Exploring Thailand with Kids!

What’s the Little Passports World Edition all about? It’s more than just a monthly subscription – it’s a conversation starter for curious kids who want to learn about the world. We asked guest blogger Amanda Shaw, a writer and mom of three who writes about her kids’ adventures, to tell us how her family “travels” with Little Passports. Read on!

Our Trip to Thailand

With the day’’s high temperature still well below zero here in Montreal, it’’s the perfect day for some armchair travel (or, in our case, kitchen chair travel) to Thailand.

The first thing we do whenever we open an envelope from Little Passports is to spread out all of our “travel treasure”s and read the letter from Sam and Sofia. It’’s full of hints that help the kids find the country on the map.

Elephants and noodle dishes are our clues this time. What else do we know? Our family loves Thai food, but apparently, during all those dinners slurping noodles, my daughter Zahra never made a connection that this food comes from a country called Thailand. “Thai-LAND?” Clearly we need to spend some time making sure that she’’s envisioning something relatively close to the country in Asia, and not a land of dancing noodle dishes.

While Zahra locates Thailand on the map, her younger sister goes sticker-crazy. A sticker on the beloved, well-worn suitcase and another in the passport and we’’re on our way to Thailand! The beautiful postcard makes it easier to turn our backs on the piles of snow outside.

There are a couple rounds of “Long live the King [of Thailand]!” and the girls make up pronunciations of the Thai letters. Then we go online to find an audio clip so we sound slightly less foolish parading around the house chanting “Long live the King!” in Thai.

We pack up the letter, the postcard, the map and the passport. We fish around in the art supply cabinet and get started on turning ourselves into Asian elephants.

The craft is easy and fun and we have all the materials on hand.

Once the masks are done, I lose them for half an hour or so while they pretend to be mommy and baby elephants, crashing their way through the Thai jungle. I take this opportunity to gather the ingredients for one of our favorite parts of Little Passports’ monthly packages:— the recipes!

Once the elephants make their way back to the kitchen, I put Zahra to work slicing the mushrooms. I’’m hoping that since they’’re part of our culinary excursion to Thailand this cold afternoon, she’’ll eat them.

We measure out all of the ingredients -— wow, what a beautiful rainbow! We spend a few minutes smelling, touching and tasting. We add extra cilantro. The fish sauce gets mixed reviews.

Then, my chefs-in-training pull up a chair next to the stove and we start dumping, pouring, mixing and stirring. The kitchen starts to smell very spicy! So spicy, in fact, that I’’m doubting the girls will eat the Tom Kha Gai -— that is, until we add the coconut milk.

While we wait for the soup to cook, we use our Little Passports boarding pass to access the trivia and games online. By this time, the kitchen smells goooooood, and Zahra is getting really good at collecting fish to sell at a Thai market.

Just a few more minutes for the soup, so we do another of our favorite activities: figuring out where we’’re going next with Little Passports. Ireland, yeah!

The soup is finally ready. We warm our hands around the steaming bowls, grab some chunks of sourdough bread and cups of tea, talk about Buddhist temples and imagine ourselves walking through the hot streets of Bangkok.

All is not perfect, though. Zahra did not eat the mushrooms.

Read more from Amanda here: Raising Global Citizens in Montreal!

Click here to start your own adventure with our World Edition.

Amanda Shaw is mom to three spirited children and doubles as Director of Content Marketing at Webrunner Media Group. On any given day, she dons a tutu or a hard hat and wields a Swiss army knife or the mighty pen.