Here are some activities to do with my books.

Juan Bobo: Four Folktales From Puerto Rico

• Draw a pig. Where would you take your pig? Use your imagination. The pig can go to school, to soccer practice, to a ballet recital. What kind of clothes would your pig wear? Measure your pig and choose fabric and make clothes appropriate to where the pig is going. Glue the clothes to the pig. After the pig is dry, display it on a bulletin board.
• Write a Juan Bobo play. Add characters such as Juan Bobo’s father, brothers, sisters, neighbors, friends. Act the play with your friends. Have an audience!
• Make a cardboard mask and decorate it with dots using Q-Tip.
• Look for other stories that have noodle-heads from around the world.

Poet And Politician Of Puerto Rico: Don Luis Muñoz Marin

• Compare Edwin Markham’s Man with the Hoe with Muñoz’s The Pamphlet. Write a contemporary poem about the homeless.
• Have a discussion about the political status of Puerto Rico and the pros and cons of keeping the island as a Commonwealth of the United States, or let it become a state or an independent nation. Have a referendum in class and vote as if you were Puerto Ricans living in the island.

In The Shade Of The Nispero Tree

• Have a discussion about a quiet prejudice you have experienced in your community.
• List twenty one countries where Spanish is spoken. Make flags from those countries, place them around the school playground and play Passport.
• Make a marshmallow wedding.
• Make capias, the mementos that Miss Bocachica and Marisol gave at their parties.
• Ask your parents and/or grandparents to tell you a spooky story they heard when they were growing up.
• Make gowns and tuxedos out of newspaper and have a coronation.
• Memorize the poem Danza Negra, recite it, dancing while your audience drum.
• Make simple pictures of folktales and arrange them so they make a completely different story. Write the story.
• Write a story about when you or somebody you know got head lice.
• Make a papier mache mask using the direction in the back of Lulu Delacre’s Vejigante.
• Invite your parents to read In The Shade Of The Nispero Tree and discuss it.

Shake It, Morena!

• Invite your parents to come to school and share the games, stories, songs, riddles they grew up with.
• Count the 27 lizards in the book.
• Translate into Spanish the Juan Bobo story in the book.
• Make your own book of contemporary songs, riddles, stories.
• Play Passport.
• Research the coquí.
• Dance Shake It, Morena!

Cesar: Sí, Se Puede. Yes We Can

• Write an acrostic poem with: Sí, Se Puede, Yes We Can
• Plant beans in a plastic container with cotton See them grow!
• Interview a farmworker
• Write about a long car trip
• Sing De Colores
• Write about your family’s experiences when they don’t have enough money