Bees make butter?

My latest idea to help learn Spanish is to read a children’s illustrated dictionary.  This way everything is in context, there’s no translation and the sentences that explain the word are at the appropriate level.  This involves choosing a sentence and walking around the house for a week reciting phrases such as, The river runs through the valley, The paint tin tipped on the floor, The bee makes honey and The fire is almost burning the entire forest.  It’s very difficult to put these into general conversation.

Can you pass the butter?

            Of course, but did you see that paint tin on the floor?

Just give me the butter.

            This butter?  This butter that runs through the valley?

Pass me the butter before I hurt you.

            This is dangerous butter.  The butter is almost burning the entire forest.

The flaw in this plan is that we live in the pampas where there are no valleys, people always put the lid back on paint tins and while the bomberos here are very busy, fortunately, there haven’t been any forest fires.  I was starting to lose faith in my plan until I had a chat with the gardening teacher.  We were discussing the seasons and gardening in Australia and here when I told her about Australian native bees with the winning phrase, native bees don’t make much honey.

Now I just need to slip the dice have dots on their six faces into a conversation somewhere.