Facts about Spain – Tooth Fairy
Tooth Fairy in Spain – Facts about Spain
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Facts about Spain – Learn in more ways that you think.
Everyone agrees that traveling is educational. You expand your horizons when you travel and see new people, hear new languages, and experience new cultures. You practice your math skills when you exchange money and use a map to find your destination. You learn about history when you visit museums and learn about food when you eat out.
But, did you know that travel is a real life way to use some of those boring sounding skilsl from school like, “Compare and Contrast”?
When the kids are in school you often hear from them, “Why are we learning this?” and “When will I need this in the REAL world?” As parents, we often have trouble answering that question.
We know they need to learn things but being able to come up with an answer as in “Well, Jonny, you need to know if those parallelograms are similar because one day in real life_____________”
Truth be told, that is the ONE thing I have yet to find a real life need for. Why do we need to be able to tell if parallelograms are similar…in the real world? If you have an application, PLEASE, I beg of you, enlighten me.
Here is your answer to the question, “Why do we need to learn how to compare and contrast for the real world?” and won’t you feel smart giving it! Teach Hub, an online resource for teachers sums it up this way,
“To students, knowing how to ‘compare and contrast’ sounds academic, not real-world, but we teachers know most of life is choosing between options. The better adults are at this skill, the more they thrive in the world.”
There you have it, learning to compare and contrast, whether they are comparing two pieces of literature or two pieces of candy or dare I say it – two parallelograms, they are using critical thinking skills. They are seeing how things are similar and how they are different.
Take our world conflicts at the moment, wouldn’t it be nice if we could all spend a little more time thinking about how we are the SAME and stop concentrating on the small ways we are different? Use the fact that curious kids enjoy learning and tips and information and cool facts about their destinations. Give them those facts about Spain or any other destination and watch them enjoy the journey even more!
We understand that learning while traveling makes a lot of sense and curious kids love learning, but you can always ‘learn while traveling’ before you even go! Start researching facts about Spain and thinking about your trip before you even leave the house. This helps everyone get excited about your family adventure and looking forward to it is a big part of the fun!
This brings us to Ratoncito Perez, the tooth fairy in Spain.
Curious Kids – Start learning before you even leave!
If you have curious kids young enough to lose teeth and wait for the tooth fairy they’ll be really interesting in these facts about Spain that they can relate to! Â Tell them about the tooth fairy who collects teeth in their vacation destination. If you are headed to Spain, share fun facts about Spain and tell your child how children in Spain wait for Ratoncito Perez to come and get their teeth.
Are you headed to Greece? Boys and girls in Greece toss their lost teeth on the roof. Children in France are visited by le petite souris. Find the tooth fairy traditions from lots of countries here.
Besides the obvious fun in discussing such a topic, it also gets kids thinking about how children all over the world are really similar. They all lose teeth and have traditions surrounding what to do with those teeth. How else are they alike? We are a global society now with airplanes that can get us anywhere in hours and with technology that can send messages from one part of the globe to another in just seconds. It is high time we focus on getting along so teach our children how to do that!
Tooth Fairy Legend –
As far back as the middle ages, there have been superstitions about the teeth children lose.
*Witches were supposed to be able to control a person with teeth so lost teeth were carefully burned.
*In England, to protect you from difficulties in the afterlife, children buried their teeth.
*In Spanish speaking cultures the tooth fairy “Raton Perez” originated in Madrid in 1894.
*In Middle Eastern countries like Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq, baby teeth are thrown up into the sky for God/Allah. This custom is though to originate the the 13th century.
*In some parts of France and Greece, teeth are thrown onto the roof of the house.
*In some Asian countries like China and Japan, teeth are thrown up onto the roof if it comes from the upper jaw, but teeth from the lower jaw are placed under the floor. A wish is shouted at the same time.
*In some parts of India, teeth are buried near trees.
*In Italy the tooth fairy is sometimes a mouse called Topolino.
*In France and Belgium the tooth fairy is a mouse called Le Petit Souris.
*In Scotland, the tooth fairy is a white rat.
Curious Kids – Read before you go!
Even the most math or science or other ‘non language arts’ career involves a  LOT of reading. Never mind the reading during the education you’ll need to get there. Once you are a math career person or a science career person or a famous athlete, there are emails and legal documents and fan club information and Nobel Peace prize papers to read. Reading and communicating with reading and writing are VITAL to each and every single career.
So, as parents, we want our children to have the best foundation possible. Are they reading is school? YES! Woohoo, but can they do even better with our help? YES!!
Reading before family vacations is an excellent way to get the kids thinking about how their lives and the lives of the people who live in your destination are alike. What sort of things do you have in common? Religion? Food? Soccer? Love of animals?
I’ve researched and created destination specific reading lists for you!
Click on your destination for the list of books already put together!
Spain
Canada,   Hawaii,   New York,   Italy,   London,   Paris   Greece   Caribbean
Read about Tooth Tairy customs all over the world for fun! Check out these books!
Throw Your Tooth on the Roof: Tooth Traditions from Around the World by Selby BeelerÂ
Tooth Traditions around the World by Ann MalaspinaÂ
Tooth Tales from around the World by Marlene Targ Brill
Do you have a kid in the ‘tooth loosing’ phase of life? Be ready for some tooth fairy fun if a tooth is lost while you are traveling!
Bring the pillow with you just in case! The tooth fairy might even leave a little of the local currency.
Learning While Traveling – PROOF for the school that your family vacation wasn’t a waste of school absences.
I taught public elementary school for years and so I know the system doesn’t like you to miss school. Why? There are a few reasons the school wants kids to be present everyday:
The first reason is that public schools get paid for every child that is present every day. If your child is absent, the school gets less money.
The second reason is it is a paperwork headache for every person the child come into contact with at school – teachers, speech person, librarian, cook – they all have things perfectly planned for a certain number of kids and if yours is absent it messes up the system.
The third reason is that each teacher has to make sure your child is caught up and on even footing with the other kids who were present the day your child was absent. See how an absence would create havoc at school? This is why schools are so hell bent on kids being there every single day and we can understand that.
However...
You knew that was coming, didn’t you? Well, with all due respect to the system and the people that work in it, their headache and paperwork really is none of my concern. MY concern is my child and their educational foundation. So, if we have an opportunity to see the world and add to their education in a way that no school every could – you better believe we will take it and too bad, so sad, to the headache and paperwork concern at a public school.
I’m sure I created enemies with that last paragraph. Sorry! In an effort to have my cake and eat it, too, I always meet with the teachers before a travel absence. I discuss what the child will miss in great detail. We discuss how we can accomplish those educational goals while we are gone. Sometimes this means I have to work with the child on the exact thing that the class is doing in our absence, but usually if we address the educational goal and not the class assignment then what we do on vacation ‘counts’.
Be certain to use terms like ‘educational goals’ not ‘assignments’ when talking to school administration. Â If the class is studying comprehension for example, it really shouldn’t matter in an educational sense whether the child does page 12 in the textbook vs. something you read about your vacation destination, right?
ALWAYS GO IN WITH IDEAS AND A PLAN.Â
Make it easy for the teacher to say yes to your ideas. Be prepared with ideas to substitute for work that will be missed.
For example, if the class is working on compare and contrast compositions by comparing and contrasting two books (or whatever). I ask the teacher, “Are you working on the two books (or whatever) or are you working on comparing and contrasting?
If compare and contrast in the goal, then I ask if my child can give a talk/presentation or do a paper/worksheet on the similarities and differences between the country we live in and something related to the country we are visiting.
Offer suggestions to the teacher regarding facts about Spain: Can your first grader write a short paper and draw a photo of Ratoncita Perez and the tooth fairy of Spain? Can your fifth grader draw a Venn Diagram (two overlapping circles used to show similarities and differences and used often in schools) about food differences?
This is a Venn Diagram and teachers love to use them. You can create your own to show the teacher as ‘proof’ that your discussions on vacation are really educational.
Curious Kids – Travel Guide Books JUST for kids
Travel guides can be a great way to learn while you travel. They give information on history, art, culture and so on AND they can be woefully boring. Have you read some of them? Yikes! You are about to embark on the trip of a lifetime!! How is it that most travel guides for adults manage to make wonderful adventure information sound that boring?
Travel guide books for kids are not common and some are really empty. They have one or two photos per page and a sentence or two. Really? A curious kid is going to be done with that in minutes, learn very little, and then what will you do???
My travel guide books are different. I created them for my own kids when I couldn’t find anything on the market that was  interesting, would hold their attention, and let us all learn something really cool during this once in a lifetime family vacation! The kids are fascinated by art history (That is NOT a typo!) you just have to give them the right story…and in their language. My travel guide books are written at an elementary school aged reading level so kids can read them all by themselves! They also serve as Cliff Notes for adults if your knowledge of history is a little rusty!
Click on your destination to order your travel guide books just for the kids!
Vatican City,    Galleria Borghese,    France,   London,   Nassau,   Austin,    New York,    Canada,    Spain,     The Louvre Museum,    The Prado Museum, Rome
Reading during family vacations is a great way to relax before trying to sleep in a new bed. Relaxed kids sleep better! Don’t lug all your library books… use the amazing Kindle! We LOVE this!! Books are even better when read aloud by a pro.
Happy Educational Travels,
Natalie, The Educational Tourist
Personally, I’m glad we have a tooth fairy here in the U.S.!
Seriously! I’m not keen on a rat in the house! Ha! Ha!