Inquiring into Our Country’s Traditions

At Colegio Juan de Lanuza, our 5-year-old students have begun a new unit of inquiry within the Primary Years Programme (PYP) titled “How We Express Ourselves,” focused on discovering how traditions are also a form of cultural communication.

They started by exploring El Pilar celebrations, before delving into the grape harvest (La Vendimia) — a meaningful, sensory experience that sparked their curiosity and critical thinking.

Through the thinking routine “I See, I Think, I Wonder,” the children observed images, shared hypotheses, and formulated questions about what they saw. Then, they had hands-on experience: they picked grapes, weighed them, pressed them, and watched how the juice transforms into must.

In the area of mathematics (ABN method), they completed counting activities by connecting dots to create bunches of grape, and produced an illustrated journal showing the different stages of the harvest — integrating language, art, and logical thinking.

This experience perfectly reflects the essence of the school’s bilingual and transdisciplinary approach: learning by doing, connecting with culture, and developing expression and autonomy from the earliest years.