Puerto Rican Flamboyant Tree

Although the Puerto Rican Flamboyant tree is not the island’s national tree, it is one of the most beautiful and recognizable trees across the island.

They are colorful,  and very majestic.  Hailing from Madagascar these exotic trees have adapted to it’s

natural environment on the island.

“El flamboyán” in Spanish is also a familiar Puerto Rican symbol. You will see it in many paintings, drawings, and calendars.

The Yellow Flamboyant tells the story of a young boy and his mother when they come across a beautiful flowering tree during a walk through the countryside. Hoping to have the same tree he decides to takes some seeds with him. The seed took years for the tree to bloom and when it did there was a big surprise!

Extension activities for this book:

• Review the vocabulary words, and spelling words on with an on-line activity from MacMillan/McGraw-Hill.
• Identify cognate words.  I had my son do an exercise on identifying cognate words. I wrote them in Spanish, and had him look for them in the book.  He wrote the English word on the card, and the sentence where he found it.  The words are:
  • occurencia/occurrence
  • visión/vision
  • transplantar/transplant
  • carpintero/carpenter
  • especial/special
  • junio/June
  • momento/moment
  • creación/creation
  • clase/class
  • ciencia/science
  • gesto/gesture
  • eternidad/eternity
  • coral/coral
  • flamboyán/flamboyant
  • secreto/secret
  • sublime/sublime
  • idea/idea

• Review vocabulary words from Debbie’s Spanish Learning post from the book here.
• Color, draw, or paint a flamboyant tree.  We painted our very own flamboyant tree on a canvas. All you need is a blank canvas,  a picture or painting of the tree. I drew my tree pictured on the right and little one drew his pictured on the bottom, paint, and paint brushes.

 After taking a break last year due to the arrival of Baby #3, we are back with one of my favorite series, the 31 Days of ABC! You can look forward to 31 more days of activities, crafts, books, apps, and more, all dedicated to teaching young children the alphabet. I am so happy to be working with an amazing group of kid bloggers, who will be sharing their amazing ideas with us in the coming days. And this year for the first year we are also adding a giveaway, so be sure to scroll to the end and enter for a chance to win! So join us as we jump, skip, hop, and read our way through the alphabet this October! Don’t forget to follow our 31 Days of ABCs Pinterest board for even more great ABC ideas!