Teaching the Parts of the Face / Partes de la Cabeza

I started a new unit on body parts. This is a unit that I tried to teach across all grade levels. Some of the following activities are better suited for younger students (in my case Pre K and Kindergarten) and some for older (in my case 1st and 2nd graders.) I looked at a lot of different sites to get ideas. Please forgive me for not referencing everything. I have also posted templates for all of these games on TPT if you do not have the time to make them on your own, however all of these games are really easy to make your self.

Practice the Parts
Part of the way I teach is through repetition. As much as that can get boring it is important to find new ways to repeat a word. You can play the Simon Dice game I have written about before, or say the word in many different voices. One new technique I tried was having students get to identify the word that I tell them to find. For instance, I have all the pictures of the parts of the face on the board with the words covered up. I will call a student up to the board and tell them to find the "cabeza" (in my case I put a picture of Obama because he is the 'head' of our country.) The student will then make a decision and pull away a card covering the word. If they get it right they get a point, if they get it wrong they must cover up the word again.

Make Your Own White Board Games
I got the idea to use tic-tac-toe in a Spanish classroom from a presentation by Valerie Greer and Wendy Mercado from Bay Shore Middle school at the NECTFL conference a few weeks ago. Their idea for tic-tac-toe is to use picture boards, where "in order to be able to put an X or O in the box, the student must say what the picture is." If they do not say what the picture is before marking X or O, their partner can erase their mark. For older students you could easily change a board to be a verb or question where students must conjugate the verb or answer the question in the box. The first one to get tic-tac-toe wins. I took their idea and added the element of a white board. I put the picture board in a plastic sleeve and gave students dry erase markers. This first was a game that everyone played, then it became a center activity for when we have small group rotations.

Mr. Potato Head - Señor Papa 
Mr. Potato Head is a a tool that many preschool teachers use to teach body parts. I thought he could have great application in a Spanish classroom. I first used a video I found by SpanishForYou11:

This video is a nice introduction to Mr. Potatoe Head being used to teach the body parts. I focused on having my students pointing to the part that the instructor mentioned next.

http://www.colouringbookpages.co.uk/mr-potato-head/#
I liked this coloring page because Mr. Potato Head has 'pelo'

After watching this video students then colored in a Señor Papa together as a class. I would call out a color and a body part. Then students would all together color in the corresponding color and body part.    
This could easily be changed for older students by doing a color by numbers (paint by numbers.)

Fishing Game

For this game I was inspired by Play, Listen, and Learn Spanish. Miss. V has a game where students fish for different vocabulary words using a magnetic fishing pole and words with paperclips on them. I took this idea and applied it to teaching the parts of the face. This game is a little time consuming to prep for because of all the different pieces, but well worth the fun. Students really loved using the fishing poles I bought from Lakeshore (they are the only place I found where you could buy just the poles.) I then made cards of different face parts (4 mouths, 4 noses, 6 eyes, 6 ears, 6 hairs.) I laminated all those cards and added paperclips and velcro dots to the back of the cards. I also made a playing board of a face for students to then place the cards. I made two decks of cards and two boards for each group of 4 students. 

The object of the game is to complete you 'cara' board before the other team. Students are paired with another student and compete against another pair (this also works in groups of 3.) The first student on each team to start, holds the fishing pole and 'fishes' for a word card. After they get one they must attach it to their 'cara' board. They then pass the poll to their partner who does the same thing. If a student 'catches' a piece that is already on their board they must 'throw it back to sea' by putting it back on the table. Students really loved this game!

Make Your Own Face
The last idea I came up with was to give students a chance to make their own silly faces. I gave students a sheet with different face parts. They then had to choose the face parts they liked and label the parts in Spanish. I also created some blank boxes for students to draw their own face parts if they did not like the ones provided. Pre K just drew their own faces and drew lines from the labels to their designated parts. 

Four different student examples in grades K- 2nd where students had to cut and paste face parts.

Two different Pre K examples where students drew face parts and drew lines to their corresponding label.

Videos to Use
Here are several videos I found that you may find helpful as a review before any of these lessons.