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World Culture Activities for Kids

Around the World in 12 Dishes: Intro

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Welcome to “Around The World in 12 Dishes”. We will be taking you on a journey around the world, following in Phileas Fogg’s (from Around the World in 80 Days) footsteps, exploring 12 different countries with our children, and cooking 12 dishes with them. One for each country visited.

The world is such a wonderfully diverse and colorful place. Our children see maps, flags and books. They see postcards and sometimes they see films about the world.. but let’s really bring it to life through food!

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Adventures In Mommydom, Creative Family Fun, Glittering Muffins, Juggling with Kids, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, Make, Do & Friends, Mom 2 Posh Little Divas, Mummymummymum, Rainy Day Mum, Red Ted Art, The Educators’ Spin On It and The Outlaw Mom have come together to help you on your food journey and will each cook a dish with our children and post about it – to help inspire you to have a go! Then go out there, cook, blog, and join in the linky fun!

Around the World in 12 Dishes

We start our journey the same way Phileas Fogg did in London, UK.

March 4 – First country is UK

Check April 1st, 2012 for our next destination.

How to join the fun!

The only mandatory part is the dish, the rest is all up to you, we just thought it would be fun and more concrete to the kids as to why we are making a unusual dish.

Cook a dish from the UK: The goal is to explore this country through FOOD and activities if you wish. Make a typical dish (sweet or savoury) from the country with the kids, take photos and have fun!

Typical dishes: Bangers & Mash, Yorkshire Pudding, Shepherd’s Pie and Custard & Apple Crumble

Print your passport: Click here to download, comes with space for a photo of the child with the dish. Here is a little cover for it if you wish 🙂

Color a placemat: Once colored/painted or whatever other way you want to do this, you can laminate it or put it between clear contact paper to use it over and over. Great conversation piece for you and your kids. Click here to download it.

Make a craft:you can make a country related craft with the kids

Read a book: We read England (True Books: Countries) by Michael Burgan and A Child’s Garden of by Robert Louis Stevenson

On-line fun:www.paddingtonbear.com The much loved and well known Paddington bear has some fun printable and online activities.

Fun fact: Did you know the UK is one of the rare countries to host the summer Olympics twice, the second time will be this summer.

Share with us: Our challenge starts on March 4 and will remain open for a year, so attach a link to your blog to enter the linky party or go to the comment section and post a photo together with what you did together with your child(ren).

Pinterest: We will add your photos to an “Around the World in 12 Dishes” Pinterest Boards (one for the dishes, one for the crafts) you will be a great source of inspiration for everyone

Straw-Printed Paper Lantern Craft

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We love to learn about other countries and cultures.Since Chinese New Year always falls at the beginning of the year, I thought it would be the perfect time to learn a bit about China.

Our first craft was making a paper lantern craft. To make this project a little more special, I combined two different techniques: straw printing and making paper lanterns.

This fun Straw-Printed Paper Lantern craft is a fun activity for Chinese New Year or anytime you're learning about China and Chinese culture.
 

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Supplies Needed:

Red construction paper
Drinking straws
White paint
Scissors
Stapler

This fun Straw-Printed Paper Lantern craft is a fun activity for Chinese New Year or anytime you're learning about China and Chinese culture.

How to make your Straw-Printed Paper Lantern Craft

I stumbled across the idea of straw painting awhile ago and I thought it would be the perfect way to decorate our lanterns.

I cut a couple of straws in half, then cut strips at one of the ends (like the picture above). You’ll need to squish the cut end up a bit before giving it to the kids. This will make it easier for them to print with the straws.

This fun Straw-Printed Paper Lantern craft is a fun activity for Chinese New Year or anytime you're learning about China and Chinese culture.

Printing is easy, just dip the cut ends of the straw in paint and splat them on your paper.

We printed all over our paper. Then we had to let it dry before we could make the paper lantern craft. I love how it looks a bit like fireworks!

This fun Straw-Printed Paper Lantern craft is a fun activity for Chinese New Year or anytime you're learning about China and Chinese culture.

To make the lanterns, you’ll want to fold the paper in half lengthwise. Make sure the painted side is facing out.

This fun Straw-Printed Paper Lantern craft is a fun activity for Chinese New Year or anytime you're learning about China and Chinese culture.

Draw lines about an inch apart all the way down the paper.

You’ll start cutting on the folded side, then stop about an inch away from the outer edge. Do not cut all the way through!

This fun Straw-Printed Paper Lantern craft is a fun activity for Chinese New Year or anytime you're learning about China and Chinese culture.

After the lines are cut, unfold the paper. Roll the paper into a circle from short end to short end.

Staple at the top and bottom where both sides meet. Use a strip of construction paper for the handle. Just staple each end to the side of the lantern.

We originally used string for our handle, but found that the string kept slipping our of the staple. The construction paper handle works much better.

This fun Straw-Printed Paper Lantern craft is a fun activity for Chinese New Year or anytime you're learning about China and Chinese culture.

We now have beautiful paper lanterns ready for Chinese New Year! And apparently I also have a budding photographer/blogger on my hands!This fun Straw-Printed Paper Lantern craft is a fun activity for Chinese New Year or anytime you're learning about China and Chinese culture.

You may also like one of these China Activities and Crafts:

Chinese Rattle Drum Craft

Panda Bear Masks

35+ Ways to Learn About China

Indian Art – Rangoli Designs

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We’re still talking about India and we recently learned a little about a traditional form of Indian art, Rangoli.These designs are typically done on floors, but we needed something a bit more small scale! I opted for recycling a cereal box instead.

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This project took a little more prep work than usual on my part, but it was worth all the trouble.I started out my searching for Rangoli designs on-line and found a couple of easy designs to copy. I drew the designs on our recycled cardboard with a Sharpie.

Then, I dyed the salt. Each color took about 1/4 cup of salt and 3-4 drops of food coloring. If you want more vibrant colors, just add more food coloring.

When dying the salt, you need to start stirring immediately after adding the food coloring, otherwise, it will start getting clumpy. We let the salt dry overnight before using it.

I set up our crafting area with our designs, bowls of colored salt, spoons, glue and pictures from a book about India for inspiration.I sat the designs on individual trays to help us pour excess salt back into the bowls. I would suggest not doing this project in a carpeted area! My floor was quite gritty with salt when we were done. (I think I’ll be cleaning it up for days!)

To do the project, the girls applied glue to one area of the design and then spooned the colored salt over the area.

We then shook the excess off, then added more glue to another area. The girls greatly enjoyed the process.

Lizzie carefully considered each color and AJ’s favorite part was spooning the salt.

We tried applying the salt with our fingers and at one point we (AJ) decided to just pour entire bowls of salt on our designs.

We also took a few breaks in our artwork to play with the excess salt on our trays!

In the end, we had a colossal mess, but also some very pretty artwork. I’m hoping that by doing some of our cultural projects, the girls are soaking in information about this big world of ours. My wish is to spark an interest and make them eager to see and learn about all the corners of the world.

Recycled Kokeshi Dolls

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We’re taking a trip to Japan this week.

My plan is to introduce my girls to some of the different countries of the world this year. Lizzie is already starting to show a fascination for different cultures, so I thought it would be fun to take this “trip around the world” with my girls.

This week, we’ve jetted off to Japan. I found a pile of great books from our library which gave me tons of ideas for activities. One such activity were these kokeshi dolls made from recycled materials.

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The prep was really easy. I took a toilet paper roll and cut two small slits at the top.I then cut circles out of an empty cereal box. I used one of our drinking glasses as a guide for the circle.

I then inserted the circle into the slits, set out paint, glue, tissue paper scraps and crayons. After reading about the dolls and looking at a few pictures, the girls got to work.

I’ve never seen Lizzie quite so careful and deliberate while she painted! Her creative juices were flowing and off she went working on making her doll beautiful.

AJ, well, she’s two. After slapping a bit of paint on her dolls, she discovered the joy of gluing tissue paper. Piece after piece after piece!

Here are the finished dolls. Don’t they look just like the picture?All in all, this was a fun project. They both had fun and the variety of materials suited both of their abilities. Needless to say, they are both quite proud of their dolls… and I am too!

The book we used as a reference was Japan ABCs: A Book About the People and Places of Japan (Country ABCs) by Sarah Heiman and Todd Ouren. It’s been a great starting point for all of our activities.