How to Teach Spanish Comparatives With Skittles (Free, Spanish 1)

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If you are looking for how to teach Spanish comparatives with something students will actually want to count, this is the lesson I use with my Spanish 1 classes, and it is free. Every student gets a bag of Skittles, sorts them by color, and uses the piles to complete a worksheet.

The lesson plan and the worksheet are in one printable file. Bag up the candy, print the worksheet, and teach it tomorrow.

Spanish comparatives (los comparativos) in plain words

Comparatives are how Spanish compares two things. This lesson uses three expressions: más ... que, menos ... que and tantos ... como. They say which pile is bigger, which is smaller, and which two are the same.

In this lesson the things being compared are the colors in a bag of Skittles. Students count their reds and their oranges, then write who has more, who has fewer and who has the same.

Get the lesson plan and worksheet (free, no email)

The words on the worksheet

• más ... que: more ... than
• menos ... que: less ... than
• tantos ... como: as many ... as
• The five colors: rojo, anaranjado, amarillo, verde, morado

Before you teach

Skittles take a little setup. I bought 2 large bags of Skittles and some small individual zip bags (the smaller ones are great for portion control). I put 40 Skittles in each bag and gave one bag to each student. You can use however many you want, but 40 worked well.

• One bag of Skittles for each student.
• One copy of the worksheet for each student.

Start with a quick review of Spanish comparatives

Begin with a short lesson or review of comparatives. There are lots of good resources for this, so use whatever works best for you: your textbook, a YouTube video, a PowerPoint. Once students have the basics, it is time to practice with the Skittles.

The Spanish comparatives activity: sort the Skittles by color

Give each student a bag of Skittles and a copy of the worksheet, Los Comparativos con Skittles. Tell students to divide their candy into piles by color, and not to eat them yet.

Count each color and define the comparing words

The Spanish comparatives worksheet starts with a table. Students count the Skittles of each color and write the number in the right space. Then they define the three comparing expressions: más ... que, menos ... que and tantos ... como.

Compare your own Skittles

Using their piles, students complete five sentences that compare two of their own colors, like Yo tengo ___ rojos ___ anaranjados.

Compare with a friend

Next, students compare their Skittles with a friend's. Five more sentences, like Mi amigo tiene ___ rojos ___ yo. When they finish comparing, they are allowed to eat the Skittles.

Answer the questions

The worksheet ends with five questions: how many more or fewer of one color than another, and which color is the most popular and the least popular.

The next day: discuss and chart the results

The first part took about one class period (40 minutes). The next day in class we discussed the findings and charted the comparisons. We used Google to create a spreadsheet and then a graph.

Once the chart was done, we made our own additional comparisons using the final numbers.

Here are the free files for this lesson

Click the file. It opens on the downloads page. No email needed.

• Skittles Lesson Plan and Worksheet (PDF)

Open the downloads page

This lesson is from our Grammar & Verbs unit

• Spanish 1 Review Worksheets: Present Tense Verb Conjugation
• Spanish Review: Prepositions, Question Words & Adverbs
• Spanish Comparisons (Los Comparativos) Lesson Plan with Skittles

See everything in the membership

Questions teachers ask about Spanish comparatives

How do you teach Spanish comparatives?

Start with a short lesson or review of comparatives, using whatever works for you, like a textbook, a video or slides. Then give each student a bag of 40 Skittles and the worksheet. Students sort the candy by color, count it, and write comparisons first with their own Skittles and then with a friend's.

What are más que, menos que and tantos como?

They are the three comparing expressions in this lesson: más ... que (more ... than), menos ... que (less ... than) and tantos ... como (as many ... as). The worksheet asks students to define each one, then use them to compare the colors in their bag.

How long does the lesson take?

The first part, sorting, counting and completing the worksheet, took my class about one class period (40 minutes). The next day we discussed the findings and charted the comparisons.

Why Skittles and not M&Ms?

Skittles are more allergy friendly than M&Ms, which often contain traces of nuts. That is why this lesson uses them.

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