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Around the World in 12 Dishes: France

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This month, Around the World in 12 Dishes landed in France.

Ah France! It’s the country at the very tip top of my dream travel list, so I was excited to do this month’s projects.

The girls and I haven’t explored much about France, so I decided to start with one of the most recognizable landmarks in the country, the Eiffel Tower. We looked at pictures, learned a few things about the Eiffel Tower, then created some beautiful artwork.

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Supplies Needed:

Black paper
Chalk
Scissors
Glue
White pape
Paint

For the first step in this project, we drew the Eiffel Tower.

Wait, I take that back, I drew the Eiffel Tower.

My original plan was to give the girls a pencil outline of the tower, then let them trace it with chalk and fill in the details. They didn’t want to. They wanted to paint. Oh well, we trudged along and I drew their towers.

In case you’re wondering, yes, the chalk will smudge. If you don’t want it to, spray a light coat of hairspray over the drawing (a trick I learned in high school art class).

If you’re like us, and don’t own any hairspray, just be careful not to touch the chalk or redraw any smudged parts. Once you’ve drawn the Tower, cut it out.

While I was drawing, the girls were painting their backgrounds. They painted the sky, a pond, a garden with flowers, and a bright yellow sun. They really got into it and enjoyed spending the time painting.

Once they were finished with their paintings and the paint had dried a bit, we glued their Eiffel Towers to their paintings.

The completed paintings were wonderful! I would have loved to have seen their version of the Eiffel Tower, but you can’t win them all. I don’t want to pressure them when it comes to art because I don’t want to do anything to take away their joy of creating.

Would you like to join in this month? You can download a printable passport page here and a placemat here.

Around the World in 12 Dishes: Morocco

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When Around the World in 12 Dishes whisked us away to Morocco this month, the girls and I decided to spend out time in the markets of Marrakech.

We watched a short video on National Geographic Kids and looked at their slideshow. We talked about all the different things you could find at the markets, such as clothing, leather, olives, tea, dried fruits & nuts, and carpets.

Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

I was very fortunate to have found a book at our local public library that was set in the markets of Marrakech, My Father’s Shop by Satomi Ichikawa.

In this book, Mustafa, who always admired the beautiful carpets in his father’s shop, asked his father if he could have the rug with the hole in it. His father agrees to give Mustafa the carpet only if he agrees to learn some of the foreign languages that were important to their trade. We learned, along with Mustafa, of the importance of being able to communicate with people from all over the world.

To go along with the book, we created out own rugs similar to the ones we imagined Mustafa’s father sold in his shop.

We used construction paper and our markers to create the designs on the rug. I joined along this time instead of just observing the process.

After we had our designs, we used our scissors to cut a fringe along the two short sides of our “rugs.”

By now, I’m sure you’re wondering about the food. Well, this month, we skipped the food and went for the craft instead.

While browsing recipes, I couldn’t find anything that I thought the family would like, let alone try. We love some of the individual ingredients, but when combined together, I knew I would be hard pressed to get anyone to try a bite.

Since this is supposed to be a fun project, I didn’t want to add that kind of stress to it. If you have any suggestions for a kid-friendly Moroccan meal, let me know. I’m still willing to give it a try!

Even minus the food, we still had a great experience imagining ourselves as rug sellers deep in the markets of Marrakech.

 

Welcome to “Around The World in 12 Dishes”. We will be taking you on a journey around the world, (loosely) following in Phileas Fogg’s footsteps, exploring 12 different countries with our children, by cooking 12 dishes with them. One for each country visited.
 
The world is such a wonderfully diverse and colorful place. Our children see maps, flags and books. They see postcards and maybe they see films about the world.. but let’s really bring it to life through food! Taste and smell don’t often get explored, we think this would be wonderfully fun and interesting for you and your children.
 
Not only is it an exciting and different way to learn about cultures, but cooking with children brings a host of benefits – from numeracy to science. How can you beat that?
 

Around the World in 12 Dishes

We had started our journey the same way Phileas Fogg did in London, UK, and now are arriving in Rabat, capital of Morocco!

  • March 4 – First country was the UK
  • April 1 – The second country was Sweden
  • May 6 – The third country was Russia
  • June 3 – The fourth country was India
  • July 7 – The fifth country was Japan
  • August 5 – The sixth country was Australia
  • September 2 – The seventh country was French Polynesia
  • October 7 – The eighth country was Mexico
  • November 4 – The ninth country was Brazil
  • December 2 – The tenth country is Morocco!

How to join the fun!

  • The only mandatory part is the dish, the rest is all up to you, we just thought it would be fun and more concrete to the kids as to why we are making a unusual dish.
  • Cook a dish from Morocco: The goal is to explore this country through FOOD and activities if you wish. Make a typical dish (sweet or savoury) from the country with the kids, take photos and have fun!
  • Typical dishes: Tajine, Briouat, Kefta, Merguez or Ma’amoul.
  • Print your passport: Click here to download, comes with space for a photo of the child with the dish. Here is a little cover for it if you wish 🙂
  • Color a placemat: Once colored/painted or whatever other way you want to do this, you can laminate it or put it between clear contact paper to use it over and over. Great conversation piece for you and your kids. Click here to download it.
  • Make a craft: you can make a country related craft with the kids [optional!]
    • Fun fact: Even though the official language is Arabic, Moroccan Arabic is so different that someone from, for example, Saudi-Arabia will hardly be able to understand.