Celebrating Day of the Dead in the Bilingual Classroom

Día de los Muertos is such a beautiful tradition. I love to teach my students about Day of the Dead and make cultural connections they can relate to. I'll be sharing some books, read alouds, and activities you can use in your Bilingual classroom! There's a FREEBIE for you too, so keep reading! 

Books and Read Alouds

What better way to teach about this important tradition than with books and read alouds. My favorite and a best seller is this bilingual book: El Día de los Muertos/Day of the Dead. I ordered this one from Scholastic Book Clubs. However, I also found it on Amazon and with prime shipping you can still get it in time to celebrate Día de los Muertos! Check out my top three favorite books with my Amazon Affiliate link AND check out the YouTube read alouds that are so fun for our students!

• Book 1: El Día de los Muertos/Day of the Dead
• See the book here on Amazon
• See the YouTube read aloud here

• Book 2: Day of the Dead
• See the book here on Amazon
• See the YouTube read aloud here

• Book 3: Día de los Muertos
• See the book here on Amazon
• See the YouTube read aloud here

Classroom altar

Create a giant classroom altar with mini altars created by students and their families. I like to have students bring in their own altar in remembrance of a family member or loved one that has passed away. Once they bring it, we create big altar made up of all of their altars. We add plenty of marigolds, plastic tea light candles, and our own papel picado we create using Astrobrights colorful paper. I like to incorporate as many meaningful elements as I can. I save all Día de los Muertos ideas on this PINTEREST board. Feel free to look around and save what you like!

Activities

I have created both printable and digital activities to help celebrate and teach about Día de los Muertos.

The printable Día de los Muertos activities include:

• Fold, Read and Learn book with comprehension questions
• Trifold with vocabulary, comprehension and writing tasks
• Flipbook for students to research and fill in information
• Craft for students to create their own Día de los Muertos marigold wreath
• PLUS letters to make a Día de los Muertos bulletin board with student work!

This Fix the Sentences resource is sure to be a hit with your students! They will look for the errors in each sentence, then retype the sentence correctly. It has a Day of the Dead theme perfect for this festivity!

Since some of our students are not in the classroom right now I have also created Boom Cards (digital task cards) to focus on Día de los Muertos vocabulary and context clues. These digital task cards are self-grading and interactive. They are super colorful, have the cutest Day of the Dead clipart, and will keep your students engaged! Check out the BUNDLE HERE!

• Día de los Muertos - ABC Order
• Día de los Muertos - Sentences/Context Clues
• Día de los Muertos - Syllables
• Día de los Muertos - Sugar Skull Colors

FREEBIE

Thank you for reading this far. I hope you found a few ideas of things to implement and help celebrate this beautiful tradition. CLICK here to download these adorable bookmarks to help celebrate and teach about Día de los Muertos. This is an exclusive freebie just for my blog readers which means it is not available for download anywhere else. Share the link to this post with your bilingual teacher friends so that they can come download their own set of bookmarks. 

Until next time friends! ¡Hasta luego!

*This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. This means I make a small commission at NO EXTRA CHARGE to you when you purchase through my links. Thank you for your support, come back soon!

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage - All Year Long

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month is super close to my heart! In my opinion, we should be teaching our students about influential Hispanics all year long. Can you tell I love my culture and heritage? Today, I am sharing a few things and ideas that can help you celebrate Hispanic Heritage all year long! Don't forget to sign up to receive my email newsletter and download a FREE Prefixes unit just for joining! 

Lotería

Lotería is a popular game played in Hispanic households. Have you ever played? It is a type of bingo with pictures and words that have become iconic over the years. Ask any Hispanic family about lotería, they probably know about it, own a set, and probably even have a t-shirt about it!!! Some of the pictures on the traditional lotería are not appropriate for the classroom. So imagine my excitement when I found a kid friendly version on Amazon. This Lil' Loteria is perfect for classroom use (pictures and words are kid friendly) PLUS it is bilingual. Such a great tool to build vocabulary in Spanish and English while having fun! You can see it on Amazon here with my affiliate link. 

Activities

You can use a variety of activities to teach or have students learn about influential Hispanics. I have created a bundle of activities that you can use all throughout the year and still be purposeful when teaching about these amazing Hispanic Leaders. 

• Hispanic Leaders Book and Activities with matching game cards and worksheets
• Hispanic Leaders Research Slides: Students can research, learn and complete.
• Hispanic Leaders Fact/Opinion: You can use these any time you are teaching a unit on fact/opinion
• Hispanic Leaders Fix the Sentences: You can use these in a grammar/writing center.

Click on any of the titles above to see this resources or click HERE to see the bundle. 

Videos

There are a few videos I've used to introduce and review Hispanic Heritage. Click below to be taken to the videos on YouTube. There are so many more amazing videos, these are just a few of my favorites. 

Hispanic Heritage Month

Hispanic Heritage Month | Disney Channel

Hispanic Heritage Month | Nick Jr.

Sesame Street Latino Festival

FREEBIE

Thank you for reading this far! I hope you and your students have a great time celebrating influential Hispanic Leaders all year long. Click HERE to download FREE bookmarks featuring 8 different influential Hispanics.  These FREE bookmarks are exclusive to my blog readers. This means they are not available any where else! Enjoy!

Don't forget to visit my TpT store HERE to see more activities for your bilingual classroom. Until next time friends! ¡Hasta luego!

*This post contains an Amazon Affiliate link. This means I make a small commission at NO EXTRA CHARGE to you when you purchase through my links. Thank you for your support, come back soon!

Linguacious Review & Giveaway

Welcome back friends! Linguacious sent over these goodies and I knew I had to share with you!

Personal note: I have a three year old and an 8 month baby that I am raising to be bilingual. There is so much research to support bilingualism and so many benefits of knowing more than one language. In order to do this, I need certain tools and resources.

Linguacious is one of the tools I use to support building vocabulary. I have previously used the flash cards and posters  and now they just added books to their amazing lineup! You can find them in over 30 languages.

So what are the benefits of using Linguacious?

I love that these resources are still tangible, as in an actual book and actual flashcards. BUT I also like that it incorporates QR code technology. So children are still flipping actual pages and playing with actual cards and then scanning the QR codes with a device and the Linguacious Application.

Another thing I like about Linguacious tools, is that they always use a native speaker for the correct pronunciation. So if I wanted my children to learn Arabic, I know I can depend on these tools for the correct pronunciation every time. For now, we'll just stick to Spanish, though!

The scanner app is such a seamless and easy way to incorporate technology and it is quick and easy to use. As soon as you scan the page or card, the Linguacious logo pops up and the audio begins. There is no lag or wait time. You definitely need the app. See it in action in my Instagram stories @mmbilingual.

Friends, I'd love for you to try out these products. Linguacious has kindly partnered with me to bring one of my followers: a FREE book and a FREE set of flashcards! Hop on over to my instagram @mmbilingual or CLICK HERE to enter this amazing giveaway.

Let me know your thoughts below. If you use Linguacious already, tell me too! Until next time, friends! XO