The first year I taught about Panama, Pato (my stuffed animal duck) misunderstood because he only heard the first syllable, “pan” (bread) and we went on a wild tangent… which resulted in kindergarteners building a “Bread Castle”. The following year, I decided to try a different approach, and we traveled out to the playground to pretend to “shovel and dig” the Panama Canal in the sandbox with plastic spoons.

When I teach geography, the overarching goal is for young students to make a placeholder or space in their brains for Spanish-speaking countries–and I will do whatever it takes to make the name(s) stick. As they get older, we layer on more culture and language.

---

A New Lesson

This year, I decided that the time had come to develop this Panama mini-unit into something more meaningful, tighter, better. I wanted to build off of the other years and expand the lesson. Kindergarteners had done an outstanding job the first semester, and I wanted to reward their hard work. I brainstormed long and hard until–POOF! There it was! An Idea! A Marvelous, Wonderfully Fantastic Idea! Or so I hoped. Things are rarely perfect the first time around. But I was determined to give it my best.

Following our beginning-of-class dance party (Rompe Ralph), I started reviewing the Floor Map. We had arrived at the *second* canvas map, which was brand new to students, so they were curious from the start. What’s that?! they wondered. I started to say, “Panama”, but was quickly cut off by Pato after the first syllable. Kindergarteners started laughing when Pato and I began arguing. They loved when Pato came to visit.

ME: It’s Panama, Pato. People speak Spanish there.

PATO: Yes, Ta-nah-nah, that’s what I said [ventriloquism has its limits, which provides terrific fodder for memorable mispronunciations].

ME: Um, no, that’s not quite right…

And so on and so forth. At one point, Pato returned to the ‘pan’ (bread) part of Panama, and began ordering individual students to please bring him pan y café (bread and coffee). I reprimanded him: Pato, that’s not their job! He replied in a whiny voice, “Pero tengo hambre” (but I’m hungry).

There is a balance between stretching out the ‘performance‘ here, while not letting it get too silly or drag on for too long. In other words, the hardest part of these ridiculous interactions (with Me, Myself, and I??) is that as an educator, I know that we eventually need to get somewhere!

In this case, our destination was Panama.

Once we clarified this and Pato more or less grasped the concept, he decided that he wanted to gift someone on the far side of the circle–(students were sitting on the floor around the two maps of Central and South America)–the pan/ bread flashcard that I had been referencing. Pato has a good heart, after all.

I encouraged his altruism, and opened a cabinet to reveal the Popsicle stick barco/ boat that kindergarteners had painstakingly made the previous year. Anyone who was in my class remembered immediately. The barco!!! It was a sweet, quick trip down Memory Lane. But back to the task at hand.

Students carefully passed the Popsicle stick boat to one another around the circle, with Pato sitting inside holding the flashcard that said pan. Finally, it reached the student at the other side of the circle.

PATO: Oh no!

ME: What? ¿Qué?

PATO: I forgot, I wanted to give [So-And-So] an apple/ manzana, too. [But that student was on the other side of the circle. So the boat had to be passed all the way around again, from one kindergartener to the next.]

This was starting to take a long time, and I had to be mindful of not dragging it out too long, but still making the point. We repeated the exercise once more. Then I said–

ME: Hey Pato, there’s a quicker way to get there, you know. You don’t have to go around Chile and Argentina: you can go through Panama.

PATO: What do you mean?

We watched this one-minute video to help him understand. The verbiage is advanced for five-year-olds, but I mostly showed it for the visuals. These are not small boats that go through the Panama Canal!

---

Pato subtlely shifted his language here and started calling the “gifts” to students “shipments”. He decided to ship boxes of manzanas (apples), piñas (pineapples), and pan (bread) to all of his friends in kindergarten through the Panama Canal. He really liked the new shortcut. It saved so much time!

The aforementioned items might seem random to you, but each year, fourth graders perform a play in Spanish based on my “Pato” character–and I try to preteach the vocabulary to other grade levels so that they understand some of the play. The plot is always different, and this year, the play has two bad guys who have teamed up together: “Bad Apple” (aka Manzana) and “Bad Pineapple” (aka Piña). So there is a rhyme and reason to the madness.

When I introduced this last week, the photocopier and I were having A Serious Argument, and I didn’t get to print out tiny pictures of fruit and bread for kindergarteners to cut out, most unfortunately. Instead, we loaded dominoes and blocks (separated by color) into the small, clear plastic boxes, and then pushed them across a bucket of [real] water.

The lesson broke down here a little because not everyone got a turn as quickly as they wanted (#kindergarten #impatient). But I believe that with a little fine-tuning, we can make the assembly lines work!

Next class, kindergarteners will cut out the tiny pictures of apples, pineapples, and bread, load them into boxes and then boats to ship them across the Canal. If I’m really brave, another group will pretend to “dig” the Canal with plastic spoons and sand.

And somehow, this will all eventually loop back into Chapter Two of their class story about The Huge Cup of Coffee.

#NotCrazyJustPassionate