Travel the world by learning about music!
When I was a kid, one of my favorite memories is when my family went on a pretend tour of the world. My mother put up a large map for the purpose of our travels and we spent a week in different countries for an entire year. Each time we "traveled" to a new country, we would draw a line from the country we had visited to the country we were visiting. During that week, we would eat at least one authentic meal from that country, learn a song or two, check out any books the library had featuring the culture of that country, and do a related craft. It was lots of fun and I really internalized geography as a part of that experience.
There are a group of fantastic public school music teachers who have had the same idea. The idea was spearheaded by Elizabeth Caldwell over at Organized Chaos. Not only have they been visiting a few different countries with their students during music period, but they have blogged about their resources and collaborated with each other to share what they have learned. I have been very impressed with their work and I wanted to share their blog posts with you. Other bloggers involved that I have drawn from are:
I will be adding to the "world tour" as I stumble across resources. If you have a great resource not listed, please share it in the comments!

Packing your Bags...
Connecting Cultures around the World
Multi-Cultural Kids Music Videos
World Music- Finding "authentic" music for the classroom
North America
Mexico- Los Machetes Folk Dance
South America
Oceana
Oceana- Music and Movement activities
Thank you for sharing! Your family world tour sounds awesome! Having grown up in 3 continents I am passionate about bringing the world to my students in a deep and meaningful way. I hope other music teachers and parents will be inspired to infuse some experiences from foreign cultures into their children’s lives!
This is awesome. It’s so much fun for kids to learn about music from all over the world. I love how different the music sounds, depending on the location. Love it!