International awareness education gives a good opportunity to children to learn about different cultures, customs and food all around the world. In May, we chose Italy as the theme of the event.    

Italy is a rich and fascinating country in so many ways.  It is known for its more than 3,000 years of history, and beautiful architecture. The country is famous for its delicious food, beautiful landscapes and interesting people.

Our Italian event took place in the second week of May. First, we introduced some new coloring activities so the children got familiar with the colors of the Italian flag and a few of Italy’s famous building. The children also had the opportunity to find the country in the map of Europe.

Coloring the Italian flag.

Coloring the leaning tower of Pisa, one of Italy’s world heritage sights.

Getting familiar with the countries of Europe.

As the main art craft of the week, the children were painting the colosseum, a famous building of Rome using the Italian colors. We made stencils and the children painted on the top of it using green, white and red colors. After that we removed the stencil and the outline of the Colosseum became visible.

Pioneer and Frontier children painting with the Italian colors.

The girls chose pink construction paper as base.

The master pieces.

We also had a fun cooking activity making pizza from scratch. First, the children cut up some sausage, mushrooms and green paper that we used for topping.

Children cutting and paying attention to the instructions.

Then, we rolled out the dough into large round pizza bases using a rolling pin and put the bases onto baking sheets.

After that, we worked on the topping. The children took turns and enjoyed spreading the tomato sauce on the pizza.

After that, we put the sausage and the mushroom on the top. Finally, we scattered some shredded cheese and seasoning.

It made an excellent snack for the kids and everybody loved it.

On the final day, we had an extensive presentation introducing Italy to the children. First, we learned about the geography of Italy. It has beautiful mountains rivers, islands and bays. Then we had a look at Italy’s famous sightseeing spots. We started our “tour” in Rome and then we moved to the country side.

Italian language has its special intonation. The children learned some of the basic words such as greetings as well as how to say “thank you” in Italian.

Italy is famous for its cuisine. We learned about Italian food and the main ingredients people use in Italy. We saw different kind of pasta. The children were amazed by the wide variety and shape of pasta that Italian people eat.

After that, we watched short videos of Italian carnivals. First, we introduced the Costume Festival of Venice. The children loved the colorful costumes and beautiful masks the participants were wearing. It’s little known but there is a funny festival somewhere in the county side where people throw oranges at each other for fun.

Italy is famous for the large number of gestures they use in their daily communications. At the end of the presentation, the children learned the meanings and imitated a few of the most common gestures.

It’s still difficult to travel abroad but through this kind of events the children can lean more and more about the World. Next month, we are going to focus on the Philippines.