CUBA: Below you will find videos about four unique animals found in Cuba–Polymita (Painted) Snails, Spinner Dolphins, Bee Hummingbirds, and El Tocororo, Cuba’s national bird.
Students could do all sorts of art projects with these beautiful creatures, or simply take one and make it the main character and hero of a class story. Do you think the Polymita Snail might be friends with Marcel the Shell?
CUBA: René Portocarrero was a self-taught Cuban artist. His paintings earned him international awards and success.
Third graders made colorful replicas in art class of his Landscape of Havana painting. The original plan was to laminate and glue all of their work onto tri-fold boards, thereby creating the “streets of Havana” in Spanish class. Students could build walls to their houses and businesses, and then fold them back up at the end of class for an easy clean-up. We wanted to create an authentic town, as part two of the second graders’ town simulation. However, the hurricanes this year had different ideas, and I became a traveling Spanish teacher–thereby putting this plan on the back burner. But their artwork turned out really well!
Food from Central America and beyond to make at home with your family. Turn on the radio to a Spanish station, and have fun! Note that the recipes are ordered alphabetically by country.
CUBA: For New Year’s, many Cubans mop their houses from top to bottom, and fill up a bucket with the dirty water. Next, they dump this water in the street, as a symbolic gesture to “throw away” all of the bad stuff from this past year and begin anew. Later, they walk around the block with a suitcase, waving goodbye to their neighbors. This is meant to ensure a trip abroad in the coming months.
A staple Cuban event is the pig roast (click on the link, if you dare), but they also will eat black beans and rice, plantains, and buñuelos for dessert for the Christmas Eve meal. A pig roast takes a long time, but the water-dumping and suitcase jaunt seem manageable!
CUBA/SPAIN: It is the year 1715–King Felipe V wants his treasure, and he wants it now. As a result, he demands that his Spanish fleet (of 12 ships) makes its way back from Cuba to Spain, even though it is hurricane season in the Caribbean. The 1715 fleet gets caught in a terrible storm and sinks, with 1500 sailors aboard–and the treasure is lost. Modern treasure hunters have discovered some of this lost treasure–one family made $4.5 million dollars in 2017!–but much still remains somewhere on the ocean floor. Students acted out this story as a class, and then made artifacts for a faux museum display. After painting the Spanish crest and flag on them, students broke a few of the plates intentionally to make it seem more realistic!
For treasure artifacts, try this repoussévideo for coins; painting actual plates and dishware with the Spanish crest; stringing together gold and silver beads for necklaces; painting those cardboard stuffers you find inside boxes a silvery-gold-rose quartz hue; and finally, drawing old navigation maps on paper soaked in coffee (to give it an ‘old’ look). These can be as artistic as is possible for the age group you teach. Good luck!
In 1715, a fleet of Spanish ships sank off the coast of Florida, en route to Spain and loaded with treasure from the New World.
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