Stories from other cultures - 3 - South Asia

This week, we looked at South Asia - concentrating on India, with some mention of Pakistan and Bangladesh. My husband's family originates from India and my dad was born in Bangladesh, so the girls have some links with these countries, too. But since the theme of this topic is other cultures, I wanted to focus more on the non-Islamic regions of India so as to broaden their knowledge a bit more.

As usual, we looked at our maps and atlases and read a load of traditional stories from the library. We talked about climate, clothes and food (with actual examples!), as well as a little about Hinduism (one of the books we took out, as an example of an Indian traditional tale, was the story of Ram & Sita and why people celebrate Diwali).

For our formal Literacy task this week, I had them write a description of a meal with traditional Indian food. We eat lots of this kind of cuisine anyway so I just encouraged lots of talk at mealtimes about the food, describing it using the five senses and what they liked about it. We also watched a few videos from this YouTube channel, which follow someone from Canada trying out different street foods from around the world. I was surprised how much the girls enjoyed watching them! F especially, I think she has her father's travel bug from the way her eyes lit up at the thought of travelling to different countries, mashaAllah. 😃✨

You can download our writing prompt here.