Integrate discussion of cultures into your daily life through food.
Very small children are egocentric. This is not a bad thing, it’s just a fact. Up until early elementary years, children have a very hard time understanding anything that is not directly related to themselves and their own experiences. This means that developing cultural awareness has to happen, it cannot just be absorbed.
One of the easiest way to integrate discussion of cultures into your daily life is through food. You don’t have to be an expert about any particular country, but just think about it. Do your children know where spaghetti, or tacos, or sushi come from? That is a good first step for the preschool set. For elementary kids, you can get into much more detail. Why are tortillas made out of corn? Why is there no cheese in most asian cuisine? Using the child’s concrete experience with eating different kinds of foods can help extend their understanding of different places.
Here’s an example. Say you have a four year old and a nine year old, and you’ve made tacos for dinner. Talk about the word taco. Teach your children that some of the words we use all the time are not originally English words, and that taco is a word that we borrowed from Spanish. Ask your older child if he or she knows where Mexico is, or what language is spoken in most of South America. They might not know the answers, and that’s okay. Ask them to think about it, and provide some of the answers. You can also talk about how corn is grown, and that corn is the main part of the meal for many South American families. Contrast it with Asian food, which is usually based around rice instead of corn. Ask them what they like best! Once again, this is not something that needs to be planned as an activity. Just chat it up over the dinner table, or while you are cooking.
- Abby Claire Hardy
