How do you recognize cultural diversify with celebration days in your program or classes?

Question

The Holidays are coming! I'd like to start a thread on the website http://www.After-School-Care.com

Please share any and all activites from your pre-K program, classroom, day care or school age care programs (before and after school care) for children from 4 to 12.

There is a healthy thread going for Everything Thanksgiving and many traditional Christmas and winter-fun ideas. Looking for ideas for December Days of Chanukah, Kwanzaa, St. Lucia Day and Eid-al-Adha inspiration .

Thank you, Barbara Shelby
http://www.After-School-Care.com

Encouraging children to celebrate and share their culture would be an excellant suggestion! But what do you do, when programs have very little--if any diversity?

Answer 1

I put symbols on the large monthly calendar, and mention the approaching holidays as we do calendar time. I also have a map of the world up to point out where the holidays originated. As the days approach, we do appropriate crafts and learn songs about the holiday. For example, for Thanksgiving we make Pilgrim and Wampanoag paper bag puppets, turkeys out of our hand and shoe prints, and paper plate Thanksgiving dinners. (They cut out pictures of their favorite Thanksgiving foods and paste onto paper plates. )This last is a good craft because even in non-diverse classes we discover that different families eat different foods on this holiday!

Answer 2

I teach in a Reggio-inspired program. Those handprint turkeys are done to make parents happy and have little education value to a preschooler. An example, one year my class had no interest in Christmas! Until January! During December, the kids were busy researching fairy tales, especially the Three little Pigs. In January, the kids then wanted to do 'Christmas' activities. This then was a great opportunity to display the different traditions celebrated in our families. A 'problem' with teaching 'diversity' is you can run into teaching ethnic stereotypes. Diversity is a natural process.