Can you make a peanut butter sandwich?

This is a challenge question.
A giant Spaceship landed on Earth and you
were the liaison between them and humans.
What if there was an E.T. And You spoke of
time, how would you answer if they asked:

“What is time?”
“Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future.” You could answer.
Confused, they might ask: “What is this ’ past ?’”
“The time or a period of time before the moment of speaking or writing.” You might reply.
There’s that word time again? think about it.
Is that when you learned to speak as a babe, or learned to write in primary school?
I could go on to present and future, but I hope I’ve made my point clear. English, American English, Canadian etc. is confusing. And hard to understand.

My husband taught several years at a trade school, Computers, for which he was allowed to give his students college credits.
The NYS board of education decided that these kids weren’t getting a rounded education so he also had to teach math, English, etc.
One of the projects he came up with and invited my students (20) and his (20)to participate in was what we would think was easy, but listen:
What if a spaceship landed on earth.
Now, ET knew nothing of our customs, what things were called, or how to use them, etc. and someone asked them to make a simple peanut butter sandwich. Do you think they could?* The answer would be no.*
First, bear with me, no one in their right mind would ask ET to make a sandwich. We’re just pretending there were.
You have the opportunity to teach them how.
Everything they would need would be on a table, but the ET has no idea what these things are, are nor how to use them. Could you talk them trough it?”
Think about it? Step by step. No hands on, no pointing.
Good luck with this challenge.

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Don’t feel bad if you can’t, none of our 40 students could either. :stuck_out_tongue:

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This is a great mental challenge, @Garnet- I remember a teacher in one of my cultural classes used a similar problem, and I’ve heard they do a very similar activity in programing classes (you really need to break things down to make computers work :computer: :grin:)!

Activities like these help to build empathy and understanding when dealing with people from other cultures or who think different. It really takes you back to the absolute basics to break things down piece by piece- a useful mental exercise! :brain: :muscle:

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