Rice Is All Around Us!
Design a box to hold yummy recipes from diverse family food traditions. Collect them in your classroom and around the world.
1. Everybody comes home asking, "What’s for dinner?" but the answers that kids get can be very different depending upon family food traditions. In Everybody Cooks Rice, Carrie samples a wide variety of meals being cooked in her neighborhood. Families are from Vietnam, China, Haiti, Puerto Rico, India, Barbados, and Italy. Although the ingredients and favors are very different, each household is cooking with rice.
2. Collect recipes. In your classroom, talk about the origins of your families’ food traditions. What common foods, such as rice or bread, can you identify?
3. Ask someone at home to help you write a favorite recipe on an index card with Crayola® Erasable Colored Pencils. If you make a mistake, just erase! Draw the country’s flag associated with the recipe next to the dish’s name. Copy several other students’ recipes that you think your family would like.
4. Design a recipe box. Cut brightly colored paper with Crayola Scissors to cover a recycled tissue box. Use Crayola School Glue to attach the paper.
5. Draw cooking utensils, food sources, and flags. Cut them out and glue them on the recipe box.
6. Continue to garnish the box using Crayola Markers and other decorative materials such as aluminum foil (to carry out the cooking theme). At home, ask your family to make several new recipes.
Adult supervision is required for any arts & crafts project. Observe children closely and intervene as necessary to prevent potential safety problems and ensure appropriate use of arts and crafts materials. Some craft items, particularly beads and buttons, are potential choking hazards for young children. Avoid use of such small parts with children younger than 3 years. Craft items such as scissors, push pins and chenille sticks may have sharp points or edges. Avoid use of materials with sharp points by children younger than 4 years. Read all manufacturers' safety warnings before using arts and craft supplies.
Scissors—ATTENTION: The cutting edges of scissors are sharp and care should be taken whenever cutting or handling. Blunt-tip scissors should be used only by children 4 years and older. Pointed-tip scissors should be used only by children 6 years and older.
- • Collect theme recipes such as foods you eat when you are sick or special-occasion dishes.
- • Publish a classroom or school cookbook and donate the money raised to a local soup kitchen.
- • Research other foods that appear in many cultures’ food traditions, such as bread and noodles.
- • Investigate how rice is cultivated. Try growing some in your classroom. Find out what the differences are among various types of rice. Which types are healthiest to eat?
- • Assessment: Ask children to talk about the recipes they collected, their origins, and to identify common ingredients.
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