• A sombrero is a great alternative to a traditional birthday hatsombrero image by apeschi from Fotolia.com
  
  Celebrating a birthday in a Spanish class can be both fun and informative. When a child in a Spanish class has a birthday, there are many activities that the teacher can initiate that will make the student feel special and will teach students Spanish at the same time. By mixing lessons and celebration together, Spanish class becomes more fun.
  
  

Birthday Cards

• To create a Spanish class lesson out of a simple kind gesture, have the students make birthday cards to give to the birthday student. The birthday student can make a card for someone they know whose birthday is coming up. The students will write the card in Spanish. Instead of "Happy Birthday," for example, the card will say, "Feliz Cumpleaños." Have them write, at minimum, two sentences or phrases in the card in Spanish. The birthday boy or girl gets nice cards and every student now knows how to show birthday sentiments in Spanish.
  
  

Piñata

• In many Spanish-speaking cultures, the piñata is a popular birthday celebration tool. Add a twist to make it educational as well as fun by having the students answer questions in Spanish or correctly define Spanish words in order to get a turn to hit the piñata. The birthday boy or girl will feel special having a piñata there and all students will learn or improve their Spanish vocabulary.
  
  

Acrostic Poem

• An acrostic poem is a poem that spells out one word vertically and each horizontal word is spelled using vertical letters. An example is Animal, People are similar, Endangered for the word "ape." For a birthday Spanish lesson, have students make acronistic poems using the birthday boy or girl's name. The words to describe that person should be written only in Spanish. This will allow people to stretch their minds into finding out new words that they may not have used before that begin with the correct letters.
  
  

Desserts

• A great treat for a birthday in the class would be to have the kids make an authentic dessert from a Spanish-speaking country. Instead of the typical birthday cake, have them make the traditional Mexican flan, which is a custard-like dessert. A favorite in Spain, churros, are like long, skinny cinnamon donuts. Tres leches is a South American sponge cake soaked in milk and cream. Making or simply eating these foreign desserts instead of a traditional birthday cake will help students learn about Spanish-speaking cultures.