¡Vamos a hacer un sándwich! A fun dramatic play activity that can also incorporate STEAM!

We all know little kiddos love to play! Incorporating play into authentic language activities harnesses that energy, increasing motivation and enthusiasm for learning new concepts and vocabulary. I am very lucky to have a large collection of play food which we use on a regular basis. My Multiage students (K-2) have been reading our minibook 'El sándwich de Mateo' with Activity Pack (see it here in our TpT store) which focuses on the phrases 'más ___', 'gracias', 'por favor' and 'es demasiado grande'...Julieta makes Mateo a cheese sandwich but he wants more and more cheese until it's too big! Simple vocabulary, but important!

Get it here!

To practice these phrases, I pulled out a bunch of plastic sandwich ingredients which we've used to retell the story. To make it even more fun, I've added more ingredients such as lettuce, tomatoes, bacon and mayonnaise.....so, how high can we build a sandwich before it topples over????

The first class we played this, I had kiddos tell me what to put on next. All the ingredients were spread out on the rug, and I called on students to tell me 'lechuga por favor' or 'más queso por favor'. As the sandwich grew, kids started calling out 'es muy grande', 'es enorme', using previously learnt vocabulary from our 'Zoo' theme. It kept growing until, you guessed it, it fell over!

Talk about suspense and laughter! The next class, instead of me building the sandwich, I called up kiddos one by one while another student told him/her what to put on next. Serious fun and serious learning...and 100% engagement in the lesson! Love it!

How can you make this a STEAM / STEM LESSON? Ask students to predict beforehand how many ingredients can be stacked BEFORE it topples over. Record their answers on the board, or have small slips of paper ready for them to write their prediction on. Once the sandwich has toppled over, count up the number of ingredients, minus 1, and see whose predictions were correct (or close).

Looking for play food? Try your local Goodwill or garage sales or head over to Amazon which has tons of choices. Here's a link to a sandwich set!


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