Today's Classroom Activities :
Dinnertime Around the World
Dinner, Anyone?
Social Studies Share the following poem with the class, then have students do library and online research to find dining customs from other cultures.
Dinnertime Around the World
by Heidi Roemer
With fork and knife we eat our meat;
That's how we keep our fingers neat.
Folks in China choose to use
chopsticks for their stir-fried foods.
In India, it's quite all right
to eat with fingers – that's polite!
You're our guest, please take a seat.
Fingers, forks or sticks? Let's eat!
Challenge students to write another poem or add lines to this one about other customs that they find.
Food From Everywhere
Social Studies/Reading After sharing the previous poem and activity give students a light snack from another country's cuisine. A good resource is Multicultural Meals: Step by Step, Healthy Recipes For Kids by Bobbie Kalman (Crabtree Publishing, 2003). Mexican fajitas, lox roll-ups or tofu steaks make interesting ways to introduce a new culture.
In Our Multicultural Classroom discover how students from other countries can enrich classroom learning.
See how a collaboration with the local high school café dished up a fun learning experience for fifth graders and an opportunity to help tsunami victims in A Helpful Serving by David Rockower.
