Cinco de Mayo Children’s Books to Help Your Class Celebrate the Holiday!
Every year without fail, Cinco de Mayo comes around. But what is it? We spend time celebrating in classrooms and having a lot of fun, but do we even know what it is? Do your students? Have you thought about showing them some Cinco de Mayo Children’s books? Maybe you haven’t looked at them yourself. There are so many great options out there, it can be hard to know where to start.
For Cinco de Mayo Children’s books, we have three great suggestions. You’ll want to look carefully at each one of them, but these 3 Cinco de Mayo Books for primary students really are the best of the best. Take a look for yourself!
* Each book title links to Amazon just to make it easy – you can read reviews, a summary, and order should you choose! (This post contains affiliate links.)
Celebrate Cinco de Mayo With a Mouse!
Cinco de Mouse-O, written by Judy Cox, is an adorable book about a cute little mouse named, cleverly enough, Mouse. He wakes up on May 5th to delicious-smelling foods. He gets up and starts a journey to find where the smell is coming from. But what he didn’t anticipate was his rascally foe, Cat! While he smells delicious food, Cat smells him! Now Mouse has to find a way to get a piece of candy from a pinata while avoiding being caught by Cat! The best part about Cinco de Mayo children’s books is that they will likely give your students an opportunity to learn a little Spanish. This book is a great one on the list, as it has several Spanish words sprinkled throughout, giving your kiddos a chance to pick up a few new words as they enjoy Mouse’s journey!
Traditional Cinco de Mayo Children’s Books
If you’re looking for Cinco de Mayo Children’s Books that are a little more informative and a little less silly, you should take a look at Cinco de Mayo, written by Mary Dodson Wade. With its pages filled with colorful photographs, this book is full of facts. The book has easy to read words for your younger readers. They’ll see pictures with words under them, helping them to connect the dots between what they’re seeing and the words they already know and understand.
A lot of Cinco de Mayo children’s books will explain the traditions and the history of Cinco de Mayo, and this book is no different! Your students will get to see what a traditional Cinco de Mayo celebration looks like and learn about the different festivities that are participated in. They’ll also get to see photographs of kids just like them celebrating and dancing throughout the book. So if you’re on the hunt for Cinco de Mayo children’s books, make sure you start right here!
Chicks and Salsa
Maybe your students do better learning when they can laugh and be entertained by funny animals. If that’s the case, you must check out Chicks and Salsa, written by Aaron Reynolds and illustrated by Paulette Bogan! Many of the Cinco de Mayo children’s books out there are informative about the culture and where exactly Cinco de Mayo came from, which is great! But this book falls into a slightly different category.
Chicks and Salsa follows a rooster who lives on a farm with several chickens. They all decide that they’re getting tired of eating the same food every day, so the rooster hatches a daring plan to make something new! With some scrounging around, and some borrowing from the garden, they make up some delicious chips and salsa! But what will happen when the owners of the farm go out to their garden to harvest some ingredients for their own Cinco de Mayo celebration and find that what they’re looking for is gone? You’ll have to read it to find out! Check out these 3 Cinco de Mayo Books for Primary Students in your classroom!
Activities on Cinco de Mayo for Your Classroom
If your students love Cinco de Mayo, be sure to check out these Cinco de Mayo coloring pages! You’ll find all kinds of options that focus on helping your students learn! There are color by numbers, color by letters, and even color by sight words! These coloring pages are great for keeping your students entertained while helping them learn! These packages contain 28-46 pages, depending on which one you select.
Are you still looking for more ideas? Check out the FREE Reading Graphic Organizer today! This tool helps students identify the main idea, story elements, and beginning, middle, and end of stories. It can be used with any story you want to introduce in your classroom, and best of all, it’s FREE!