One of our favorite things to do as a homeschool family, is take field trips. We had a great one this week. We attended the 37th Annual INDY International Festival. I don’t know if it is planned every year to coincide with Geography Awareness Week, but I thought it was great that it did this year.
We attended during one of the student days, but it is open to the public throughout the weekend. It would be a wonderful outing for any family – homeschooling or not. On Friday, they held the Naturalization Ceremony — what an experience. Some of our church family became citizens a few years ago and I remember them sharing about it. We will plan to attend again for one of those days — how neat to tie into a study on citizenship!
It’s no surprise that I love geography and learning about other cultures. There is a wonderful international community in Indianapolis. This event is a great way to be introduced to it. Many of the booths were manned by natives of the countries they represented. Others who were not natives were celebrating their heritage and offered a different perspective. And of course, there were also booths with food! The smells were amazing! We could have spent all day just eating!
We didn’t though. And I didn’t get a single picture of the food — trust me, it was good! There were many opportunities for pictures though. We didn’t just wander around eating and posing for pictures though. We also watched a few performances of ethnical dance Celtic Images and group from the Philippines. We received a passport for each of us upon arriving. We were to “travel” around gathering the information from each country and have our passport stamped once we learned basic things such as the capital, etc. We also learned of a hero of the country. Once completed, you could turn this in to enter a giveaway. My children didn’t want to be distracted by writing (it is still so hard and time consuming for many of them). Instead, we enjoyed talking with the people and learning without the need for writing.
There were also many opportunities for hands-on activities – or feet-on activities. A traveling map of Indiana and Asia were there. These were giant-size. You could walk throughout Asia — I have a son fascinated with the Great Wall — he loved seeing how much it covered. We found places familiar to us in Indiana on that map. We did all this from the sidelines though — my children didn’t want to remove their shoes. (Surprises me – that’s the first thing that happens when we go anywhere else)
We also spent time at many of the art-inspired booths. Making paper cranes – I love that they remember a story we read last year learning about Sadako. We also worked on some sidewalk chalk art – Italian style. There was so much to see and do! I’m not sure we will make this an annual event, but definitely every other year. As the children get older and we study other countries more and more will be relevant to them. And we can try some of the food we missed out on.
Do you have the opportunity to explore other countries from your hometown?