La Casa Centers- Ideas for Spanish Class

My third graders are in the middle of our Me and My Home unit, learning the rooms of the house. We started by looking at houses around the world and read The Three Little Pigs. But because I´m back in the Specials rotation this year we didn't have enough time to do the Tres Cerditos STEAM challenge - read more about that here.

Instead we moved onto to the inside of the house with rooms. I introduced the rooms of the house by telling the story of Cenicienta (Cinderella.) Cenicienta has to clean ALL the rooms of the house so it's great for lots of repetitions. This is also where I start introducing adjectives that they'll need next year - rich, intelligent, handsome, nice, mean, strong etc. It's not a focus but it helps that they've heard and seen them before when they get to fourth grade.

We also warmed up each class by playing ¿Dónde está abuela? where one person puts abuelita somewhere in the house and the other person guesses. I changed this up to different family members for a nice review of family vocabulary.

Then we moved onto centers.

Center 1 - Gapminder.com

I LOVE this center. Mostly because I love this website. It features houses from around the world. Students got a worksheet with different items in the house. They had to find the picture of the item and then write what room in the house it went in.

Get your free worksheet here!

Center 2 - Magnetic houses

I won these sets of magnetic houses three years ago at the NNELL breakfast at ACTFL. Students take turns asking each other ¿Dónde está? with the furniture and their partner answers with the room. The first time I tell them to make una casa normal. The second time they can make una casa loca with the bathtub in the living room for example.

I photocopied the back cover so if kids wanted to they could actually practice the furniture vocabulary as well as the rooms of the house. If they didn't then they just ignored the paper. Instant differentiation!

Center 3 - Reading center

Because we started with Los Tres Cerditos and Cenicienta I have students read our Tres Cerditos books and our Cenicienta Readers Theater in groups of 2-4. At the end of Cenicienta there was a survey that asks who in their family cleans the different rooms of the house.

Get your copy of Cenicienta here. 

Center 4 - Cut and paste

I put out these cute houses from Fun For Spanish Teachers. Students cut out and pasted the labels. When they were done I had a bucket of books in Spanish on houses that they could look at. Later they cut these out and put them in their notebooks.

This unit is quickly becoming one of my favorites. Students really love talking about their own homes and looking at homes around the world. What activities do you use to teach about the house? Share in the comments below!