Universal Yums
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The deliciousness of a country all in a box! This monthly subscription box brings so much enriched learning and joy to our family, and may be a must for anyone wanting to teach cultural appreciation. Check it out here.
What is it?
It’s a box full of savories and sweets from another country!
12-16 page Information booklet about the country and its major sites of interest, nutritional information, a music play list, trivia, games, and cultural traditions
Monthly delivery - free shipping in the US
3 Levels of box size - 5-7 snacks (which is what we ordered for 3 years) $15/month, 10-12 snacks $26/month, or 18-20 snacks $41/month if you commit for 12 months. It gets a little more expensive if you order month-to-month which renews automatically.
You can buy individual treats in their shop and individual past boxes.
3 Reasons It’s Our Favorite:
Expands taste preferences in a meaningful way - a much needed skill for many little ones.
Takes you on an adventure throughout the world through your taste buds! We love exploring another country, getting to know the globe, and gaining a deep appreciation of other cultures. It’s seriously the most epic thing we do inside our home during our homeschool year.
Our kids love it - they beg to do this activity! We took a break this year, and they ask regularly when we will start it again.
How We Use It:
Rate the Yums and Chart it - As we taste our share of each yum, we rate it. We keep a chart and award 2 points for a “good”, 1 point for “okay”, and 0 points for “yuck”. There are 4 of us sharing the 5-7 snacks and so we add up our scores together and record our “Yum Score” for each country. Then, after about 10-12 boxes, we create a bar chart to view our results!
Use it as a Unit Study! Here’s what we do:
a) We take turns finding each country on the globe. Over time, we play games using the globe locating all the previous countries we’ve “traveled to” with our Yums boxes.
b) Study the flag symbolism, economy and agriculture, religion, and transportation.
c) We learn about interesting historical events that changed the country’s boundaries, government, natural disasters, and more.
d) We look up the points of interest on YouTube and watch videos that take us there with other kids or tourists. We get to virtually experience the country’s wonders together!
e) We add two pages to our binder notebook with one picture we draw for each yum treat. The flag is always one picture, and then my kids get to pick the other facts that they like and draw a picture with description for each of those. We fit 4 pictures on one sheet and also tape a wrapper from one of the yum onto it. They love flipping through and seeing past countries.
f) We utilize field trip locations to enhance the experience. For example, if we get a Japan Yum Box, then we will go to the Japanese Friendship Gardens in our county.
g) We read cultural fiction from that country’s past. I have a reference book that we use for many of the stories and legends from various countries. Or, if it’s a country like Greece that has a mythological history, we read a number of myths and will spend an hour on that. It’s a great introduction and exposure to potential future interests.
h) Cultural craft - if you have a reference book for crafts for other countries, utilize that to add in a craft every once in a while. Every country can be different. Some can have crafts, others field trips.
i) A Universal Yums day is a 2-4 hour “school” day, and that is all we do. I prepare the YouTube playlist ahead of time, and review the facts and look at our library of reference books first, putting tabs for a quick turn to important information.
Trip Around the World Week - We have done this two times. If you let the boxes pile up, you have enough to use 3-5 boxes in one week. My kids love spending an entire week where we open a new box each day. I hang my international flag pendant across our dining room, decorate with globes and reference books, and open up and set up the boxes to entice their taste buds. We hang up a world map and chart our course using yarn and tape. We go in order that a plane or cruise ship would take. We watch a YouTube video each morning of a plane taking off to fly to the next country so we get the feeling that we are traveling to a new place. We also do most of the Unit Study activities listed above, but it’s an entire themed week of it with no other school work. Although it’s a lot of planning and work, it’s a neat way to take a break in the regular routine.
Other Ways to Play
Depending on your child’s age or development, you can offer these additional options:
Researching and presenting about a topic or interesting practice or tradition that your child is curious about for that country. He can compare and contrast with other countries or cultures they’ve learned about in the past.
Offer to let your child present the country to all of you! She can research the videos to show (you can curate a quantity ahead of time for her to choose from), look through the books for fun facts, take her to the library to search for cultural stories to share, etc.
Look up recipe options and make one for dinner that night to share with the entire family.
Teach a few important words in the native language. Make it a game requiring that those words be used instead of the the English words throughout the day.
The possibilities are endless!
Reference Books I Use to Supplement Study
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