¡Vamos al supermercado!

My kindergartners just "ate up" this thematic unit on the supermercado (haha...I love horrible puns!) We had so much fun that it's become one of my favorite things to teach. Who knew that an annoying weekly chore for adults could be so much for kids? The truth is that the supermarket is a gold mine for one of the big C's - Connections. You can connect it to math, literacy, and basic life skills.

Target Vocabulary:

supermercado/restaurante

comida - pan, huevos, leche, frutas, verduras, jamón, jugo, helado, chocolate, tocino

por favor

gracias

de nada

numbers 1-10

me gusta/no me gusta

Que rico/guácala

1. First things first we watched Calico Spanish's Chocolate video. This is always a hit no matter the grade and even though it's not wholly traditional, I really like the change from bate bate to a mi, me gusta chocolate at the end because it really gets students using that language chunk correctly. 

I introduced what a supermercado is. We talked about which supermarkets they knew of. Because they're in kindergarten some got confused and gave me restaurant names which led into a sorting activity. Then I introduced the foods with flashcards and students told their shoulder partners if they liked or disliked them. For an added bonus we also said que rico/delicioso or guácala (my kinders favorite thing to say each year.) 

2. To practice the food vocabulary more we looked at my picture dictionaries. I called out a food and they had to find it in the picture. Think Where's Waldo but with los huevos. It was particularly effective because as they looked for it they repeated the word and then repeated it some more with excitement when they had found it.  Next, we looked at real supermarket ads (authentic resources!) and we did the same seek and find game. This game worked a lot better than something like matamoscas because the pictures were more engaging than just flashcards and since there was no competition there were also no tears.

Get a free copy of the supermarket ads here. 

My Ks freaked out looking at these ads - they were SOOO excited. I thought it was odd until I remembered we live in a digital society now. They probably have seen very few grocery ads. Unlike me who grew up loving to look through the newspaper each week.

3. Then we read the book Peppa Pig va al supermercado. I was able to snag this book last summer when I was in Ibiza. 

4. Since our book was all about grocery shopping with a list we worked on writing our own lists. First we did it in a large group. I bought this gigantic magnet that looks like notebook paper last summer and it was perfect for writing and displaying our list. Students help me decide what to put on my list and we talked about which items we liked and disliked. We also counted how many items we had on the list.

In the next class I continued with whole group instruction. Again we wrote a class list but this time I had play food on my desk. After writing our list, I had volunteers come up and they chose something off my desk. Then I let them cross that item off of our list. As we went along we did math problems in Spanish. We subtracted one each time to get the new number of items on our list. Since adding and subtracting within 10 is a math skill in kindergarten this was a quick and natural way to integrate it into Spanish class. 

5. Finally students were ready to strike out on their own. First they did a matching worksheet where they had a list and they had to draw a line to the correct food. Then they got a chance to write their own lists based on what foods they liked. 

I printed out the grocery ads and put them next to the items. Some shopkeepers just asked for random numbers while others were very conscientious to look at the price advertised. Either way it was an easy way to make it a more text rich environment and students self-differentiated based on what they were ready for.

6. Once they had written their own lists we did a grocery role play. I had plastic food, plush food from Ikea, and laminated food I had printed off the internet. I even had plastic bags from Krogers for them to carry their bought items. This was of course pretty chaotic but they had so much fun. I even had one kiddo tell me that he was "so excited I can't sleep!"

You can get all of the worksheets, role play material, as well as links to other sites and additional videos I used in this unit in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. 

While I taught this unit with kindergartners I think it would work well with any age level. For older students I would give them a budget they have to keep as they shop. They could research a recipe from the target culture and shop for the items that they need. I can't take all 100 kindergartners on a field trip to the local Aguascalientes Supermercado but it would be totally doable with a Spanish club or Spanish 1 class. The possibilities are endless! How do you teach food and the supermercado? Share in the comments below!