Creativity dominates 2019 Culture Day celebration
WHS students & elementary Spanish buddies engage in day of activities supporting cultural education & appreciation
Launch the media gallery 1 playerThis year´s Culture Day celebration was full of stations to engage the elementary kids. All of the activities that were planned for the students were hands-on and encouraged each and every student to participate. The stations consisted of music/dance, food, two crafts, and two games.
The music/dance station taught the students an authentic dance called ¨La Raspa,¨ where the students listened to the authentic music and learned the traditional dance from their Spanish buddies.
The food station this year was a different variation of a smoothie called a ¨Licuado.¨ These smoothies were blended together with bananas, strawberries, pineapple, orange juice and ice. When combined, they made a delicious drink designed to quench your thirst and cool you down on a hot day.
The craft stations this year were tissue flowers and tin ornaments. The tissue flowers used ¨papel de China,¨ which is Spanish for Chinese Paper. This paper was glued together to create a beautiful flower that was then attached to a very colorful stem.
Creative minds at the tin ornaments station really shined with all of the unique designed the kids created! They were able to design their ornaments on tin foil, cut them out and hole punch the design for the string in order to make a beautiful ornament.
Finally, the games this year really brought out the competitive side to the kids, which was very fun to witness. The first game was called ¨Robando el sombrero,¨ which means “stealing the hat.” Each kid had a laminated hat attached to his/her back and then was told to steal the hats from the other students´ backs without losing their own hat. The final two kids with the hats on their back were deemed the winners.
Watching the last game, which was the inspiration for our t-shirt designs, showed some serious soccer talent with the younger kids. The game was called ¨Tlachtli,¨ which is the name for the game that was played in ancient Mesoamerica, where each team wanted to get the ball through a hoop high up on a wall. This was modified a bit by using a hula hoop duct taped to a basketball pole.
To wrap up a successful day, the animal groups were given trivia questions to answer, and candy was given to the group that had the most questions correct.
I loved seeing every kid smiling and having fun at each station!" commented WHS Spanish Instructor Weston Sieck. "It was amazing to see the high school students get so involved with the activities and to be able to get the kids excited to learn something new in a hands-on experience. I was very impressed with the kids´ retention of the content as well! You could quiz them at the stations and there would be many kids saying the right answer without hesitation. The day was very successful due to the great staff that helped set up the elementary and also the high school students and their tremendous efforts to make the day exciting for the kiddos."
Culture Day is such a wonderful opportunity for the elementary kids and high school students to interact and learn from each other. The whole day was filled with smiles on the kids´ faces and an amazing amount of information retained from the fun, yet educationally engaging stations!
photo courtesy Morgan Oden
photo courtesy Morgan Oden
photo courtesy Morgan Oden
photo courtesy Quinn Zeleny
photo courtesy Morgan Oden
photo courtesy Quinn Zeleny
photo courtesy Morgan Oden