Teaching Spanish to Students with a Mexican Picnic

If you are a teacher looking for a fun new way to teach Spanish to your students, consider holding a Mexican picnic. You can teach them about Mexican traditions and food, while enjoying some time together outside of the normal classroom environment. Common outdoor activities like volleyball or Simon Says can be given a Spanish language twist to keep with your lesson plan. Here are some tips on how to throw an authentic Mexican picnic to teach Spanish to students.

Teaching Spanish to students with a Mexican picnic: Where and when

Planning a Mexican picnic to teach Spanish to students can be a logistical nightmare if it is not done right. Consider the age of your students when deciding how elaborate to make the picnic. Older children may be able to handle a class field trip to a local park while a younger class should be kept on school grounds. Younger children will also have a shorter attention span for your Spanish language lesson plans, which can be another good reason to keep things quick.

Teaching Spanish to students with a Mexican picnic: Traditions and heritage

Besides being a good way to teach Spanish to your students, you can also use a Mexican picnic to teach them about the Mexican culture. Of course, this is a picnic, so the best place to start is with the food. Mexican food works especially well for a large group such as a class picnic. It is easy to serve a lot of students out of one large tray of beans or rice. Finger foods like mini-quesadillas, taquitos, or chips and salsa are also good choices for a Mexican picnic. For an authentic dessert, pick up some Mexican candy at the local Hispanic grocery store. As your class is eating the food, teach them the Spanish names for the ingredients like cheese, beans, rice, chicken, beef, and others.

Teaching Spanish to students with a Mexican picnic: Outdoor activities

Plan Spanish-related activities for the Mexican picnic so you will have ample opportunities to teach your students the language. Volleyball is a staple of any outdoor picnic and can be tweaked to require the students to call out words in Spanish. Choose a broad category like parts of the body or even Spanish numerals to give your students plenty of word options. Other fun picnic games can easily be translated into Spanish and played with the normal rules. Simon Says works very well in Spanish because it forces the student to translate the instruction before they can decide what to do. No Mexican picnic would be complete without a pinata. Again, this can be a great opportunity to teach your students about Mexican traditions.