The say necessity is the mother of all invention and that is absolutely the case with this brain break! We are back to school, all masked up and 6 feet away from each other. We are encouraged to take our students outside for “Mask Breaks” and I have been on the search for easy, fun games to play outside while we’re enjoying the fresh air for a few minutes. This is one that came to me as we were heading out the door and it worked out pretty well…so what else would I do late on a Friday night but share it with you?!

Although we go outside and spread waaaay out to play this, I think it would absolutely work to play inside. Follow your heart.

Here’s how you play:

Make a big circle. Tell everyone, in your target language, to look at their feet. The teacher says 1-2-3 (in the target language, obvio!) and on 3, everyone raises their head and looks at another person in the circle. Then one of two things happens:

• If you’re looking at someone who is not looking back at you, nothing happens. You’re still in the game.
• If you look at someone who is looking back at you, the fastest person to say “Cacahuate“ (or some other ridiculously funny word in your target language that you pick) stays in the game. The person who didn’t say “Cacahuate” as fast is out and moves out of the circle.

Then the teacher says again Look at your feet 1-2-3 and the game begins again.

It moves really quickly…For most rounds, especially at the beginning when you have a lot of students in the circle, everyone is looks at another person, so it is silent. After a quick pause (to make sure no one is going to holler CACAHUATE,) the teacher says again Look at your feet 1-2-3 which signals the next round.

Kids who are out are now the refs. They’re the ones to announce Fuera (Out) to the person who says Cachahuate too slow or Papel, Roca, Tijera (Rock, Paper Scissors) if they determine a tie.

Play until you have 2 people left, and those are your champions. You might want to give them a Special Applause, because they’re a lot of fun. Then head back inside, or play another round. We spend about 5 minutes outside and play 2 or 3 rounds.

¿Cacahuate?

So why CACAHUATE? There’s a backstory. There’s always a backstory. With my Spanish 1 Little Darlings, we’ve been talking about the pets they have and the pets they want. We have a shared google slideshow and everyone contributed a picture and we’ve been having a jolly good time talking about pets. On the day inspiration struck, we had been discussing a girl’s guinea pig, named Peanut. And since cacahuate is just so much fun to say, I wrote it up on the board and we referred to the beloved guinea pig as “Señor Cacahuate“. So when we trooped out of the portable for our mask break, Cacahuate was on the brain. And the rest is history. Back story to the back story: Today one of my Heritage 2 Little Darlings submitted the most epic Google Translate Fail of all time: El descanso es historia. (The rest (as in a break, nap) is history.) Lord help us!