Letter: Around the world with your five senses
By Wendy Chappell-Dick
Manager of Ten Thousand Villages Bluffton
In the last weeks before school let out, Ten Thousand Villages hosted four classes of 2nd graders who were able to “travel around the world” using sight, smell, sound, taste and touch.
“We may seem like a store, but we are so much more,” I told the children. Ten Thousand Villages is actually a non-profit, with a mission to help some of the poorest people in the world earn a living. By providing a market for international handmade crafts and gifts, Ten Thousand Villages empowers people to help themselves.
Volunteers who work at Ten Thousand Villages set up the store in order of continents. The children could see colorful crafts from Asia, India, Central and South America, Africa and the Middle East.
CONTINUES
We played world music on Spotify and asked the students to guess from which part of the world the music came. They were invited to do a little dancing to a Bollywood song.
Carolyn McDaniel demonstrated some more fascinating sounds, such as the tone of a singing bowl or a thumb harp. She let the children try rattles and drums made with various materials.
Suzann Bauman took her subjects outdoors to smell exotic incense, chocolate and coffee beans, and a variety of fragrant soaps.
I asked the children to close their eyes and touch a silk headband, a carved gourd ornament, a necklace made from smooth tagua nuts, and leather and wool from Alpaca, Water Buffalo and Yak. The 2nd graders had many creative suggestions as they guessed what the materials the things they touched were made of.
Despite all the wonders that they had seen, the favorite product 2nd grade was the bucket of knitted finger puppets from South America.
The children were dismissed focusing on their sense of taste – a chocolate from Ghana, from a farmer-owned co-op that is free from scandals that have plagued mainstream chocolate companies linked to human rights abuses, structural poverty, low pay and child labor.

Stories Posted This Week
Saturday, May 3, 2025
- Pirate baseball win vs. Tigers
- Bluffton softball edged in battle of Pirates
- Committee meetings scheduled for Bluffton Council
- #1 recommended attraction in NW Ohio is in Ada
- Mental Health Awareness event with Seth Gehle
- Ohio highway patrol promoting motorcycle safety
- Recap of Bluffton Board of Education meeting for April 2025
- Weekend Doctor: Antidepressants in the long term
Friday, May 2, 2025
- BHS seniors exhibit art at Gallery 323 through May 7
- What's in your weekend?
- Pirate softball blanked by Lancers
- Pirate baseball blanked by Lincolnview
- Laman Promoted to VP Retail Credit Manager by CNB
- Local land conservancy hires first Executive Director
- Steiner to present Swiss Family Migration program on May 21
- 850 Days of Caring volunteers will pitch in for Hancock County
Thursday, May 1, 2025
- Angel M. Langhals owned LFE/API Meters
- Allen Co. task force targets target sex and human traffickers
- Blessing of the Bikes, May 4
- Metzger honored at 2025 Black Swamp Council meeting
- Volunteer invitation for Bluffton Pathway Count in May
- Pirate tennis edges Ottawa-Glandorf
- Bluffton EMS station staffing goes 24/7 on May 1
- You are what you eat: Link to immune system
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
- Observation deck added to Motter Park cascading pools project
- Bluffton Women in Business meet May 15
- Four sportsmen stock 200 trout at Buckeye Lake
- Pirate girls, boys 2nd at Minster track quad
- Pirate baseball win vs. Riverdale
- Pirate softball loss vs. Riverdale
- Field reports from NW Ohio wildlife officers