Latin America

All Around This World’s classroom and homeschool lessons about Latin America for kids introduce your family to Latin cultures through interactive fun . . .

Latin America’s history is a grand narrative full of joy and heartache, one of great ambition fulfilled and vast potential unrealized, a past that includes both undeniable devastation and a consistent ability to face adversity upon adversity and live on.

All Around This World Latin America "Everywhere Map" -- Latin America for kids

From a 1492 “stumble-upon” by Christopher Columbus, who “discovered” a part of the world that was already full of millions of people and their many proud civilizations, waves of European colonizers, primarily from Spain and Portugal, claimed the area we now know as Latin America as their own. Some of these colonizers viewed the land with actual hope, others as only a resource to abuse. Whatever their intent, colonial governments trounced the indigenous population, brought humans from Africa as slaves and extracted as much wealth as possible from the fertile land. At the same time, as a not insignificant side-effect of their domination, the Europeans–again, mainly the Spanish and Portuguese–also brought with them their own European culture, Iberian poetry and cuisine, and most relevant to us, their melodic and passionate music.

In our All Around This World classes we explore Latin America by taking a tour from the Southern tip of Chile up to Mexico then back down south to Brazil. While we enjoy some music from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, we mainly leave the Caribbean to star in its own full season of adventure.

If you’re not in an All Around This World classroom but instead you’re following along at home, you can still enjoy our lessons about Latin America for kids:

Chile: the longest, thinnest country in the world, where we longly and thinly prance around like roosters courting chickens while dancing “the Chilean national dance,” the cueca.

Argentina: we dare to be dramatic while dancing the tango.

Uruguay:  we land on the pampas (plains) of Uruguay and commune with the most mellow of all cowboys, the Uruguayan gauchos.

Ecuador: we dance the bomba balancing empty wine bottles on our heads–okay, in class we use beanbags.

Colombia: we time-warp to dance three generations of cumbia.

Honduras: we shake our bottoms with abandon as we dance a modern version of the Garifuna punta.

Mexico: we each don an impressive (imaginary) headdress to honor the earth with an Aztec dance.

The Guianas: we celebrate the walking-ist of all the world’s four day walking festivals–Suriname’s Wandelmars!

Venezuela: we visit the Yanomami and learn how to count to 10 Yanomamo-style, using just three numbers and our hands

Brazil: we end our tour in Brazil where the kick, leap and cartwheel through the air,as we play/dance/”do” capoeira

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