Cinco de Mayo game – in Spanish AND French class!

I always watched my Spanish-teacher colleagues have fun playing Cinco de Mayo games, feeling a bit left out. Of course we got our fun day on Mardi Gras, but that doesn’t help much when May 5 rolls around. It seemed pretty obvious that I should make a digital escape game for Cinco de Mayo, but a couple of years ago it hit me – why should Spanish classes get all the fun? I’ve taught about the Légion Étrangere for quite a while on April 28 – but not so much on May 5. Why not?

So I got to thinking – why not make a digital escape game telling the story from the French point of view? After all, they were one of the parties involved in this whole Battle of Puebla thing. And wouldn’t students benefit from learning about why that battle even happened? Most of them don’t know what May 5 is celebrating, and they definitely don’t know about the lead-up to the battle.

Anyway – I made a game called Le Cinq Mai for French classes. It has the same type of fun and challenge that the Spanish game has, but it focuses more on the French side of things. The topics include:

• the battle of Camerone
• Napoleon III
• the second battle of Puebla
• the Pastry war
• the fate of Emperor Maximillian
• the French commander

Really, how can you go wrong teaching about something called “the pastry war”? If you’d rather purchase through the TPT store, use this link: Le Cinq Mai).

But what if I’m a Spanish teacher?

Well, the original Cinco de Mayo game is still available for Spanish classes! ( If you’d rather purchase through the TPT store, use this link: Cinco de Mayo ).It’s a very popular game, and students enjoy playing it every year. Of course the topics are different. It focuses on things from the Spanish/Mexican side of things. The topics for the Spanish game are:

• Mole Poblano
• Benito Juarez
• Mariachi Music
• Ignacio Zaragosa
• The Battle of Puebla

Plan ahead for either Cinco de Mayo game!

If you plan to play either of these Cinco de Mayo games, please note that there are many others using the games on the same day. I have 20 different copies of the game website so there is plenty of bandwidth for all of your students. But sometimes the sites they link to can get overwhelmed and they either slow down or stop working altogether.

Also, if your district blocks websites outside of the district Google system, it may not work. In this case, no problem – with a little bit of advance notice, I can make a copy of the Cinco de Mayo game for you and you can publish it from within your district. If you think you may need this, plan ahead! It’s better to have it up and running so you can test it before May 5 than to discover that morning that your students won’t be able ot access the game.