The 2nd Way To Sneak World Geography Into Your Summer Fun!

In part one, I gave you a sneak preview and mentioned that today’s post had something to do with food. I think food is one of the easiest ways to introduce both kids and adults to world geography and foreign culture.  So the 2nd way to sneak world geography into your summer fun is with an International Meal.

 Planning Your International Meal

1.  Choose a target country. Choose based on your family’s cultural heritage, or explore a country you don’t know much about. Or let your children come up with about 5-7 options and draw a name out of a hat.

2.  Decide on the meal. Here are some options:

• Go to a restaurant that specializes in food from your target country.
• Make your international breakfast, lunch or dinner at home.
• Simplify:  make an appetizer or dessert rather than an entire meal  (Go to my recipe page for ideas).
• Have a picnic. A European picnic would be fun.

3.  Let children get involved

• Let your kids help with the grocery shopping. Try shopping at a speciality market. I loved going to small Greek bakeries and markets in Greek Town in Chicago when I was little.
• Let kids help cook the meal.
• Kids can help pack a picnic basket.
• Allow your children to help decide what restaurant you will go to.

4.  Get Creative.  Use some of these great online resources to get creative with your international meal:

• Learn some news words in the language of your target country on the site imtranslator.net. If I planned a French picnic for my international meal, for example, I could go to this site and choose French from the language list. I would then type the word bread in the translation box and find out that the French word for bread is pain.  I could even listen to how it is pronounced. Then I would write this word, and any others I choose, on notecards and bring them on the picnic. I could introduce the word bread, for example, as we eat our French baguette.
  
• Make placemats. Make a set of placemats out of flag printables. Go to the site Activity Village and enter your desired country, which is France in this case. (helpful hint:  it is the small search box in the upper right sidebar) Print out the flags and cover with a laminate sheet before you eat your meal.
• Choose one more activity. Return to the site Activity Village or search for another similar site. Activity Village has printables  designed for numerous countries including puzzles, coloring pages, country bookmarks etc. Going back to my French picnic example, I will go to the Activity Village site and choose to print out a postcard of the Eiffel Tower for my final activity. My child can color it, write a short note to grandparents about our French picnic and then, “au revoir”, it’s off to the mailbox.
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Join me tomorrow when I reveal the 3rd way to sneak world geography into your summer fun! I will also let you know how to earn the board game Name That Country!