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Does anyone have any Fair Trade activities for children?

Julie Buckingham from Teaneck, New Jersey July 31, 2014

Our campaign is participating in “Teaneck Night Out”, part of National Night Out, an event geared especially for families. In addition to our normal brochures that we have at our events, we’d like to have some activities at our table for children to do. I’m thinking something along the lines of a word search, something to color, and make something a little more mature for older children. Does anyone have any suggestions of resources we could use?

Community Answers

  1. Display a simple map of the world. Collect together a selection of FT products (edibles, crafts or both) and ask kids to try and identify which country or continent each came from.

    Anna McMahon from Bethlehem, New York - 10 years ago
  2. I like Anna’s idea and would also add let them sample cocoa beans, talk
    about the process for chocolate… etc. That always amazes them.

    On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 11:22 AM, Anna McMahon <admin@fairtradecampaigns.org

    Jason Lemieux from Cardinal Stritch University - 10 years ago
  3. Scavenger hunts are fun, where you pick items around town for the children to find, like particular Fair Trade items in stores, Fair Trade signage, and even a Fair Trade leader you know will be around. Hand out the list from your table, and then reward those who bring the completed list back to the table with a Fair Trade chocolate bar.

    elizabeth.killough from Media, Pennsylvania - 10 years ago
  4. This is Emily Z., the Fair Trade Communities Fellow. I see that my answer is probably too late for your event, but hopefully it will be helpful to someone else. You could do some hands-on demonstrations of the chocolate process. You can purchase a dried cacao pod from Equal Exchange (http://shop.equalexchange.coop/dried-cacoa-pod.html), and maybe have some large pictures of the process of chocolate from pod to chocolate. Unfortunately I don’t know where she got them, but I knew a woman who had examples of coffee beans in 3 different stages, green, dried w/ the papery bit still on, and then roasted. She had a short description of each stage, and the kids found it interesting to play with the beans – we even saw many adults checking them out as well. For a chocolate event, I made homemade chocolate play dough and let the kids play with it while we talked about chocolate. Here’s a recipe: http://www.loveplayandlearn.com/2013/03/simple-chocolate-play-dough-recipe.html. The best part about making it yourself is it’s non-toxic, so you don’t have to worry about younger kids tasting it – fair warning though, it tastes horrible.

    Ashley - 9 years ago

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