A Cultural Activity from Colombia.

This was a fun activity to do with my students. I was joined by one of my student’s dad who was born in Colombia. This is what we did.

Materials and Preparation

Buy Colombian whole grain coffee and ground

A cloth or paper coffee filter,

A glass jar or big glass to brew the coffee (transparent so kids can see)

An electric kettle or another jar with hot water

Milk or half and half cream

Sugar

Small cups for students can taste (Toothbrushing rinsing mini cups work great as long as coffee is warm but not too hot)

Optional: *Obleas, *Arequipe and napkins.

*Can be found on Amazon

Below you will find 2 PDF’s. One is about coffee in general and has photos and its history in English. The second PDF is 9 pages long and is a photo essay of how a cup of coffee is made. It is bilingual English/Spanish, in case you want to go over some of the steps in Spanish. You can project these PDFs as you show kids the real coffee or print it all out in card stock or paper. If you are using paper (this is what we did) set the videos included in the PDF on different tabs in your laptop or tablet so you can show the kids without wasting time. Videos really enhance what is being said beyond the photos.

Presentation

1. We talked about the plant of coffee, the kinds there are and told them about its history. We also talked a bit about Colombia’s coffee and why it was so good and favored around the world. We used the following photos and information. PDF follows.

2. Then we showed students the process of making a cup of coffee. Below is a slideshow of the PDF I created. The red text in both PDFs refers to why Colombian coffee is so good and favored in the world.

3. We showed students the coffee beans and the ground coffee as we talked about it. The smell in the room was so coffeelicious! We also had the obleas with arequipe! Obleas are a popular giant wafer cookie that you add arequipe (dulce de leche) to. It goes down with coffee very well and your students will love it! It’s on the third photo to the right. ^ ^