This topic will give you ideas for activities that will contain math and researching skills. There are many opportunities for students to explore food preferences/prices and clothing styles. There are more topics than meet the eye when students discover that in some cases, kids their own age have labored under less than the best conditions to make the clothes or sports equipment they wear and use.

It's Time to Eat!

What are the favorite foods of your students and their online friends? Suggest that each class of students survey each other to find the class favorites. Collect the data, graph it and then share the results.

• Is their favorite food sold in their keypal's country?
• If sold there, what is the cost of their favorite food in their keypal's country?
• What is their favorite drink? Can you guess where Inca Cola is sold?
• What nuts, if any, grow where you live? Are there foods or spices that are only found where you live?
• Are the favorite candies of your students, such as M and M's, found in other countries?

What are the favorite family recipes of your class? Share these recipes with the partner class. If there are units of measure that are not familiar to either class visit the conversion website: WWW Unit Converter and make the conversions. If there are ingredients listed in any of the recipes that are not common in the other country the students might have to do a little explaining. Perhaps the ingredients can be found in a special shop or maybe another ingredient can be substituted.

Plan a Meal

Discuss plans to have a meal using the recipes from your students' keypals. If the food is typically served during a special holiday or season research and share this information.

• What is the holiday when it is served?
• Is there any meaning behind serving this particular food?
• Is this food a family tradition?
• Is there a religious significance to the food?
• Is the food blessed before serving? Byzantine Blessing of Easter Foods - Swieconka Blessing of Food in Poland
• Is art in any way connected with the food such as painted eggs [Poland] or Gingerbread Lane

1. Ethiopia: Menus and Recipes from Africa - When you eat dinner in a home or restaurant in Ethiopia you eat the tablecloth.
2. The Global Gourmet: Brazil
3. Brazil: Festival and Feasts
4. Greece - Global Gourmet. Learn where the chef's hat originated
5. More destinations from the Global Gourmet
6. Memories of a Polish Easter
7. Dole 5 a Day - Nutrition Education for Kids, Teachers and Parents
8. Nutrition Cafe Fun games about healthy food
9. Pizza Hut
10. Pepsi
11. McDonald's
12. Coca-Cola

The Latest Style

What are the latest styles in clothing that many of your students like? Perhaps they are curious about clothes that kids their age are wearing in other parts of the world. The students can create a survey and ask their online friends to tell them their favorite style of clothes and compare prices.

Are the students aware of any child labor that might be involved in the garment or sports industries? The following websites will deepen their understanding child labor and provide good food for thought and discussions.

• Voices of Youth - Explore Children's Rights [UNICEF]
• Free the Children International
• What Are My Rights? - from Kidlink's "Who Am I?" program
• Save the Children
• Global March Against Child Labour
• Targeting the Intolerable: A New International Convention to Eliminate the Worst Forms of Child Labour

Back to the Menu

Patti Weeg
www.globalclassroom.org
April 17, 2004