End of the year

Here we are, counting down the days until summer vacation! As the kids get anstier, and my patience wanes, I wind down my theme work and look to activities which review learnt vocabulary. Often this includes games of all kinds. One I particularly like is 'Reloj', a card game from Spain. This works best in smaller classes or groups.
To play:
You will need several decks of cards (I use 5 decks for a class of 12)- remove the queens and the jokers.

To play:
-all cards are dealt evenly to players. Cards are kept face down.
-going clockwise, first player turns over top card, places it in center of table and says ‘reloj’. next player turns over his/her card and says ‘uno’. next player does the same, saying ‘dos’- play continues in this manner counting up to ‘rey’ (12). when players get to ‘rey’, counting starts again at ‘reloj’.
-as cards are played into the middle of the table, should a player turn over a card which holds the same value as the number he/she calls out, player must take all of the cards in the center. (So if player says 'dos' and turns over a 2, player takes all of the cards in the middle) No cards are taken when ‘reloj’ is said since it does not represent a number.
-play continues until one player goes out.

cards are counted in this order:
reloj
uno
dos
tres
cuatro
cinco
seis
siete
ocho
nueve
sota (10)
caballo (jack)
rey (king)

Disfrutalo!

Categorizing by color

When introducing a new thematic set of vocabulary, I plan activities which tap into previously learnt vocab. At my level, this includes numbers, size vocab, and colors. One activity which I particularly like is categorizing by color. This can be done with any set of items and is a great review of color words. Long ago I made a 'color mat'- a big poster with a space for each color on it (labeled, of course).
My First Graders have just started the theme 'Ranitas'. Using a collection of small frogs and the color mat, I held up each frog and asked "What color is this frog?". I call on a student to answer- this student then gets to place the frog on the appropriate color. I have gathered over the years enough frogs for everyone to have a turn, with multiple frogs of some colors and some colors having no frogs at all. Once all of the frogs are placed on the color mat, then I ask "How many frogs are red? (blue, yellow, etc)" Colors and numbers have now been practiced with a novel item (frogs) which keeps the interest and motivation high.
Tip: since many items are more than one color (a frog could be both yellow and black), I instruct the class to identify the color that it is the most of. This makes it easier to place the item on the color mat.