International Cultural Exchange on our blog!

I have thought long and hard about organising a cultural exchange. I did one before and it has been so much fun. A lot of work but fun! So today, I am sending a meassage to all of my readers. If you are interested, please send me a message on mymontessoripreschool@yahoo.com with your name, your address and if you are homeschooling or if you are working in a preschool setting. Could you also please put your country in the subject line of the email?

PLEASE do not sign up if you do not intend to send any packages!!!! This wouldn't not be fair on those who did spend time gathering their items and paying the postage! To make things even clearer, I think we should have a date set up by which all packages would have to be sent. We will decide on this at a later stage, once I have organised all the groups and sent everybody with their details. I will answer each email to confirm your place in the exchange. Be assured that your personal details will not be shared on this blog and confidentiality is of utmost importance. Your details will only be shared with the people allocated to your group. In the meantime, keep checking this blog for new updates.

I was planning on creating groups of 6 people. Each group will basically send 5 packages and receive 5 from around the world. I will try to make each group as diversified as possible.

Here are some ideas of what could be included in a package (but please, do not feel restricted by the list!):

-Pictures of your school, your house, your church etc...
- Items depicting the national/regional sport
- Sample of food typical to your region
- any items representing your area (cooking utensils, key holders, badges, pins, hats, decorative objects etc..)
- Postcards, stamps, coins,
-Craft representing your country or continent.
- Worksheets or coloring sheets about your country/continent or books on cd (we received several of these and LOVE them).
- Recipes, pics of food specific to your region
- Stories about your country
- Items of clothing that can be found only in your area

.. basically anything you think could be of interest to a child in another country, and anything else that you think would be fun for a child to receive. As long as it is related to your country or your region! So what do you think? Are you in?