Pesetas

At the moment, with my Year 5 Spaniards, I am doing big numbers and money.  We've been focusing on amounts of Euros, for obvious reasons, but the children are very interested in pesetas.  I've told them how I always remember the difference between cien and ciento by thinking of the 100 peseta coin, which had "cien pesetas" written on it:

I said I would have a look at home to see if I still had any pesetas to show them.  I found four 25 peseta pieces and two 5 peseta pieces (and a whole set of French francs, some Dutch guilders and some South African rand).

The peseta coins that I have turn out to be very useful on a cultural as well as a historical level.  I've scanned them on both sides and magnified them a lot so that the children will be able to examine them next lesson.  Here they are, in case you would like to use them.  Each vertical pair is one coin.  Can you work out the cultural references on each coin?

I don't teach French at the moment and so the French francs are not of use to me, but if you would like to use them, here they are:

Spanish fiestas and festivals

A member of the Languages in Primary Schools (LiPS) Facebook group was asking yesterday which special Spanish days are commonly taught as part of the cultural element of the Key Stage 2 curriculum.  Celebrations and festivals are also a part of the new GCSE course in Languages.

Here is a list of all the popular fiestas and días festivos.  If I have missed any that are celebrated widely or across the country, or that are popular fiestas from elsewhere in the Hispanic world, please put it in a comment and I'll add it to the list.

You can download my Días Festivos Tarsia and dominoes from here.

Año Nuevo	1st January	New Year
la Cabalgata de los Reyes	5th January	Parade of the Three Kings
el Día de Reyes	6th January	Day of the Three Kings / Epiphany
el Día de San Valentín	14th February	Valentine’s Day
el Día de la Amistad	14th February	Friendship Day
Carnavales	February	Carnivals (take place Thursday before Shrove Tuesday to Shrove Tuesday)
las Fallas de Valencia	15th-19th March	The Falles
el Día de San José / el Día del  Padre	19th March	St Joseph’s Day / Father’s Day
Semana Santa	March/April	Holy Week
el Día de San Jorge	23rd April	St George's Day
el Día del Libro	23rd April	Book Day
Feria de Abril	April / May	Seville April Fair (takes place in the 3rd week after Semana Santa)
Día Internacional de los Trabajadores	1st May	Labour Day
el Día de la Madre	1st Sunday in May	Mother’s Day
Corpus Cristi	10th June	Corpus Christi
Fiestas de San Juan	last week of June	St John festivals
San Fermín	7th July	St Fermin’s Day
Asunción de la Virgen	15th August	Assumption of Mary
la Tomatina	last Wednesday in August	Tomato-throwing festival
la Fiesta Nacional	12th October	Spain’s national day
el Día de la Hispanidad	12th October	Day of the Spanish-speaking world / Columbus Day
el Día de los Muertos	31st October – 2nd November	Day of the Dead (not Spain)
Todos los Santos	1st November	All Saints' Day
Día de la Constitución	6th December	Constitution Day
Inmaculada Concepción	8th December	Day of the Immaculate Conception
Nochebuena	24th December	Christmas Eve
el Día de Navidad	25th December	Christmas Day
el Día de los Santos Inocentes	28th December	Day of the Holy Innocents (like April Fools’ Day)
Nochevieja	31st December	New Year’s Eve

Reading about Spain and Hispanic Culture

Sometimes I have a young class who need calming at the beginning of a lesson and at other times I need to fill a little bit of time at the end of a lesson when the children have finished all their work.

I read them a book in English about Spain or a Spanish-speaking country which also has a cultural theme.  Here is my selection of books:

Abuela's Weave  tells the touching story of Esperanza and her grandmother going to sell their traditional weaving at a market in town.  The story is from Guatemala and I read this to the children as part of our Guatemala project.

This is the tale of how chocolate was given to the Mayan people by the Jaguar god.  It has a bookmark in as this is the story I am reading with Year 2 at the moment!   

The moon falls from the sky and breaks into pieces.  The story tells how she was put back together again.

Lola's papi teaches her to dance flamenco.  There is a CD included with the book as well with music.

Ferdinand the Bull was the subject of one of the early Disney cartoons.  We read the book first and then watched the cartoon to see how they were different.

This is a great book for explaining why there are so many Spanish-speakers who don't live in Spain.

I bought this book because it reminded me of Nathalie Paris and her Bibliobook!  This is the true story of a librarian who took books to children in very rural areas of Colombia with the aid of his donkeys.

This story tells the tale of Gaudí walking around Barcelona and talking about his works.

The fox (Zorro) wants to eat the guinea pig (Quwi) but is continually tricked by him.  Year 2 really liked this one.

Another story from Mayan mythology, which tells how the first Mayan people were made of corn

I like to read this story on European Day of Languages.  Carmelita and her dog Manny walk down their multi-cultural street, calling out "Hello" and "Woof" in lots of different languages as they go.

And finally, The Legend of the Poinsettia tells how the poinsettia plant ("Flor de Navidad") came to be closely associated with Christmas in Mexico.

Thank you to members of the Languages in Primary Schools Facebook Group, who recommended a lot of these.  Do you know any others?