Mexican Educational Games for Children

El Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a traditional Mexican holiday on November 2nd.

Mexico has a history rich with cultural traditions. For young children learning about Mexico, or learning the Spanish language, one of the ideal ways to introduce Mexico is through playing educational games. If students enjoy arts and crafts, employ hands-on activities that center on Mexican facts to elicit students' enthusiasm to learn more.

Language Learning: Spanish Color Dominoes

Play a game with students or children to learn basic Spanish vocabulary and phrases. Use a domino template provided by EnchantedLearning.com, or create your own on thick card stock. With the children, cut out the rectangle domino tile shapes from the paper. On one half of the rectangle, write a Spanish color word, like "amarillo" for yellow. On the other side, draw a yellow ball or picture, like a sun or star. Divide students into groups. Each player must match the color word with the actual color shape. If a child cannot play when it gets to her turn because he does not have a corresponding color, he picks one or two extra tiles and skips his turn. The winner is the one who can get rid of his pile of domino tiles first.

The Day of the Dead

On the Day of the Dead, El Dia de los Muertos, Mexicans remembers and honors their dead relatives and ancestors. On this day, Mexican citizens decorate their homes with altars featuring artistic skeletons and sweet offerings for the deceased. For a class learning about Mexican culture, have students split up into groups of 4 or 5, depending on the size of the class, to play a skeleton race game. Each group will make as many skeleton representations as they can in a given time period, like an hour or two. A teacher or parent can supply the class with information about the holiday and pile a table full of materials for making candy skulls, paper skeletons, and drawings to commemorate the dead. The group who makes the most in the time allotted shows off their creations and gets to decide how and where to hang their decorations - and the rest of the class's - around the classroom. A teacher or parent could also award them with a special Mexican candy, like a tamarind pulp candy, chili sweets or chicle (gum).

Educational Pinata

Create or purchase a papier mache, authentic Mexican pinata for class. Before letting each child come up for a swing at the candy-filled - or other treat-filled - pinata, ask a question about Mexican culture. These can be questions you have already discussed in class, such as history, traditional holidays and ceremonies, famous artists, or Spanish words and phrases, or information a student studied in his free time. When the student gets the right answer, he can swing three times at the pinata and hopefully get a treat incentive. Instead of filling the pinata with candy or treats, you can also opt to fill the pinata with small, traditional Mexican toys, like a Pirinola spinning top, a Mexican "loteria" game, or a wooden and leather toy drum.

Mexican Artists

Play a matching game. Model the game off of traditional Mexican "loteria" cards, a picture and word matching game. Create loteria-like cards by printing sheets of card stock with paintings or images from famous Mexican Artists. The front of the card can show a portrait painting by Frida Kahlo, for example. Teachers can print the images off the Internet or cut it from an art book. Other artists and architects include Judith Gutiérrez, Diego Rivera, Rodolfo "Rudy" Escalera, José Luis Cuevas, and Luis Barragán Morfin. On the back of the card, print the name of the artist and the name of the painting or other image. Play the game with students like flash cards, seeing which student - or group of students - can name the artists or their painting first.

References

• Enchanted Learning: Dominoes
• Enchanted Learning: Mexico: Crafts: Day of the Dead
• Teacher's Network: Sarago: Mexico

Resources

• CIA: The World Factbook
• Elkiosco: Gob: Mexico