Cultural Encounters

This year, we’re doing something different with our curriculum.  For the last several years we’ve done a very history focused curriculum, but this year I wanted to take a year away from that and do something lighter.  So, I chose a program called Children Around the World by a company called Winter Promise.  The focus is world geography with an emphasis on what children’s lives are like in different parts of the world.  I’ve beefed it up with coordinating literature and it’s working well for us.  

We study a different country each week, one continent at a time.  One of the neat parts of this curriculum is that each week we plan a cultural focus night to go with whatever country we’re studying.  We’ve decided to do it on Friday nights, when we normally have family time anyway.  The curriculum gives suggestions for foods, games, cultural presentations, etc. and then the kids and I have a planning session each Monday where we decide what to include.  Then we divide up the chores and get it all done before Friday night.  

We’ve only done two so far.  The first week we focused on our own family’s culture so we ate our favorite foods, played favorite games, etc.  The kids each made a collage of their own to represent our family.  It was fun.

This past Friday we had studied the British Isles, so we had an English tea.  My job was to make crackers, like the British use at Christmas.   Lizzy and Isaac made their own Guy Fawkes (which they wanted to burn but the rain saved us) and shared about Guy Fawkes Day.  Lily and Abby set the table and made the scones.  We all worked together to make tea sandwiches and such.  We certainly had to make some adaptations since we don’t have American grocery stores available, but we made it work.  

The beautiful flowers the girls gathered from the yard.

Our table, set with our mishmash of "fancy dishes."

Lizzy, Isaac, and Guy Fawkes

One of the things that I like about the curriculum is that it really leads the children to think about and process how children around the world live differently.  We’ve already addressed topics like child labor and trafficking and they have a journal that helps them to process how they can be a part of solutions to problems like these.  

I look forward to sharing more of our cultural night fun throughout the school year.