As a new school there are all sorts of things you want to make sure you’re setting groundwork for in the first few weeks, and for me at the top of the list was establishing a good foundation for our anti-bias work. I have written before about some of the age- appropriate things we do with preschool children in anti-bias education. Now that we’re up and running I wanted to share what that’s looked like in practice.
Books form a great foundation for talking about similarities and differences, and for sharing about ourselves and setting personal boundaries. Here are a couple of the books we’ve been reading that have helped us in our discussions:
These two books have allowed us to talk about how we share so many similarities, and how it’s alright to be curious about the things that are different, but how important it is to respect each other’s boundaries. I have loved hearing our kids adopt the language of consent, asking for hugs, or to touch hair or faces. This is powerful stuff, the foundation of a strong community.
This week we got to take our exploration of self and other one step farther, and build our faces. Ms. Erin Thompson spent time with each child looking in the mirror and looking at our eye color, skin color, hair color and texture, and more. One of my favorite observations from the kids was that all of our skin colors are different, but our nail beds are all similar colors.
The kids started by building their own faces, but in the coming weeks we are putting this work on the shelf so that they can ask any of their friends or teachers if they can build their faces as well, I look forward to listening as they think and talk about their creations (and this time we’ll remember the eyebrows! 😉 )
If you have a favorite book about similarities and differences, share below in the comments section or on our FB page.
Until next time,
-Breana at Growing Curiosity Community School