Activities

Educator's School Highland Park Elementary, Austin ISD

Educator's E-mail Address sgarcia@hipark.austin.isd.tenet.edu

Grade Levels K-12

Subject Art/Social Studies

Title of Lesson Traditional/Original Loteria Cards

Purpose/Objective
Students will play a traditional game of Mexico and use the artwork from the gamecards to create an original artwork.

Learning Activity/Procedure
1. Play Loteria with students. If you have information on the origins of the game, share it with the students. Make it fun- play Mexican folk music, have snacks, use m&m's for markers, let them play with a partner, use the Spanish terms for each card, give out prizes to the winners........

3. Use Carmen Lomas Garza's loteria cards to discuss her interpretation of the traditional cards.

4. Have students choose a card to recreate. Be sure to discuss with them how much of the original card they should use in their own design- to copy or not to copy. You could use this as an opportunity to introduce a new media such as pen and ink, collage or watercolor resist. Or you could have the students create a loteria card in the style of a famous artist or art movement- a cubist loteria card, an impressionist loteria card, a Stuart Davis style loteria card.....

• Objects/Materials/Bibliography
• Loteria cards and markers
• Art prints of various artists and styles
• Carmen Lomas- Garza's Loteria Cards off the internet
• Materials appropriate for your art activities. I suggest whatever the activity that you give the students precut card shapes to work on and a banner for their loteria titles.

If the assignment was to make a cubist styled loteria card then the evaluation might look like this: the Subject should be shown as geometric shapes that fit together like puzzle pieces. The subject should be large, placed as the center of the composition, brightly colored and outlined. The shapes in the subject should be colored using three or more textures such as smooth, striped and pebbled. The background needs to be simple and contrast strongly with the subject.

In some video we have of Carmen, she describes the poems or riddles the caller might use to describe the name/picture. For example; "If you stay outside too long, I might burn you." for el sol. This way, to win you must not only have the right pictures on your tabla, but you must also figure out the poem or riddle. I could see classes making up poems and riddles suitable for their age cohort.

As far as I have been able to determine, "Loteria" is basically played like Bingo. Individual game cards typically have 16 pictures which are brightly colored and have the Spanish vocabulary naming the subject written at the bottom. The subjects pictured ("la botella, la pera, la bandera, el gallo," etc.) are traditional. Someone has mentioned there are phrases or poems attached to the subjects. There is no "free" space as with Bingo.

Participants can play with more than one card at a time. The caller draws Loteria picture cards from the deck one at a time and calls out the name of whatever is pictured on the card. ("la botella, la pera, la bandera, el gallo," etc.) Participants mark any matching pictures with something like a dried bean. Players are trying to mark four pictures in a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal row, or mark the four corners in order to win. There are several different ways that players announce a win. Included are:

"Ya gane!"

"Gano con ___________! ("la botella, la pera, la bandera," etc.)

"Buena con __________! ("la botella, la pera, la bandera," etc.)

"Loteria!"

With "Gano con" and "Buena con" players add the name of the last card called out. (That would be the card that completed the row of four or the last of the corners.) The caller sometimes includes the traditional phrases or poems associated with the individual pictures that are drawn. Sometimes players themselves add these phrases or poems as the pictures are drawn and called out.