At-Home Culture Camp


Create a culture camp to help your internationally adopted child learn about her culture. A culture camp can be created for a weekend or for a week of summer vacation. You can include just your own children, add a few cousins, or plan an camp extravaganza with all the neighborhood children.

Pick your country or culture. Decide what topics to cover. You might explore art, music, food, traditions, holidays, language, architecture, literature, folk tales, poetry, landscape, history, famous people, important places, or religions.

Consider all your possible resources for learning about your chosen culture. Museums, restaurants, recipe books, videos, books, internet, library, universities, religious establishments, festivals, newspaper archives, local people.

~ You could visit a museum to learn about art and architecture.

~ You could visit a local restaurant and try a new cuisine.

~ You could prepare a favorite cultural food.

~ You could rent a video on the country or culture and learn to count to ten.

~ You could meet with someone born in the country you're studying and ask about their childhood.

~ You could find a festival with foods, songs, and stories from your chosen culture.

How you structure your culture camp will depend on how many children you're involving, how old they are, transportation, and time. As a starting point, possible activities for studying about Russia, as an example, are listed below.

~ Watch Russian travel video. If it has traditional Russian dancing, try to do it yourselves!

~ Learn to say "hello" and "good by" in Russian

~ Learn to count to ten in Russian

~ Visit a local museum and look at paintings by Russian artists

~ Look at a Russian travel book

~ Draw a picture of a Russian winter scene

~ Visit a Russian Orthodox Church

~ Listen to a CD with Russian music

~ Read a Russian folk tale

~ Watch "Fiddler on the Roof"

~ Visit an international food store and look for items from Russia

~ Have lunch at a local Russian or eastern European restaurant

~ Talk with someone who grew up in Russia or who has worked or done missionary work in Russia.

~ Prepare Russian afternoon tea at home.

With thought and planning, you can provide your children with a memorable culture camp experience, and help them learn about the world at the same time.

RESOURCES

Festivals Around the World http://www.festivals.com

Learn Spanish http://www.studyspanish.com/

Cultures http://www.cultures.com/

Camps Teach Language, Culture http://www.statenews.com/editionssummer9...

Vietnamese Culture Camp http://www.adoptvietnam.org/parenting/ca...

The copyright of the article At-Home Culture Camp in Adoptive Parenting is owned by Susan Ward. Permission to republish At-Home Culture Camp in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Go To Page: 1

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic