Ever wonder what it’s like to live in a different country? What different foods are there, what different kind of clothes they have? At the Folk Fair, one can learn all about different cultures. The third graders pair up and work on a country that they can present to the whole school.

The Folk Fair is an event that the third graders host to educate the other students about different  countries around the world. Mrs. Yannet, the current third grade teacher, came up with the idea six years ago. She wanted her students to experience what a big project was like, and Mrs. Yannet wanted the third graders to learn about other countries.

“It was a big leap of faith!” she explains.

Mrs. Yannet assigns the countries based on which are most important in the world. She likes to also represent continents and countries that don’t speak English. Mrs. Yannet also assigns the countries based on if a student has a special connection to a country. For example, one student visited Eritrea, so she assigned Eritrea to that student. Every year, the countries are different because of this, so one year there was Romania and another year there wasn’t. Also, the amount of countries depends on the number of students. One year, there was 20 countries because there were a lot of students, but this year there are only 24 students, so there were only twelve countries.

The students spend about six to seven weeks working on the Folk Fair. The week before Thanksgiving, the students are assigned their countries and are given research packets. The week before Christmas break, the third graders go to the lab and work on researching their countries for about an hour. After break, the students return to work on their folk fair project for about half the day every day.

On the students’ stands for their country, they have a brochure highlighting the main points about their country: music, schools, holidays, arts, food, traditions, activities etc. Each student also writes about a famous person from their country. Sometimes students can have things from their country such as shoes or scarves. There is also a stand for food, called the World Cafe. At the World Cafe, guests can get different foods from different countries that students prepared. There are treats and snacks and other foods for those who have allergies.

The 6th annual Folk Fair had a lot of different and important countries for students throughout the school to learn about. There was  food, music, art, and a lot of different countries with many interesting cultures.