Celebrating who we are

A big part of our social studies curriculum in kindergarten is learning about who we are as individuals and members of a community. All year long we will do different activities that help us explore how each person is unique. Here are some glimpses into what we have done in the past few weeks!

We started off by looking at pictures of children from around the world, and sharing our observations. What does their hair look like? What does their skin look like? Can you see where they live? Do they look the same or different from you?

Then we started a discussion about our skin color. Several of our books taught us that while skin is often called "black" or "white," we are all actually various shades of brown.

We compared our skin color to each other's skin, and then I passed out paint chips in various shades of brown. The students chose a color that most closely matched their skin shade. Some colors included almond, chocolate, and tan.

Then they made drawings of themselves using their skin color crayon, and shared their color with the rest of the class:

Here we wrote out sentence strips that say "___ is the color of ___." The kids match up their names with the different paint chips.

Lastly, we made self-portraits using skin- and hair-color paints! Check out these masterpieces. We'll hang them in our classroom on the Community Wall, if you'd like to come see them on display.

We also had an exploration area out in the classroom for making self-portraits, including hair-colored yarn that the kids like to try during their free play!