Inside: Use this celebrate our differences bundle to teach kids to celebrate and appreciate each other for our differences with these fun and hands on activities.
Ever since I was a little girl in Girl Scouts, we celebrated World Thinking Day in February. It was a day to learn about and celebrate other countries and other cultures. We learned songs and dances and traditions. We made crafts and tried new foods we’ve never heard of and saw clothes that looked nothing like what we saw every day.
And it was magical. It opened us all to the world at large, showcasing new cultures, new languages, new traditions, and new ways of doing things.
Since I grew up in Los Angeles, my community was quite diverse but since it was the 80s and 90s, there was not a lot of celebrating of that diversity happening.
But we can’t just notice or tolerate the differences. We can’t only have awareness.
We have to appreciate, showcase, celebrate, and lift up our differences so our kids see that same is “boring” and different and diversity is not something to fear…it’s something to embrace.
So we can continue to have World Thinking Days, and Cultural Days, and Celebrate our Ancestor Days. But we can also intentionally focus on teaching this during social-emotional learning.
And for that, we use the resources in this Celebrating Differences Bundle.
Why Celebrating Differences for Kids is So Essential:
We have to teach kids to celebrate differences for several reasons.
Since we live in a diverse world, learning about our fellow citizens, classmates, teammates, and neighbors allows us to understand them better. It allows us to make sure those around us are seen, heard, understood, and valued.
We can recognize our differences and then celebrate them so everyone feels included and like they belong.
If we live in a community that is not diverse, then it’s also important to learn about differences so we know that our way of life and our community is not the only one and is not the best. It expands our worldview from being narrow to seeing the community with a wider lens when we know there are other people outside of our community who look differently, celebrate differently, and think differently, with different religions, different cultures, different languages, different abilities, different family structures, and different traditions.
Celebrating differences allows us to appreciate other foods, languages, traditions, clothes, and cultures.
Celebrating our differences also helps to bully-proof kids. Since bullies tend to go for the different child because differences can feel “weird” or scary, when we take away the stigma of differences and not only tolerate differences but accept, welcome, embrace and celebrate our differences, it takes the target off those kids.
But celebrating our differences doesn’t just happen automatically.
We have to explicitly and intentionally teach kids how to be aware of, appreciate and celebrate each others’ differences.
So, we can read books like these that celebrate differences (and also bridges the gap between the differences to show we’re all more similar than we may first realize):
We’re Different, We’re the Same
Daddy Christmas and Hanukkah Mama
But we can also explicitly teach kids how to appreciate our differences with this Celebrate our Differences Bundle.
What’s Included in the Celebrate Differences Bundle:
This Celebrate Our Differences Bundle comes with:
1.We are All Different Emergent Reader in color
2. We are All Different Emergent Reader in black and white
3. We are All Shades of Brown Emergent Reader in color
4. We are All Shades of Brown Emergent Reader in black and white
5. We Celebrate Differently Emergent Reader in color
6. We Celebrate Differently Emergent Reader in black and white
7. I am Kind to Kids Who are Different Emergent Reader in color
8. I am Kind to Kids Who are Different Emergent Reader in black and white
9. Celebrate Differences Discussion Starters
10. Celebrate Differences Writing prompts
11. The Rainbow Colors of Me
12. Find the Differences Game
How to Use the Celebrate our Differences Bundle:
Purchase the Celebrate our Differences Bundle and then print out the resources you want to use first.
You can start by talking about our differences and why it’s so essential to not just tolerate differences but to appreciate them with the Discussion Starters.
Choose which version of the Emergent Readers you want to use (color, black and white). If you use the black and white version, encourage kids to use these skin color crayons so they can color the book to match their skin color.
On the interactive pages, kids can circle, cross at, and draw in pictures to complete the book.
You can also use the We are Different Emergent Reader for beginning readers.
Or you can use the We are Different Early Reader for more advanced readers.
Your kids can color in the colors of their Rainbow Colors of Me… they’re gorgeously colorful when they’re all hung up together.
There are also expository writing prompts to help kids connect celebrating differences and the discussion with their writing skills.
There’s a fun game to play with a group called Find the Differences Game to see how many classmates are similar and different from you in different ways.
Teaching about our differences and celebrating our differences can be done so kids both appreciate our differences but also see just how similar we all are.
We can do it in a meaningful, fun, hands-on way with the resources in the Celebrate our Differences Bundle.
Ready to get it and focus on celebrating, appreciating, and showcasing our differences with kids?
Get the Celebrate our Differences Bundle in Teachers Pay Teachers now.
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