Even our skin is unique
Today has been a hectic day. I am not sure why other than we have had a lot of visitors. We had an observer in the classroom and Kat’s Grandma, Raenelle came in to do pendulum painting with the kids and that was a hit !
Also, I do ongoing developmental assessments of the kids through a program called ” Worksampling” It is basically what it says ” taking a sample of their work ” so I can determine what I might need to add to lesson plans for certain kids to excell in focused areas . I take pictures. I dictate notes into a program in my phone. I save videos and I also save art work. Three times a year I enter ratings for each child in seven domains and run summary reports. The state also uses this information to qualify the funding that we receive . It looks like I chased a squirrel on that one. but I said all this to say we had a worksampling technical assistance visit today. Donia and I actually left the house for a bit to do a working lunch at Cafe on Broadway ( I know.. you felt sorry for me up until then, right.. ) and then came home to finish up.
Before I got bogged down in Worksampling one of the small group activities we had was looking at our skin color and comparing . After talking about why all of our skin is different ( on the outside ) we used flesh colored paint to mix and match our own skin colors. We started with white and added darker colors. Sometimes we got it TOO dark and had to add more light paint. The kids found that interesting as they rubbed the paint onto their arms.
We read a book called ” My Somebody Special.” The story took place in a ” house school ” much like ours. There were dogs, cats, beavers, raccoons and other animals. After pointing out all the different animals I asked them how was that like our class ? Eventually we got to the point that they realized that we are all different too . We are as different as the cats and dogs.. but we are all kids. Kids that love to play !
Just a thought to leave with you – a little grown up small group point. Children are not born racist. Preschoolers are not naturally racist. Racism is taught. Be the generation that stops racism . We can learn so much from kids about how we all should treat each other. These kids dont look at each other and see dark or light skin.. they see friends.
Ok. Im done. 🙂