My students and I are working on a monster unit in class. I’m going to cover October-appropriate items. My students LOVED when we learned about El Día de los Muertos last year, so I wanted to enhance the experience this year. We’re starting with general stuff, move on to La Llorona, another legend/mythical character to be determined, and end with El Día de los Muertos. This week I borrowed materials from the fabulous Mr. Peto’s lesson ¿Qué está debajo de la cama? – make sure to check out his information!
This week we worked on these items:
el monstruo (the monster) / el fantasma (the ghost) / el cuco* (boogeyman)
oye un ruido (hears a noise) / se esconde (hides) / tiene miedo (has fear) / se agarra (grabs)
encima de (on top of) / debajo de (underneath of) / dentro de (inside of)
la cama (the bed) / el armario (the closet)
*I also saw El Coco, but when I read up on the term it said El Cuco was used in more Central American countries. I didn’t want to confuse students between coconut and boogeyman… I’d love to know which one YOU use so I can correct this in the future if I am wrong.
However, the reason for this post is the [very] last-minute, some-what-cultural monster listening activity I did today! If you haven’t seen the news, a giant squid (officially called Architeuthis Dux) body was found in Cantabria, Spain this week! I saw the article just as I was logging off my email and clicked it in interest. While not an exclusively Spanish/Latin “monster,” it is somewhat of a real “monster” as well as definitely interesting, and it fit in my lesson perfectly! I typed up a paragraph and put together a series of pictures. I then read the paragraph to students and they circled the pictures that best fit what I read.
(Photo taken by Enrique Talledo of Cantabria)
Click to view the handout and text I read to students: El Monstruo Real en España – Editable Version
If you’ve already reviewed body parts, you could modify the story and have students draw what you’re describing – we haven’t gotten to enough body parts in Sp. 1 yet!
Why not teach a little science in your lesson today?
La Clase de la Señora Dentlinger 
My husband’s family threatens ill behaved children with El Cucuy. This is Mexico’s “boogeyman”.
I added El Cucuy this year! I didn’t do much more than introduce him and a cute little story about a mom pretending to be El Cucuy. A couple of questions: (1) Do you have any good lessons for El Cucuy? (2) I did not know about El Cucuy until I did some research and found many names. I used El Cuco, but I see you used Cucuy (I also saw Coco and Cuca). Was I wrong? Or do you know specifically which countries would use El Cuco? I had a hard time deciding which version to use!
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