Mi Casa Project

View of the Mi Casa Template.

The Project: Spanish and Technology in Action

In Mi Casa, 4th-grade students worked collaboratively with a partner to create Spanish-language scavenger hunts in Delightex (formally CoSpaces EDU), a powerful platform for building interactive, virtual experiences. The project was a partnership between our amazing Spanish Teacher Allison Newton and myself.

• In Spanish class, students learned house-related vocabulary and wrote descriptive clues for their scavenger hunts.

• In Technology class, I guided students in using Delightex, starting by providing a TinkerCAD-designed house template. To keep the focus on language skills, I staged the virtual house, preventing students from becoming distracted by decorating.

View of a student example of the labeling functionality.

Why Delightex? A Powerful Tool for Schools

Delightex is essentially a web-based game engine for kids. It proved to be an ideal platform for this project, thanks to its:

• Seamless Classroom Integration: Delightex offers an easy-to-use classroom creation tool with simple rostering, making it effortless to manage student accounts and assignments.

• Collaborative Virtual Spaces: One of Delightexs’ most impactful features is its ability to foster collaboration. Teachers can create assignments where students work together in the same virtual environment, allowing them to co-create, add clues, and build their scavenger hunts simultaneously.

• User-Friendly Interface: The drag-and-drop functionality made it easy for 4th graders to navigate, create, program and customize their virtual homes while focusing on the language component.

• Availability of Media Types:  The available media types that can be imported into a project includes audio, video, images, and 3D files. This is where Delightex really shines for me, with its ability to showcase the many skills that my students learn in Technology class all in one place.

• Programming: Students can program interactions in their projects through either drag-and-drop coding or with Python.   

View of the coding elements of the scavenger hunt.

Creative Design for Access and Inclusion

One of the most powerful aspects of Mi Casa was its emphasis on creative design for access and inclusion:

• Differentiation: The visual, interactive format made language practice more accessible for diverse learners. Those who struggled with writing could rely on visual labels, while advanced learners could create recordings of the items to practice pronunciation.

• Cross-Curricular Learning: The collaboration between technology and language classes gave students multiple entry points to succeed, whether through creative design, programming and/or language mastery.

• Student Engagement: The immersive, game-like nature of the scavenger hunts fostered curiosity and motivation, making language practice both meaningful and fun.

Player view of a clue when they click on the right object.

Tips for Educators: Bringing Mi Casa to Your Classroom

If you’re interested in replicating this project, here are some tips and links:

• Subscription: There is a free tier of Delightex but to get all the features of the software there is a cost associated with premium features. 

• Leverage Delightexs’ Collaborative Features: Use the group workspace function to enable students to co-create in the same virtual environment. This promotes teamwork and shared ownership of the project.

• Use Pre-Built Templates or Remix Projects: Providing students with expectations about using the software is important because of its flexibility. I've found giving students a starting template design helps them focus on the learning goals I want them to achieve. 

Resources

• Mi Casa Project Template (in Delightex)

• Student Example (in Delightex)

• Student Feedback Worksheet (in Canva)

• Scavenger Hunt Template Worksheet (in Canva)

Why Projects Like Mi Casa Matter

By merging language learning with 21st-century skills and creative technology, projects like Mi Casa transform traditional lessons into engaging, student-driven experiences. Delightexs’ collaborative virtual environment makes it easy to manage, fosters creativity, and provides meaningful, inclusive learning opportunities for all students. While this project example revolved around language learning, Delightex is a powerful tool that can be used in any content area. A few other examples of projects students have worked in Delightex with is a National Park Project that blends Science, Language Arts, Technology and Social Studies classes. You can read more about this project by reading the: Exploring 21st Century Learning: A Journey through 4th Grade National Park Visitor Center Project