All the colors 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 reading the book I Love My Hair and exploring our hair color, length and texture. We did a writing activity sharing why we love our hair.

Next we started a discussion about our skin color using the books Shades of People and All the Colors We Are. The books taught us that while skin is often called "black" or "white," we are actually all various shades of brown. We read and talked about how our skin pigment comes from the amount of melanin we were born with, as well as who are biological parents and ancestors are.

We looked at paint chip samples in all shades of brown, and picked out ones that were closest to our skin shade. Then we made self portraits using our skin color's name (such as tan, cocoa, etc).

Several of our explore tables helped the kids further investigate these concepts, including playing a game called "I Never Forget a Face" and using art materials to create models of ourselves and our family members.

Our culminating project was writing poems about ourselves and using skin color paper to represent our hands. We shared these with the whole school at this month's all-school assembly, and then put them on display at Black History Night at the Salvation Army! They're now hanging outside our classroom if you'd like to come get a closer look. I love how they turned out!