Category: festivals

“Watch this beautifully animated, and heart felt, short film about a little girl who visits the land of the dead, where she learns the true meaning of the Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos (sic).” Student Academy Award Gold Medal winner, 2013!!

httpv://youtu.be/jCQnUuq-TEE

You can download the colour by numbers ‘calavera’  below (completed version on right) from this post on Spanish Playground  There are also links to a number of online ‘rompecabezas’ related to the festival – you have to move the pieces to make the complete picture.

Other helpful links
How to build a Día de Muertos altar (photos)

National Geographic talks about the festival in images and simple captions

Here are some images to colour

How to make sugar skulls

And this website has lots of information and activities for Día de Muertos including how to make sugar skulls (calaveras)

One of the Links into Languages Linked UP projects took Día de Muertos as its theme – the resources are brilliant but you’d need to start several weeks prior to the event to cover it all!

And finally, AZCentral has this PDF of resources that is freely downloadable.

Cómo hacer  un Árbol de Pascuas

httpv://youtu.be/YOcd1M6oXl4

Cómo hacer un Pollito dulcero

httpv://youtu.be/s80TiWuckyU

Aquí está la plantilla para hacer los pollitos.

También se puede hacer una Gallina de Pascua

Cómo hacer un Huevo de Pascua de Chocolate – paso a paso

httpv://youtu.be/xJexlxFw0Fk

Algo un poco diferente – cómo hacer Angry Birds para Pascaus

httpv://youtu.be/0cY2Wb7B7w8

Cómo hacer Huevos de Pascuas

httpv://youtu.be/4f9fzlTZYgc

y después, una canasta para los huevos de Pascua!

httpv://youtu.be/sJtp2JvDmQM

Cómo hacer Conejitos con huevos de Pascua

httpv://youtu.be/tSdaomBU9NE

Y por los ‘más avanzados’, dos maneras de hacer una Corona de Pascua – con la técnica de Patchwork sin agujas o con agujas y costura.

Thank you for reading ¡Vámonos! in 2012. Wishing you all the above and more in 2013.

Lisa xx

It's heavy!

Materials and presentation from my second session at #ILILC2 – Barça, Barça, Baaarça!

Barca – presentation

Barca handout – links to things mentioned in the above presentation and more!

comenius_spotlight_birmingham – information sheet from British Council on the project

A day early I know but I figured it would be more useful to tell you about it BEFORE the day so that you might be able to use it ON the day…

Via Twitter, I discovered this lovely activity from OnlineFreeSpanish.com for making Valentine’s Day cards.

I particularly like this resource as it offers lots of choice! You can choose a border, an image and a bilingual message to suit your personality and the recipient. Not all the messages are ‘slushy, lovey-dovey’ ones so it’s quite safe to use with a group of children who might not be into romance. And you can also choose to have the image in colour or leave it black adn white to be coloured in. Additionally, you can choose to print the card as a poster (one loveheart icon), as a sheet of four (four lovehearts) or as a sheet that can be folded to form a proper card (heart on card icon) The only downside is that the inside of the card is only in English 🙁

More Spanish Valentine’s fun here  on Youtube from Babelzone/LCF with a little video and a new take on He loves me, he loves me not!

For more Valentine’s ideas (mostly in French) check out Jo Rhys-Jones’ post on Talkabout Primary MFL.

And why not get adventurous and follow the lead of @wizenedcrone aka Fiona Joyce who had her Y9 learners writing a simple collaborative poem. Following a simple structure

Te quiero como ………… quiere a …………

learners can use dictionaries to suggest nouns to fill the gaps. In the example from Fiona, my favourite line is

‘Te quiero como las abuelas quieren a los crucigramas’

My example –

Te quiero como el mono quiere al plátano.

Te quiero como el pato quiere al agua.

Te quiero como los profes quieren a las vacaciones.

Te quiero como la fresa quiere a la nata.

Or you could try it with this pattern

…………. son rojos

…………. es azul

Quiero a ……………

Como quiero a tí

substituting the dots with a plural noun, a singular noun and another noun that you like a lot.

My poem might be

Las cerezas son rojas

El cielo es azul

Quiero al chocolate 

Como quiero a ti

As the clock in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid strikes midnight, people across Spain will be attemptig to eat 12 grapes before the ‘bongs’ finish.

As OrangePolkaDot tells us, the supermarkets sell special packs of twelve grapes to help you suceed!
Why? This blog post suggests that it is may have been due to a good grape harvest in 1909 (as does this post) or perhaps the converse.

Y en español aquí y aquí

Whatever, my advice is – make sure you have seedless, small grapes as you’ll never make it otherwise! The first New Years Eve I spent at my in-laws was hilarious thanks to my mother in law buying grapes so that I could ‘do my grape thing’ but choosing big fat seeded ones! That was a fun experience – good job I have a big mouth ;o)

Here’s a clip of a family celebrating ‘los doce uvas de la suerte’ (note the Mum doesn’t quite manage the feat!)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhfhaI_BsDU

I also like the other tradition that OrangePolkaDot highlights – wearing red undies.  Sounds like a fun idea to me – but how ill anyone know if you’re ‘celebrating’?  Unless Desigual are having another promotion…

Thought I’d highlight two great treats for Advent from two inspirational people.

Firstly, Mandy Barrow of the world famous Woodlands Junior School in Kent has produced an online World Advent calendar with details of Christmas around the world.  Each day you can open a new door and find out about Christmas traditions from other countries, and find the answers to questions like

How does red-suited Santa survive in the heat of a Brazilian summer?
In what country is Pavlova a popular Christmas dessert?

At Whitehouse Common, we’re going to use it to increase our ICU each day, and hopefully discover some things that we didn’t know before!

The second Advent treat is from Mark Pentleton at Radio Lingua Network who has made a Festive Phrase advent calendar. Behind each door is a short enhanced podcast  teaching a festive phrase and also giving information about the language, speakers and where it is spoken.  Can’t wait to find out if he’s doing Icelandic!  Another great opportunity to increase the breadth of experience of our pupils in terms of language, knowledge about the world and understanding of others.

TeachersTV is, I think, an increasing useful source of clips and materials, not just for CPD but also for classroom use.

Here they present some lovely lessons starters set in Martinique, set around preparations for carnival, the school and the local area.  Not only good for the language – for example, Une chasse au tresor  looks at vocabulary of directions – but also for ICU as the setting of Martinique allows comment to be made on the surroundings, comparing and contrasting, and also raises awareness of the Francophone world.

Another episode focuses on the preparations for Carnaval and the Carnaval itself – always fascinating to pupils in the UK where such festivities are unusual!

And another looks at the route Matis takes to school – an eyeopener in terms of what the route is like!

At about 2-5 minutes long, they’re a great way to open a lesson, or for those 10 minutes activities that can spread out over the week.

Thanks to an e-mail from Speekee, my knowledge of Spanish festivals has just grown!

This weekend in Spain’s festive year it’s The May Crosses – Las Cruces de Mayo.

Las Cruces de Mayo form a Spanish tradition which dates back to Roman times. Anyone can take part in making the decorative crosses, usually achieved by fitting together sections of plastic tubing, each punctured with lots of little holes. Then the crosses are laced with flowers which fit into the holes. Often, the immediate surrounds of the cross are also ‘dressed’ – with herbs, flowers and the like.

Here’s a clip they posted on Youtube to show what they look like.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERiyXCUlyNo

You can find out more here, here and see some photos here.

And here’s a marvellous 360º panorama of Las Cruces in Motril.

Las Cruces de Mayo – Motril (Granada) in Spain