Lauren Cultural Connection, Food, Migrants, Refugees

Enoteca Maria

Enoteca Maria is a New York City restaurant with a truly unique concept: They have a rotating menu prepared by grandmothers from around the world. What began as an Italian restaurant with food cooked by Nonna’s from different regions of Italy soon evolved into inviting grandmothers from across the globe to share their culinary traditions.

Depending on the night, patrons have the opportunity to order food from Bangladesh, Peru, Japan, Algeria, and a dozen other countries. The restaurant is constantly taking on new grandmothers, and therefore creating new offerings on their diverse menu. In addition, the owners of the restaurant have created a virtual book entitled Nonnas of the World, where anyone can submit their grandmother’s recipes, written in their native language.

I’m so glad that this amazing restaurant exists, and I hope that concepts like these spread across the United States!

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Lauren Cultural Connection, Migrants, Refugees

Activities that Break the Language Barrier

Lately we’ve been spending a lot of time with a family from Ecuador. They only speak Spanish, and save for a few stilted Spanish phrases from me, everyone in my family only speaks English. But our kids have enjoyed playing together, and we’ve had some interesting conversations with the help of translation apps and expressive gestures. Here are some activities I have found work well when not everyone in the group speaks the same language.

Toys

As long as everyone in the party is willing to share, playing with toys can be a fun activity that doesn’t require anyone to be bilingual. Building toys like Legos or blocks, puzzles, dolls and action figures have been helpful for our group.

Board Games

Not all board games are easily played across languages, but some are far simpler than others. Matching games, checkers, chess, Chutes and Ladders, Operation, Jenga, Sequence, and Candy Land are some of the few that have worked for us. Basically, anything that relies heavily on pictures, patterns, or actions will do.

Sports and Active Games

Soccer (futbol) is a universal sport. Anyone can enjoy playing this together. Basketball, baseball, simplified hockey, various types of tag, hide and seek, dodgeball, field day type games, playing with balloons, rollerskating, bike riding, walking, and going to the park are great options as well.

Arts and Crafts

Drawing, painting, play dough, clay, beading, origami, and baking have all worked well.

Charades (with pictures)

We have played a modified version of charades where we lay out a handful of pictures (think flash cards), and we take turns acting out one of the pictures, allowing the kids to point to which picture they think is being portrayed. Yes, it makes the game shorter and simpler, but more importantly, no one has to speak the same language.

Entertainment

If the situation or the energy levels necessitate screens, we’ve tried to find shows that use little dialogue and have a lot of physical comedy or storytelling. Things like Tom and Jerry have been golden for this, as well as Fantasia. Also, we can all have fun listening to music and dancing together.

The wonderful thing about these interactions is that it brings our worlds closer and we are each learning things from each others’ language and culture. I think it’s vital to remember that there are so many ways to communicate and interact with one another.