Understanding Differences

Mr. Sun Sun, Mr. Golden Sun,

Please shine down on me!

The sun is out, the birds are chirping and Petals class are excited!

The morning started out quite exciting, as children rolled in chit-chatting away with each other. The tables had puzzles set up and we continued painting on our portfolio covers. Today, some of the children realized they could draw/write their names with their fingers. They imagined their fingers being brushes and pencils. Children who had already finished yesterday still wanted to paint some more. They spent the whole morning just painting away.

At the carpet area, we had our Legos out along with wooden blocks. A few minutes later we realized children were more interested in Legos than the wooden blocks. We asked the children what they would like to exchange the wooden blocks for as our rule is clean up one then another. It was a unanimous, “soft toys!” They build houses/caves with chairs and cushions and pretended they were houses for the soft toys. Children also enjoyed some cooking time in the kitchen area today.

We had a quick circle time with Kiki for morning greetings and then got ready for snack. The children and Kiki discussed that the park might be wet, therefore “a little adventure” would be a good idea to see our neighborhood.

After snack, we went on our adventure with the help of our line leaders this week R1 and R2. They told their teachers which way to turn and when to stop. This is all part of being responsible and making a conscious decision to keep friends and teachers safe. On our walk, we looked at all the different restaurants in the area, the cool “PINK” store, yummy ice-cream store and the barbershops. As the weather was quite warm today, Kiki decided to cut the adventure short, which the children were a little disappointed about. She promised they will go on a longer adventure once the weather was cooler.

We are very excited to see the children talking about their classroom leadership roles very seriously. Children are folding, cleaning, wiping and helping each other more and more every day! This is all part of their growth and independence in Petal’s class.

Once we came back from the park, Kiki started centered learning with the children. Today the children learned about differences. Kiki started off by asking the children about their moms and dads.

Kiki: What are your mommy’s and daddy’s names?

Some children said, "My mommy's name is mommy and some daddy's name is dada." While others were able to name their mom and dad.

Kiki then brought out a special book called, “The Family Book” by Todd Parr. The book celebrates all kinds of families and shows how each is special in its own way. I highly recommend this books, if you would like children to learn about diversity and multiculturism in the 21st century.

We live in an increasingly diverse world, which is a truly wonderful thing. Our children will encounter people of different races, cultures, and abilities. They’ll make friends with children from different familial structures.

Teaching our children about diversity and inclusion is so important — we all want to raise tolerant, accepting, and empathetic kids. So, here’s how to harness the power of our children's young, open mind.

Children were so fascinated to see all the different types of family displayed through animals and various illustrations. This brought out the conversation of understanding that we all are different, with different families, which is A-Okay! Children looked at each other and acknowledged each others uniqueness, and to always show love and kindness, “I respect you, you respect me!”, our number 1 classroom rule. Children had so much to discuss with us about their own families and wanted to hear about their teachers too.

After the special book, Kiki then played a game inspired by “Brown bear, Brown bear” by Eric Carle. Instead of calling out animals, she called out the children's name and asked them what or who they could see. This continued on to lunch time until we all could see our wonderful lunch leaders, S1 and S2 looking at us.

We had a wonderful day today filled acceptance and love for each other!

We hope you have a lovely afternoon and see you tomorrow.

Lots of love,

Petals Class FAMILY 2018-2019