One of the best lessons you could ever teach to your children is a lesson in culture. There are so many different ones around the world, and your children will see these as they grow up. Exposing them early is a smart way for children to realise that there is much more to life than cartoons and comic book universes. 

You might not always have the chance to go abroad beyond the one time you got to book an Italy school trip, but that doesn’t mean that you cannot take your kids around the world and help them learn about new cultures. In fact, you can put down the textbook and make their experiences as real as ever. Below, we’ve got six activities that you could do to teach your children about world cultures.

Make a passport together.

Creating a passport lets your children have a little fun and pretend they’re going away! You can go online and look at pictures of passports from around the world, making a list of all the differences. You can then sit together and develop a family passport that will reflect your children and your lives. Any colour, any pattern – it’s totally up to them to be creative.

Make some stickers!

Use a Cricut to print them or a sticker printer and print ‘visited’ stickers to put into their new passport. Talk about what a passport can do for them and how to use one, and then play a game with a globe – you’re going around the world and learning new things today!

Get a map.

If you don’t have a globe, you’ll need a world map. Use push pins to show where the countries on the map are located – including the country in which you live. Then put pins into the countries you’ve been to before. Use the internet or guidebooks and learn about each of those places. Talk about the foods to eat and the attractions they’ll see, and list the places you visited together while you were there.

Talk about the weather.

If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, talk about the weather for the countries that are there. Talk about the opposing seasons and the temperatures and what they could all mean for those living in those environments. Use the map to find the northernmost countries and then do the same for the Southern Hemisphere. 

Play dress up!

You can get dressed up in cultural clothing for each place you’ve been before, and you could even cook some of the best traditional meals from those countries. It’s a fun way to get crafty and have fun with culture.

Learn a language.

If you want to teach your children about the cultures around the world, why not choose to learn a language together? You could teach them that you’re new at this, too, and you need help to learn. It’s especially important if you plan to visit new countries together.