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I need to show that we celebrate diversity , in fact I have to take photos of how we do.Any ideas -worried about it being tokenism -here is our book showing Asian families,here is a doll with a crutch etc

Anna

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A beautiful activity I witnessed once was where a nursery practitioner got the children to mix paints to match the exact colour of their skin...and they tested the shades out along their arms, until they got the one that matched perfectly! Lots of chat about shades and variations and opportunities for building self-esteem. I believe later she did a display of self-portraits.

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Hi one of the ways we share diversity with the children is to have a album of photographs of families around the world, that is put in our book area each day [think we got them from the Festival shop] but not sure if its still open, lots of puzzles, posters depicting different languages, small world toys.

We also decided some time ago not to just do celebrations which can be seem as tokenistic, but to choose a country on our map and then discover as much as we can about it including different homes we live in, animals, foods, clothing, climate, music, songs, books etc this works really well. :o

Edited by bridger
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I'm putting together a scrapbook at the moment called 'everything around us'. Its made up of pictures from magazines, newspapers, leaflets etc. Just some examples of the pictures are a man with a guitar, a group of women in burka's, an old lady at a bare table, a hot air balloon festival, an asian lady wearing loads of gold jewellrey, a child satnding in a shanty town, tall ships, a fisherman, signs from high street shops, lottery tickets, bus tickets, any and every picture I see that has something we can talk about and mostly that is something we dont see often or at all. I intend totake it into playgroup and just look at it with the children and see where the conversation goes, it can develop from there. Cheap and cheerful and will be following the childrens lead, not a tokenistic gesture from us.

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I'm putting together a scrapbook at the moment called 'everything around us'. Its made up of pictures from magazines, newspapers, leaflets etc. Just some examples of the pictures are a man with a guitar, a group of women in burka's, an old lady at a bare table, a hot air balloon festival, an asian lady wearing loads of gold jewellrey, a child satnding in a shanty town, tall ships, a fisherman, signs from high street shops, lottery tickets, bus tickets, any and every picture I see that has something we can talk about and mostly that is something we dont see often or at all. I intend totake it into playgroup and just look at it with the children and see where the conversation goes, it can develop from there. Cheap and cheerful and will be following the childrens lead, not a tokenistic gesture from us.

Oh that is such a great idea.......off to buy a scrapbook! :o

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How supportive are your parents? You could invite some of them in to talk about their cultures, ask them to cook some traditional foods to send in for the children to try etc. At the school where I used to work we had one mum who regularly came in a read stories to a group of children in Urdu.

Depending on which parents agree to be involved you could have a whole week to learn about their culture and have them come in at the end of the week so children can ask any questions that have arisen through the week and could maybe do some sort of show and tell to show the parent/s what they have learnt.

Also don't forget to celebrate white British heritage, especially if you have a culturally diverse group. My class at my last school consisted of 23 Pakastani children (many were born in England but most of their parents weren't), one Somali child and one Egyptian child and they all loved to hear stories about me and my family, e.g. how I celebrate Christmas, Sunday dinners etc. basically anything that they didn't do themselves.

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How about inviting grandparents or a significant male family member or friend in for the session?

 

We have started doing this - the uptake has been a bit slow, but we have hopes, as the feedback we have had from those who participated and from the children has been great!

 

I would recommend this :o

 

Sue

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I could try asking for Grandparents -getting parents in has never been that easy -we are a day nursery-as they are working.Will try the scrap book idea

Thanks :o

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We also focus on celebrating the diversity within the setting. We talk about different food that the children like, having different favourite toys or comfort objects, who has a Daddy and a Mummy at home and who might live with just Mummy or perhaps Mummy and Granny. We look at pictures of ourselves at home and talk about the differences we can see in the background. we talk about how xxx needs a booster to help her reach the table but yyyy is taller and sits on a dining chair without one. We accept that yyyy may not like having dirty hands so xxxx helps to get a bowl of water to have next to the sandpit.

 

For me the point is that if you teach children to accept and value the differences between them and the familiar people around them they learn a way of thinking which can be transferred to future experiences.

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