnuts as well as candied fruits.
The ‘image’ of the festival is La Castañera / Castanyera, an old lady dressed in peasant clothes and a headscarf, sitting behind a table, roasting chestnuts.
Here’s a story about her:
Below is a poem about her, and you can download a couple more (to colour) from this site)
And here’s a poem in Catalan about La Castanyada:
If you have a Twinkl subscription, you can download various resources on the subject including vocabulary, a presentation , a story, a game and some colouring sheets. La Castañada on Twinkl
As part of the Erasmus+ project that I’m involved in with my school, we participated in a celebration of La castañada at our Spanish partner school. Here’s a video that shows this.(from 2:30-3:20)
Earlier today I saw someone share that they had made an Advent calendar using AdventMyFriend. Not liking to actually sit and do just one thing, I decided to investigate and have a go myself whilst watching TV.
Below is the result!
Click the image to go to the calendar.
Really easy to do too!
1. Choose your background2. Give your advent calendar a title and click on Day 1 (or any other day – you don’t have to do them in order!)3. Decide if you want to add an image or a video to show behind your door.4. I added a video. Add a message too then click OK. 5. That door now has a tick to show it’s ready. Keep going until they’re all ticked.6. Once all the boxes are ticked, click preview to check it works then SHARE!
One you’ve finished, you can share your calendar to most social media platforms as well as sharing via email and embedding it into a website or blog.
I’m thinking that I’ll make another one with Christmas traditions from around the world. In the meantime, you’ll have to wait until December 1st before you can look behind the first door of the one above! Why not make your own in the meantime?
Taken at Colegio Esperanza, Tlaxcala November 2015
Films like Coco (watch it here), The Book of Life (trailer)and even James Bond have made this a festival that is much more well known than when I began teaching many moons ago!
*This is compilation of previous posts plus a couple of new ideas!*
This website is new and I love it! https://dayofthedead.holiday/ is well presented and comprehensive in explaining the festival – when, where, why, who and how – as well as offering ideas for how you can celebrate including make up tutorials, craft ideas and recipes.
This video is a helpful video that explains what happens during the festival, full of vocabulary and presented in steady clear Spanish.
And this one colourfully explains how indigenous festivals became mixed with catholicism to make the festival as it is today.
Finally I want to point out the Rockalingua song that has proved popular with my pupils in recent years. If you go to their website you can watch a video of the song as well as download the words, worksheets and other materials for free.
Taken in Mexico City 2015
I’ve shared ideas on this theme before; if you click on the images below, they’ll take you to the posts!
Crafts, a poem, a story and a song
This post was a review of a book all about a child getting his wires crossed (no thanks to his sister!) about what happens on Día de los Muertos. A lovely book – I recommend it!
I adore this video; it really simply explains what happens with no words and leads to amazing discussions. The post also includes many links to other materials and ideas including colouring, craft and downloadable PDFs to support lessons.
A video explaining the festival, a piece of music and a song.
An interesting news article about changes in the way Día de los Muertos is celebrated, and how it’s moving from private to more public. I was certainly struck when I landed in Mexico City on October 31st 2015 by the exuberance and spectacle of the street celebrations but also by the quiet of the personal celebrations by individuals on the subsequent days. I think there was a Halloween/Día de los Muertos divide going on, but that was my perception. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Whilst I know that many schools do not celebrate Halloween (mine don’t!) I thought I’d share these ideas that I’ve used, made or seen over the years.
A Halloween Storybird.
Songs about ‘calabazas’
Songs about ‘esqueletos’
A story.
1. A Storybird for Halloween
In 2012 I made this Storybird at the request of the Reception teacher at my school. I say ‘my school’ but at the time I lived in Switzerland and they were missing me!
I happily created it and shared it with them, and then with you via my blog in this post.
Unfortunately in the intervening years, Storybird has changed the way you can share so the link was broken so I created a PPT of the pages and added some activities and extra slides today, then narrated it. The link to it is at the bottom of the post.
2. Songs about ‘calabazas’
I’ve shared the first of these songs before when I subtitled it (using a tool that doesn’t exist anymore so it’s lost 🙁 However, you can switch on the CC subtitles now and whilst, not perfect (the third ‘calabaza’ is ‘enojada’ and the subtitle read ‘que no y no’) they serve the purpose!
As you can see, each ‘calabaza’ is expresses a feeling using the phrase ‘se siente…’ and you could follow up this song with asking ¿Cómo te sientes? (How are you feeling?) with children responding “Me siento…”
Here are the lyrics: Cinco calabazas sentadas en su casa Una calabaza se siente muy cansada. Cuatro calabazas sentadas en su casa Una calabaza se siente asustada. Tres calabazas sentadas en su casa Una calabaza se siente enojada. Dos calabazas sentadas en su casa Una calabaza se siente muy frustrada. Una calabaza sentada en su casa Una calabaza se siente sorprendida Cinco calabazas duermen en su casa Cuando sale el sol, se sienten muy felices.
Cinco calabazas sentadas en su casa.
I’ve just discovered this second video, also about ‘calabazas’ and emotions. This time the ‘calabazas’ are more animated, and express their feeling using the verb estar. Some interesting vocabulary used including gruñona, a great word meaning grumpy or cranky! Another opportunity to discuss feelings, asking ¿Cómo estás? with children replying Estoy… It also offers an opportunity to look at the present continuous Estoy+gerund.
Here are the lyrics: Letra: Una calabaza, sonriendo, sonriendo. x3 Una calabaza está feliz.
Dos calabazas, gruñendo, gruñendo. x3 Dos calabazas están gruñonas.
Tres calabazas, bostezando, bostezando. x3 Tres calabazas están con sueño.
Cuatro calabazas, llorando, llorando. x3 Cuatro calabazas están tristes.
Cinco calabazas, riendo, riendo. x3 Cinco calabazas están jugando.
3. Songs about ‘esqueletos’
I’ve long been familiar with the Babelzone song about ‘Los Esqueletos’ that has a skeleton coming out of the ‘tumba’ every hour of the night as the clock strikes, and have shared it many times! The version below has a bit more ‘movida’ and also uses ‘desde…. hasta’ to give a range of time (from … until) rather than ‘cuando el reloj marca…’ Certainly an earworm!
Tumbalakatumba – very catchy
I also like this version as it’s a rhyme rather than a song; great to work on rhythm and link language learning to music. You could find the percussion instruments and really get a beat going! And then it becomes a song encouraging you to dance. First moving your ‘cintura’, then your ‘cabeza’, ‘rodillas’ and finally your ‘cuerpo’
If you prefer ‘calaveras’ to ‘esqueletos’ you could try this version or this one.
And linking ‘los esqueletos’ to parts of the body, you could try “El Baile del Esqueleto.” To the tune of Dem Bones, the song encourages you to move and dance whilst simply talking about how your bones are connected to one another. You could use it as part of a science lesson on the skeleton, or as an exercise in finding the word for or working out what the lyrics mean using scientific knowledge.
And not entirely a song about ‘esqueletos’ but here’s a ‘Halloween’ version of 5 babies jumping on the bed with skeletons and a ghost Mummy telling them off!
4. A story about a broomstick
During lockdown I recorded a number of stories for my pupils and, like many people, had some online shopping sprees when I couldn’t get out. I combined these when a colleague discovered that I had bought a Julie Donaldson/Axel Scheffler book that is her favourite and asked me to record it for her so she could hear what it sounded like. I’ve uploaded it here for the next few weeks if you’d like to use it. After that, you can have a look at this version which is animated with pictures from the book (but also has some spelling mistakes!) or this one. If you have a Twinkl subscription there is a set of vocabulary to accompany the story here and the bottom of this post has a couple of craft activities too. Obviously, activities for the English version Room on a Broom could also be used and/or adapted, especially craft activities as they have no text on them; here are some examples KiddychartsScholasticTeaching Ideas
So – there are my ideas for Halloween. As I said at the beginning, I don’t celebrate Halloween in my schools, but we do look at another festival at this time of year – Día de los Muertos.
Thanks to José García Sánchez in the Secondary MFL Matters Facebook group for this lovely infographic/ map of European present givers. Whilst Christmas is past for most, Spain and those who follow the Orthodox calendar have another day or so before they receive their gifts on 6th January or Epiphany. I’ll certainly be thinking of activities to use this next year, perhaps preparing comprehension questions based around practising name of countries and / or nationalities but I’ll also be using it as soon as we go back to school as a way of eking out one last activity from the array of Christmas cards and greetings we received as part of our eTwinning projects.
Below are some images of our cards, temporarily taking over the Achievement Tree!
For many, Christmas in Spain really starts today with El Gordo, the special lottery draw.
The prize is big and, unlike other lotteries, it is not won by a single person but shared amongst thousands of people. Also, unlike other lotteries, the numbers are sung by school children as you can see in this clip from the BBC.
The winning tickets for this year’s El Gordo was sold in Roquetas del Mar, Almería. You can watch the whole thing here on the El País website. The winning number — 79140 — appeared on 1,600 tickets, with each ticket holder winning 400,000 euros.
And here’s a cute video with some facts and singing!
This article explains the importance of the poinsettia to Aztecs who called it cuetlaxochitl which means “mortal flower that perishes and withers like all that is pure.”
Here’s a story about The Legend of the Poinsettia:
https://youtu.be/pp8TSgpTSUI
And another story, this time about Las Posadas.
This site has links to lots of articles if you want to explore more, but I’ll leave you with a couple of Mexican Christmas songs.
The song that is sung during posadas:
A short radio programme with some suggestions of carols from the childhood of Betto Arcos en Veracruz, including Los peces en el río
Having a number of pupils who don’t celebrate Christmas, and to alleviate ‘Christmas saturation’ I tried to come up with a different activity for the last week of term for my pupils.
Most of WPS have spent the last half term looking at days months and numbers so a calendar sprang to mind. And I recalled making a 3D one years ago…
I couldn’t find the template so I searched online for a dodecahedron net, and then for 2015 calendar tabs in Spanish, and then made my own.
copy of Spanish calendar tabs for 2015 – (you’ll need to reduce it to half size I discovered unless you print it straight from the site in which case it’s the correct size!)
scissors
glue
felt tip pens
LOTS of patience!
‘Method’
I gave each child a net on thin card and asked them to decorate each pentagon to form a background. Some chose a pattern, some tried to draw a suitable picture for the month, others just coloured.
Then they cut out the net – I’d made all the bits to cut really obvious by using dashed lines but still children cut off the tabs!
They cut each month out and stuck one month per pentagon onto the net.
Then the fun began! You need to fold all the pentagons inwards, and all the tabs too.
Sticking it all together starts off easy as you make a basket shape with the base but gets more and more fiddly as you have less space to grip and hold flaps so that they bond. My advice is to make sure the you do a tab or two at a time and hold them until they are firmly stuck. The last few joins will be more flimsy as you can’t apply pressure but if you try to leave a pentagon with several flaps, you should be able to just tuck them in and hope for the best!
Here’s my finished example:
I’ve since discovered this preprinted dodecahedron calendar calendario-deca-2015 on the same site – it wasn’t there last week! However, I prefer my version as this has capital letters for the months and days and having battled with children all term to stop ‘correcting’ the date that is written on the board when they copy it into their books, I’m not going down that road!
And there is also a Calendario rombico calendario-rombico-2015 which looks interesting! You need to follow the instructions here to make it!
Whilst the bottom strip on the calendar tabs is not needed, it fits beautifully with the unit we’re studying as we’re in the middle of discussing festivals and dates, and the calendarios will be great for practising saying the date in Spanish after Christmas break. However, having spent my lunch hour ‘rescuing’ a large pile of them, I don’t want to see another one for a while!
A bit late for this year (El Día de la Madre was 4th May in Spain this year), admittedly, but nothing like planning ahead (May 3rd next year) 😉 And it’s always good to tell people we love them.
I came across this lovely song via Pinterest today and thought it would be lovely for a Mothers Day assembly. It helpfully has the lyrics on the screen as well!
I found this video via Pinterest – a short video that explains Semana Santa in Sevilla using animation and real footage. You can switch on the subtitles to have the English appear across the bottom although the two finger puppets explain well with key words appearing behind them.
For many, Christmas in Spain really starts today with El Gordo, the special lottery draw.
A bit late for this year (El Día de la Madre was 4th May in Spain this year), admittedly, but nothing like planning ahead (May 3rd next year) 😉 And it’s always good to tell people we love them.
