Culture Fair

This post has been in the making for a long time. Ancient "news".

The three youngest boys joined our church school and other homeschoolers for a culture fair on January 27, 2017. We got the details for the fair about 4 weeks before it was to be. Talk about panic! Two of those weeks were already carved out to work at my parents' house.

How was I going to help Melvin (who is dyslexic) and Christopher to get their reports done? Part of the requirement was a 600 -700 word report from both of them. That meant a lot of my time helping with a writing project bigger than anything they had yet accomplished and not enough of my time to do it.

The deadline for the report was a week before the fair. Most of my time had been spent helping Melvin by reading to him and writing down his thoughts and paraphrases. By Thursday morning Christopher had about 200 words done. As I set out to see how I could help him, I realized he had been copying some of it from the encyclopedia. I said, "Oh, you can't do that!" He burst into inconsolable sobs and declared he didn't want anything to do with the fair.

After talking about how he might still accomplish the task using speech to text accommodations we got him happily on his way again, telling the computer all about Germany. He really waxed eloquent on the history.

Christoper chose Germany because his aunt comes from there.

After contacting the teacher and realizing he didn't even need to see the reports (they would take points off toward the prize if it wasn't finished) I relaxed. Mostly. 

Pakistan, Melvin's country of choice was so foreign to me that I didn't know where to begin to find clothing or how to make the food.

Matthew chose Switzerland and truffles were his "food" choice. How hard is that? Christopher chose sour kraut and sausage. Another easy one. 

Matthew chose Switzerland because he has roots there.
Take notice of the upright display. He built that and it swivels, showing info on both sides.

Pakistan? Oh, what do they eat? Google just about had my mind made up on a chicken dish.Then my memory was jolted- we knew someone who had married a Pakistani. She had died but surely the family could tell me something. And indeed! I called Reuben Yoder and spoke with him awhile. He was full of such helpful advice. Rice and Dahl was a common food in Pakistan he said.

Google to my rescue again, I found an Easy Peasy recipe for rice and dahl.

Reuben told me how I might make clothing so Google helped me there again, once I knew what their clothes were called. I found tutorials for making the Salwar, Kameez and turban.

Melvin chose Pakistan because his finger landed there when he spun the map!

Everything turned out great and we had a fun evening. I will include pictures from all the students. I've blurred the faces of all children but mine for privacy reasons. I missed one girl who had Chile.

Buddhism

Japanese 

A bit of the Japan display & part of the flag of Malaysia

Stephen (in the background) was photographer for the evening

English

Italian

Egyptian

Netherlands (Dutch)

French

Chinese

Iraqi (because his brother is a missionary there)

Mexican

Polish

Chechens

Malaysian

Mr Vernon (right) and Miss Rose (back left) are the brother/sister teacher team at school

Don't you think the children (and their moms & teachers) did just a totally amazing job?

Which is your favorite? (We were supposed to vote.)

Do you realize how much you learn when you have a project like this to do?