Spanish Class art project: The colorful Casas of Guatapé, Colombia
If you are a Spanish teacher looking for a fun lesson and project about houses or art, here’s an idea you probably haven’t heard of before: Teach about the houses of Guatapé, Colombia.
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Guatapé is a town less than 100 kilometers from Medellín, in the mountains of Antioquia, Colombia. It’s a popular tourist attraction because of its giant rock with over 700 stairs (la piedra del Peñol–look it up!) and it’s colorful town. Specifically, the town has houses with unique facades. Years ago, people put zócalos on the lower outside walls of their houses as a sort of plaster to protect from humidity and wear and tear from animals. Zócalos were painted with colorful designs, often of something that the inhabitants of the house liked.
Since the early 1900’s, these zócalos have morphed into a colorful art form and a point of pride for Guatapé. There are dozens of colorful houses in the center of town, in addition to the rainbow square with its bright stairs.
You can teach students about these Guatapé with this short video in Spanish that shows them lots of images of the houses. If you want a full lesson with a mini book for students to create, you can get it here. Spend time looking at the bars on the windows (used because there are no screens, and the climate allows for open windows daily), the shapes on the doors and the zócalos and what they could represent.
Guatapé houses Art Project
For the art project, have students create their own colorful casas with bright colored paper. I recommend getting thicker cardstock paper that is especially bright, like this paper, instead of typical colored paper.
Option 1: Have students create colorful houses with geometric designs from paper cut outs. When I did this project this is what most of my students chose to do. Use glue and glue sticks to paste the bits of paper together.
Option 2: Have students create their own zócalo that represents them.
Option 3: Have students just design and create a door. This is probably the easiest of the three options.
With any of the options you could have students present their designs orally, focusing on colors and shapes for lower proficiency levels, and why they made the design choices they did for higher proficiency levels.
One last tip–this project took more time than I anticipated, partly because students worked really hard on them but partly because it just takes a long time to cut out paper shapes. So you may want to plan for more time than you’d originally think, or have students finish them at home.
