Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) Week

Did you know that Halloween is on a MONDAY this year? Is there anything scarier?

Halloween. On a Monday.

Dress-up. On a Monday. Excited students ready to trick-or-treat. Celebrations on a Monday night. Staying up late on a Monday night. There goes the rest of the week, right? Maybe not.

Here are some ideas that will keep your students engaged and learning.

Dia de los Muertos is a holiday I've started to introduce to my students. Some of my students celebrate the day. There are holiday items in our grocery stores, discount stores, and craft stores. Even if my students don't celebrate, they are seeing skulls and skeletal mariachi bands. It's a real-life opportunity to teach about their environment and to learn about a holiday that may seem creepy but is really full of tradition and remembrance.

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Amy has a couple of book suggestions. You know, Amy. She's my sister who just also happens to be an elementary-school librarian and believes in oral language. So you KNOW her suggestions are good ones!

Amy also made a wonderful Informative Reader's Theater for The Day of the Dead, or El Dia de los Muertos. It explains how the day is a time for remembering people and the traditions that go along with it.

      

Because I have many students working on Wh- questions, I made a game that explains Dia de los Muertos. The focus is on answering what, who, where, and when questions. The answers are in the information on each card.

And to address pronouns, Dia de los Muertos is part of our Pronouns, Places and Possessives scenes.  

                                                 

The scene is set up for true pronoun discrimination. You can say, "Show me HE is sitting down", and because there are both a boy and girl sitting, the student has to rely on pronoun knowledge and not the word "sitting." The pack comes with an instruction page for you (it's the upside down one - you look at it while the student looks at the picture) and a B&W homework page. 

Halloween is on a Monday. That doesn't mean the rest of the week is sunk. Learning about Dia de los Muertos is a wonderful holiday for our students to learn about.