Every teacher is known for something. You know, Ms. Frizzle has her field trips, Mr. Sweeney has his words of wisdom, and Mr. White had his…side hustle. I hope that my legacy is that I took time to do fun cultural projects with my students, especially Piñatas. I know that there are deeper parts to culture and this is a superficial level of what culture actually is, but I do believe that there is time for fun when learning about culture. This post will outline my experience with making piñatas and how you can do it with your students! You will find my own “Piñata Prep” Google Doc for free at the end 🙂
My Piñata story:
My first year of teaching, I was introduced to making piñatas with students by my coworker. Amy had done piñatas for several years and even taught me how to make them using glue made from water and flour (I don’t actually recommend). I tarped my room and prayed for the best. The glue we used smelled HORRIBLE and it was very messy. The results: pretty freaking awesome Piñatas.
My second year of Piñata making, I had the stomach flu or the very beginning issues of my dairy allergy and wasn’t able to make them with the students. I had THE BEST SUB that made them with the kids. Two days after piñatas, we were sent home for COVID-19 and I am so so so grateful that they finished just in time!
So here we are, year 3. I wasn’t anticipating at all that we would even get to do this but I am so excited that my Spanish 2 students wanted to. I had a ton of left over materials from years prior and it worked out perfectly that my 2’s were wanting to do it (I only have 24 kids.) We simplified it down quite a bit and they could only use 1 balloon! We also didn’t do the flour and water recipe because it makes it really smelly and messy. Instead, I grabbed a few big bottles of Dollar Tree glue and mixed it with water, just enough so that it wets the newspaper but also adheres together. It worked really well and I don’t think that I will go back to the original. My coworker ended up using the traditional flour and water paste and just
Where is the input?
Some will read this blog and think that spending 3 days on Piñatas is ridiculous and a waste of time. They will say that there is no learning value and that we should focus more on input. I want to express the importance of intercultural competence for a second and what that looks like in my classroom. While I am sure there are other ways we could investigate the culture, I love that this activity gives students a creative outlet.
The Ohio World Languages Learning Standards provide a culture goal for Novice Low- Novice High. Here is what it looks like:
In my opinion, making piñatas directly relates to investigating the hispanic culture, more specifically Mexican culture. Prior to making piñatas (in a normal year where we don’t decide to do them 24 hours prior), students complete an investigation into the history and evolvement of piñatas. I wrote my own story but had too much inspiration from copyrighted materials, and I didn’t cite my sources. I would recommend looking at Las Piñatas: A comprehensible mini-unit including authentic resources if you want to do a mini-unit before making them! Anyways, I believe that culture should be experienced in real-life situations to hopefully inspire students to recreate them in the future or even travel abroad.
Culture should be experienced in more ways than just worksheets and readings. Immerse students in the culture by creating experiences in the classroom that inspire them to learn and investigate outside of the four walls in your classroom.
Haylee Ziegler – Señora Ziegler
Disclaimer: your students will have as much fun with this as YOU let them. Your attitude as the teacher will 100% control how this goes in your room. Your room will get messy. Your room will smell like glue. The kids will have fun and always remember it.
Where do I begin?
I gathered a list of the supplies that are a must for making Piñatas and you can access it below. I also included a rubric that was given to me, as well as some vocabulary that I used with upper levels in a writing project for them to tell me how they made their piñatas in the past tense.
I find that the prep and clean up are the most annoying things when making piñatas. You must be willing to embrace the mess, but also plan for it. Wherever you plan on making piñatas, make sure that you have a well covered area. Once you have your area prepped, you can begin.
The process
- Decide on your piñata style and make the base of the piñata out of balloons or cardboard. I usually require some form of balloon on the piñata so they can practice forming the paper maché well enough to be able to pop the balloon and fill the cavity with candy.
- Make your paste! You can use the flour and water recipe on the rubric in the PDF or just take Elmer’s glue and add a little water, just enough to make it runny. If it has too much water, it will not work as well.
- Rip newspaper into small strips and dip it into the glue mixture.
- Put the newspaper onto the structure and completely cover it.
- Try to get at least 2-3 layers of newspaper on before moving onto the decorating.
Dip the newspaper into the glue and put it on the balloon.
Now for decor….
- Add the color tissue paper onto the piñata overtop of the newspaper. Do this several times and let it dry.
- If you are planning on painting, go ahead and start doing this.
- Add in any other finishing touches to your piñata, like glitter, googly eyes, etc.
When you finish and everything is completely dry, pop the balloon inside by cutting the tip of it open. If you want to smash it, try squeezing in candy to make it more fun! If not, it makes for super cute decor.
FREEBIE:
Here is the Freebie for some Piñata fun. You are not allowed to sell this, but you most certainly can make a copy of it and change it up to work for you and your setting! I did include some vocab that I used my first year in a more traditional list form. I wouldn’t give this list to my students now, but rather find a way to incorporate it into the mini-lesson prior. I think it is helpful to see the vocab listed out