Cultures Around the World

This social studies unit on culture is perfect for the teaching time between November and December, before the winter break because it's so festive.  Although it is a social studies unit, all of the other subject areas are incorporated to help build across content area.

The countries I cover are England (along with a brief explanation of the other countries belonging to the UK), Germany, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kenya, India, Australia, Japan, Mexico, and the United States.  Of course you can chose your own countries to include.  I chose these because I had things from each country that the students could look at, read, and listen to.

The thing which are done for each country are as follows:

• Locate the country on a world map in relation to our location in the US.
• Color each country's map and go over what the colors and symbols mean.
• List the major landforms of each country.
• List the major plant and animal life forms in each country.
• Discuss any major winter celebrations (i.e., Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Diwali, etc.)
• Fill in a population chart, comparing the populations of each country.
• Read a folktale or story from each country.
• Listen to music selections from each country.
• Go over some basic words and phrases from each country's major language.
• Look at things from each country (money, cookbooks, menorah, rugby ball, etc.)
• Eat foods from each country (seaweed, Turkish delight, chutney, Vegemite, etc.)

The students have a book with three pages for each country.  One page is the world map and places to fill out plants, animals, landforms, and celebrations.  Another page has words and phrases from each country.  The last page is the map for each country for the children to color.  I include a population chart in the back of the book, as well, so they can keep an on-going record of the populations as we cover each country.