Cultures of The World Fair

Part of our social studies standards are to learn how cultures from around the world affect our culture.  There's no better way to start this standard than to learn about cultures from around the world.  The problem for me was how to teach the students about several cultures within the time that we had available.  This is when I thought of a cultural fair.  I talked my team into teaching  each of their classes about a different country and some of the different cultures within that country.

We had the students research:  food, art, music, clothing, customs, and language.  Each class put together a science board with some of the research.  We also hung other research on the walls outside of our classrooms.  This way the students had plenty of room to read about the different cultures.

 We chose to hold the fair the day before Thanksgiving break.  The cultural fair was so engaging, the students were sure to learn all the way through the end of the day.  We weren't so sure that would happen with our every day lessons.  Each class prepared one of the more popular food or drinks from their country.  I bought prepackaged food from Ikea for my country.  This helps to satisfy the rule in some schools of prepackaged food.  The year before we had a parent make our food at home.  (I did not serve the pear drink.)

Each classroom can have a quick craft inside for the students to complete. We made floral headbands for Sweden.  Most countries have flowers in their culture so this is a wonderful go to craft.  If you search on Pinterest, you will find a plethora of cultural crafts.  We also used the folders that you see below to hold all of our research in reading and writing.

Every student was given a passport with the countries listed inside.  The students were to record details from every country that they visited.  So we allowed students to roam the hall.  They went into the rooms to enjoy food and a craft.  They read information on the countries outside of the rooms.  Their teachers held them accountable for details by checking their passports.  We had parent volunteers to come in to assist the students in moving throughout the hall and into the appropriate rooms.  If you can't do a whole grade level Culture Fair, you can set up centers in your classroom.  You can have groups of students research different countries and share with each other.

Putting together the materials for this unit took quite a while.  If you don't have time to put them together, check out the units below in my store.