See the World at the Movies

Not every film that provides a glimpse of a foreign country or culture is a child friendly "Sound of Music." But it is worth screening new movies and animated features to find a "Brave" that introduces children to different countries.

     In fact, an amazing number of countries have been featured in Oscar-winning films: "ARGO" (Iran), "The King's Speech" (United Kingdom), "The Hurt Locker" (Iraq), "Slumdog Millionaire" (India), "Braveheart" (Scotland), "Schindler's List" (Poland), "The Last Emperor" (China), "Gandhi" (India).

     The Academy Awards also honor the best foreign language films. The 2011 winner, "A Separation" from Iran, provided positive recognition to a country sanctioned for its nuclear program and scorned in ARGO for holding U.S. citizens hostage. The director of the 2012 best foreign language winner, "Amour," is from Austria.

     Like foreign language films, animated and live action short subjects don't have wide-spread distribution, but, if they are shown locally, they can give youngsters insight into the lives of children in other countries. In "Asad," one of the 2012 live action nominees, we saw Somali children dealing with their dysfunctional world, and in another 2012 nominee, "Buzkashi Boys" opened our eyes to the limited opportunities for young boys in Afghanistan.

     Perhaps the best impact a film can have on a child is the realization that, not only can foreign be fun, but humor also can expose the foolishness of a situation by looking at it differently, the way a live action short about Rwanda's bloody Hutu-Tutsi struggle did a couple of years ago.

Games Children Play

Children in different countries might speak and dress differently, but they play with similar balls, cars, tops, and other toys. In A World of Children's Games, Friendship Press (friendshippress.org) has collected the rules children aged 5 to 12 need in order to play games from 60 countries. By checking the origin of their games, youngsters will find that they are putting together Ravensburger puzzles and Playmobils from Germany, building with LEGOs from Denmark, playing Nintendo games and folding origami cats (origami-instructions.com) or flowers and leaves described in "Origami Bonsai" (signals.com)  from Japan, and building virtual worlds using the Minecraft video game created in Sweden.

     International scavenger hunts help children understand other countries. In the simplest form, kids can use an atlas, almanac (including The World Almanac for Kids), or computer to find the locations of monuments, mountains, rivers, animals, and the like. In other versions, students may be asked to find the countries where people: drive on the left hand side of the road, eat with chopsticks, and bow instead of shake hands.

     Schools with a large concentration of foreign students have an opportunity to plan an advanced form of an international scavenger hunt. Parents can dress in their native clothes and set up classrooms with musical instruments, maps, dolls, crafts, foods, and other items associated with their countries. Once the classrooms are prepared students can go room to room trying to win prizes by finding the answers to a sheet of questions (possibly called a passport) based on the country displays.

     An African scavenger hunt I've played with elementary school classes involves giving each child a bag filled with African products and helping them locate on a large wall map the countries where these items are produced.
                                                     African Products

Cloves, Cocoa (chocolate candy), Coffee (coffee beans), Copper (a penny), Cotton (cotton ball), Diamonds (clear plastic bead), Gold (gold button), Peanut, Rice, Rubber (rubber band), Sisal (piece of rope), Sugar (sugar cube), Tea (tea bag), Wood (toothpick).
    
                                           Sources of African Products

Cloves: Comoros, Madagascar
Cocoa: Benin, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria,
            Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Togo
Coffee: Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Cote d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic
             of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia,
            Madagascar, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Togo,Uganda
Copper: Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Namibia ,Uganda, Zambia
Cotton: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Mali,
             Mozambique, Niger, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe
Diamonds: Angola, Botswana, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo,
                  Guinea, Liberia, Namibia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Zimbabwe
Gold: Ghana Guinea, Rwanda, South Africa
Peanuts: Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan
Rice: Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Sierra Leone
Rubber: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia
Sisal: Angola, Tanzania
Sugar: Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique,
           Republic of the Congo, Swaziland, Uganda
Tea: Burundi, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda
Wood: Cameroon, Central African republic, Cote d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabor, Ghana,
            Republic of the Congo, Swaziland, Zimbabwe

If any students are allergic to nuts, remember to leave peanuts out of the bags, because students do enjoy eating some of  these products, when the lesson is complete.

     One game that needs no setup time encourages children to learn the names of foreign cities and countries. From A to Z, players alternate using a letter to identify a place in the world and something a traveler could bring back from that location. For example, someone might say, "Going to Kuwait for kites." The next player could say, "Going to La Paz for llamas." Since almost any item can be found in any country these days, there is no need to think about the accuracy of associations. This game is equally fun and challenging en route to grandma's by car or to Australia by airplane.

     Adults can benefit by watching children play with blocks, dolls, toys, games, playground equipment, dirt, and sticks.  According to Juliet Kinchin, curator of Architecture and Design at New York's MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), seeing kids at play enables designers (and I would add, politicians and foreign policy experts) to look past the limitations of social norms, geography, politics, and culture and to make new connections that can lead to a different, ideal future. What did Walt Disney do when he created Disneyland, a composite of his boyhood's Main Street, Fantasyland, Frontierland, Adventureland, and Tomorrowland or Epcot?
    

How the World Shapes Up

Michigan looks like a mitten to people who live there. What other shapes can children find when they look at maps and atlases of the world?

     Whether it's in their first books, on "Sesame Street," or connecting puzzle pieces, children learn about shapes. Apply this concept to the world, and they will see Italy looks like a boot. The Red Sea is a string bean, and Paraguay and The Gambia are shaped like peanuts. In Africa, some call Zambia the butterfly country because of its shape. My granddaughter thinks Chad looks like a face, and it has a man's name besides. Doesn't India look like a triangle? Lake Victoria is a circle, and there are so many ovals: Madagascar, Taiwan, Mongolia.

     Multicultural Kids (multiculturalkids.com) sells a China puzzle to give children hands-on experience with shapes in that country, while "World GeoPuzzle" from Museumtour.com does the same for the world. And, if you have an expendable world map, kids can point out shapes they would like to cut out and label.