Cultural Differences and Friendship: The Sandwich Swap

Book #1: The Sandwich Swap by: Queen Rania of Jordan Al Abdullah and Kelly DiPucchio

In the story, The Sandwich Swap, two girls are best friends. They do everything together. The only thing they do differently is the type of sandwich they eat at lunch. Lily loves to eat peanut butter sandwiches on loaf bread and Salma loves to eat hummus sandwiches on pita bread. Each girl believes that her sandwich is the best. This causes a conflict between the girls. They spend the next day mad at each other. They do not do anything together, including eating lunch together. They sit at separate lunch tables. The other children begin to notice the girls are mad at each other and they begin choosing sides. They call the girl on the opposing side names

We would first read the book aloud together as a whole group. We would, then, have a group discussion about the things in the book, best friends, favorite foods, and how people like different things. I would make charts. One indicating who each child said that their best friend was. Another would be peanut butter verses hummus. For this chart, we would have to first taste both peanut butter and hummus. The students would then mark which one they liked best.

At the writing center, I would have the students write about their favorite and least favorite foods. I would also have them write about their best friend, who they are, why, and what they like to do together. In the play center, I would have different types of play foods that the children may or may not have seen before. I would have several copies of the book The Sandwich Swap, as well as books about different foods in the reading center. During small group, we would talk about different types of foods and how some people like foods that others do not