A tweet the other day about a visit to IKEA and the purchase of hats and things reminded me that I hadn’t shared my latest purchase from the great Swedish home of fun!

Those who have been reading ¡Vámonos! for a while will know that I am a great fan of IKEA for resources that can be used in teaching languages (and other things too!)

Last time I went I bought a fruit punnet and vegetable basket and this purchase continues on the food theme.

How might I use this IKEA breakfast set?

Well apart from naming the items of food e.g. pan, un huevo frito, salchichas, queso, beicon – if that’s how you spell it now ;o) – etc, you could use this set to work on negative sentences ‘Para desayunar, tomo un huevo frito’ Para desayunar no tomo salchichas.’  Or you could introduce phrases of frequency  e.g. ‘Normalmente, como pan tostado para el desayuno’, ‘A veces desayuno un huevo frito y beicon’, ‘Nunca como tortitas/panqueques’. Opinions would also work.

Alternatively you could use it for some intercultural understanding and comparison of eating habits. What is a typical English breakfast?  What would an American eat for breakfast?  And in Spain? France?  And that allows opinions too!

Think they need to add some yoghurt, cereal and some drinks to the set!

Wonder what I’ll find on my next visit?

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.

Thanks to Lidija from Croatia, here are some brief highlights of the ‘TeachMeet styley thingy’ at #etwpdw, showing some of the people about whom I blogged earlier this week.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41T8Df33OnY

Thanks to eagle eyed @joedale for spotting it!

Michael Purves shared his ‘tale’ this morning.  A pretty inspiring tale it was too, taking him from a ‘despondent, stuck in a rut’ teacher into an eTwinner extraordinaire running eTwinning projects between 40+ countries.

His journey started in 2007 when he was browsing the LTS  website with a colleague and came across eTwinning.  Having registered his interest, his first project was with a Finnish school and was a comparison of food and sport called A healthy passport.

At an eTwinning PDW in Ischia, his next project was hatched, based on the premise that animals speak different languages – dogs say guau in Spanish but woof in English etc.

Perhaps his biggest project was Schoolovision, a Eurovision song contest for primary kids.  With over 40 countries involved it was a big project, involving video recording and editing, voting by Flashmeeting and blogging.  He goes for big projects as his latest is a Snapshot of Europe with pupils across Europe taking photographs of their local environment in four categories.

Schoolovision2009

Schoolovision2010 and now

Michael shared the benefits of eTwinning-

for him, it led to a new dimension in his teaching, a renewed sense of belief in his teaching, an ‘I can’ attitude, and lots of fun, laughter and friendship.

For his pupils, a growing ‘digital literacy’, fun and friendship, a greater understanding of one another, plenty of cooperation and the opportunity to plan and make desscions about their own learning.

And for the school, international recognition.  For example, his class have been on Newsround on the web!

A super douper ambassador – and not a Ferrero Rocher in sight.

Just discovered this video on my training today.

Could this form a stimulus for a discussion on Intercultural Understanding?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z2_kKAe9y0&feature=related

Today, 5th May, marks the 5th birthday of eTwinning.

The birthday was celebrated across Europe with balloon releases, cake eating and national events.

In the UK we were encouraged to plant blue and yellow flowers – the colours of the European Union and also the eTwinning logo.

At Whitehouse Common, 1DS marked the event in several ways.

1. we watched the eTwinning videos below – the children (aged 5-6) completely understood the message of the first clip – ‘eTwinning makes lessons more fun.  The kids looked much happier when the eTwinning man arrived.’  And they were highly amused by all the ball throwing in the second!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj58uA4cjrQ

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HDdxNQ6AIY

2. we made paper doll chains to symbolise people holding hands as friends – surprisingly they all successfully cut out their dolls in a chain (although we had one set of decapitated dolls!)

3. we coloured in flowers in blue and yellow for a display

4. and best of all, we planted some marigolds and a blueish daisy in the dragon planter.

So – Happy Birthday eTwinning from WCPS!

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