Celebrations Around the World

For the last three years I have organized an event called Celebrations Around the World at the girls' elementary school. I was not the originator of the event; I just agreed to be in charge of the PTO-sponsored evening when Adah was in first grade, and I've been doing it since.

Celebrations (as we fondly abbreviate it) is a great activity where volunteers who have lived in, visited, or just have an interest in another country set up a table with interactive, kid-friendly information and activities. Then all of the students and their families are invited to come for an evening of cultural experience and fun.

The whole thing is relatively easy to put together from my position. I ask for volunteers, find out how many tables they need, create some "passports" for travel, send home fliers, and then set up a few hours before it all begins. We usually get 5-10 high school volunteers to help set up and then assist at the tables. Once the event begins, I'm pretty free to tour around with my own kiddos and help them with crafts, taste the foods, and enjoy the costumes and music that are on display. When it's over, down come the flags, out goes the trash, and the tables get folded and rolled aside for the janitor.

Despite all the organizing and coordinating I do to get everyone and everything there on time (and that includes the after-school care of my little ones while I'm at the school setting up) I never have the wherewithal to bring a camera. Thankfully, my friend Marisa does. And this year she took lots of photos and sent me some so I could finally have documentation of my Celebrations Around the World efforts.

Everyone enters the gym and can pick up a passport for the evening. It's really just a folded piece of paper with some official insignias on the outside and then a list of all the countries represented that evening on the inside; it also includes some relevant clip art and hello/goodbye in the native languages of the countries. As the children visit each country, they can receive a stamp on their passport.



From there everyone is free to travel at will. You can spend as much or as little time at each table as you like. Repeat visits are allowed. This year, we "traveled" to Thailand, Italy, Germany, Japan, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, and French Louisiana. We also had some exotic reptiles from regions of Africa and South America (read: snakes).

We probably get about 100-150 people attending. I always think I'm going to carefully keep track of how many passports we copy and how many are left, but someone always gets to cleaning that up before I can count. Plus, we never know how many parents and kids are there who don't take passports. No matter. Everyone seems to prepare enough materials, and I enjoy the great time to see and meet other parents and learn new things rather than worry about counting all the heads.

 

My family & I tasted Japanese candy, sauerkraut, Thai spring rolls, and gnocchi with pesto. Other years we've had rice and beans from Costa Rica, empanadas from Argentina, French bread, and Egyptian cookies. This year the kids made Mardi Gras and Carnival masks, as well as Indonesian shadow puppets. Those were a big hit. That's Gunnar's silhouette making his crocodile move in the photo below.

 

Adah took a turn with her puppet, too (below). Maggie loved this station, also, especially because it was run by one of her teachers, Mrs. Petrick. It was the first place she went after getting her passport.

 

My children rarely come home from Celebrations Around the World remembering many facts or figures about the countries they "visited," but they've always come home having tried something new and different, and usually having learned a story or custom that excited them. We look forward to Celebrations every year. I don't mind planning it, but think it would be fun to do my own table if someone else wanted to be in charge another year . . . (hint hint to any of my local readers).