Youths Embark on First-Class ‘Tour’ of World : Culture: Students ‘visit’ a country each week in a summer program that exposes them to cooking, drama, crafts and music of foreign lands.

Grabbing a wafer-thin pancake from the griddle, Carly Pippin, 10, smeared it with berries and syrup and prepared to eat it Swedish-style.

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“They don’t stack their pancakes like we do in America. They roll them,” she said, sprinkling her creation with powdered sugar before licking her fingers.

“These are a lot better than what we had yesterday. That was disgusting,” said Carly’s classmate Cristina Cruz-Urike, 11, wrinkling her nose at the thought of Monday’s Swedish canapes, made of horseradish, bacon and cream cheese.

Carly, Cristina and 60 other Thousand Oaks elementary students are learning to cook Swedish food, sing Swedish songs and play Swedish games this week as part of the 19th annual Youth Cultural Program at the Arts Council Cultural Center. The event is sponsored by the Thousand Oaks chapter of the American Assn. of University Women.

The four-week program features a different country each week. Next Monday, the students take off for Argentina, followed by the Philippines and Italy. Each of the teachers in the half-day program leads a class in either cooking, drama, crafts or music. They research the country of the week and incorporate its traditions and folklore into their teachings.

Arts teacher Kim Goulding leafed through cultural arts books to find an art project for each country.

Her students will make Swedish Tomten elves, Italian tile mosaics and mille fiori beads, Filipino wood chimes and Argentine candles and clay pottery in the coming weeks.

“Most schools these days don’t have the facilities or the time for the arts,” she said. “Classes like these fulfill a need.”

Ann Glass, chairwoman of Swedish week, called historical societies all over the United States and the Swedish consulate in New York to gather information about the country. “Summer is for filling up what the schools can’t do anymore,” Glass said. “It blows my mind the way arts are always cut first. They are what make children want to come to school, want to learn.”

Fourth-grader David Hauskjold, 9, embroidering yarn into his Swedish wall hanging, said he liked having arts and music classes every day.

“In school, if you want to do things like computers, it’s there,” he said. “But if you want to do art you can’t, because we don’t have classes.”

Some youths enjoyed the program so much in their elementary school days that they came back to volunteer with the younger kids. About a dozen teen-age volunteers are helping the students in this week’s program.

“At my house, we still make some of the recipes I learned in this program,” said Teresa Prescott, 13, who attended the program for five years. “I can make paella, which I learned when we studied Spain, and broccoli and beef from our week on China.”

Melissa McCabe, 11, said she looked forward to Friday, when the students will present their songs, foods and crafts to their parents.

She hopes to re-create some of them at home. “What I like about this is that you get to make stuff and eat it, and you don’t have to write reports and do homework,” she said. “Then again, we can make homework for ourselves when we make the things we’ve learned here. But it’s fun homework, and that’s the point.”