Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Tell your partner in one word, then we learn eight Spanish vegetable words with el or la from a market stall.

You are at a vegetable stall in a Spanish mercado. We meet the labels in two crates.

Crate 1: plate vegetables. English and picture first. Listen to the full Spanish with el or la, repeat twice, then flip to check the spelling.

Crate 2: salad vegetables. Same routine. These are fun to say: lean into the long ones.

When both crates are done, say all eight together one more time with the articles glued on.

Still at the mercado stall. Two crate labels get turned over on the board at a time, and one of you may be called up to do the flipping. When a pair matches, everyone says the full Spanish phrase together with its article, not just the person at the board. Cheer a clean el/la match out loud.

Back at the stall: we sort the crate labels into two piles, and one of you at a time comes up to move a label. Before every drop, everyone says the full Spanish phrase and shows a hand signal: left hand for el, right hand for la. Only then does the label go into a column. Four and four: can you fill both columns clean without a peek?