A Preschooler's CulturalFest Expo Adventure
by Ellen Frierson, FIUTS Manager of Education Programs
Just a few of the “virtual booths” represented at the 2021 CulturalFest International Expo
Over the last few months, my colleagues at FIUTS and I have been working hard to transition our annual CulturalFest International Expo event to a virtual format. At the same time, my kids and I - particularly my five-year-old daughter - have been having a great time over the past week trying out some of the activities for ourselves! Here’s how we’ve been enjoying this year’s very unusual CulturalFest experience.
My daughter loves dance class at her preschool, and we watch a lot of dance videos online in our free time. So we decided to start by checking out a dance video on the India page. We were completely enthralled by the Bhangra dance performance. We watched it twice - and my two-year old son, who usually doesn’t even sit still for more than a few seconds, also watched it for five whole minutes (!). Later, my daughter and I even searched YouTube for even more Bhangra performances to watch.
Exploring further on the India page, we found a great art activity suggestion. We learned about different styles of henna, and then we traced our hands on plain white paper and decorated our drawings with henna-style designs. We did an image search online to get inspiration, and had fun looking at pictures of beautiful designs.
This was a pretty great activity that my daughter wanted to do multiple times, using different colors (such as purple, shown in the photo to the left). Now she’s excited to get henna for real someday, which I told her I hoped she’d be able to do at the Expo in person next year (fingers crossed…).
Then we went to the Japan page. There were a couple options for craft activities to try, and we decided to make a Teru Teru Bozu - a handmade doll that is supposed to bring good weather and ward off rain. This was an easy activity that we could do using supplies that we already had at home.
After we made our doll, we put it in the window (photo at left) as instructed, to see if it would help us to avoid rain, since we’re pretty tired of rain. This was right before the snowstorm hit Seattle, which at least is different from rain, so maybe it worked?
We went back to the main Expo page and I asked my daughter where she’d like to explore next. She chose Afghanistan, so we went to the Afghanistan page and printed out the coloring sheets. My daughter is really into clothes, so she loved the picture of the woman wearing traditional Afghani clothes (photo at right) and was excited to color it. She also colored the page with Afghanistan’s national flower, the tulip, and added her own creative decorations as well. After that, we looked at photos from Mozambique and Mexico (and fantasized about going to the beach), watched videos about textiles and fashion in Guinea, learned about some differences between U.S. and British English on the U.K. page, and are making plans to try out a recipe - maybe something from Armenia. And obviously we can’t wait to see the Performance Showcase on Saturday!
We’ve been having a great time, of course, but exploring the Expo has been giving us a lot more than just fun activities to get through a couple winter pandemic weeks. In non-pandemic times, my full-time role managing our Visiting Programs at FIUTS involves a lot of evening and weekend activities, and I’ve been hauling my daughter along with me to work events ever since she was a baby. Casual in-person interaction with international visitors was a huge and exciting part of her life that suddenly disappeared almost overnight (and my son is too young to remember it at all).
But while we were exploring the Expo, the activities seemed to spark real curiosity, excitement, and joy for my daughter, and for me as well. We looked at where the places we were “visiting” were located on the globe, and each activity encouraged us to ask questions and try to learn more. I think this experience is playing a meaningful a role in her growth as a person who is beginning to understand the world - with all its diversity, flaws, beauty, and complexity - and her place in it. As an international education professional and a parent dedicated to raising my kids with a global mindset, this has felt like a big win!
Of course, it wasn’t the same as being able to make the real-life, in-person connections that make the usual CulturalFest experience special and unique. But all of us on the FIUTS staff team are excited that at least with this new virtual format, people from anywhere in the world can be a part of CulturalFest. (We’ve even put together some great educational resources for teachers and parents to use when exploring the virtual Expo with kids.) With any luck, we’ll be able to gather in person again soon. And in the meantime, we’ll do the best we can to make the world a regular part of our lives here at home.
Click here to explore the Expo for yourself!
Have you been doing CulturalFest activities with your students or family? Share and tag them with #CulturalFest2021