My Family Matters! All About Me – part 4
Who is part of your family?
We need to teach kids that their family is unique and special, no matter what they look like. Our society includes such a wide range of family compositions. Kids may have a mum, a dad, two mums or dads, step-parents, grandparents in the role of parents, foster parents… There’s lots of different family structures, and kids who have a family that is ‘different’ to those of their friends may not know how they fit in. We can help them understand that it doesn’t matter who is part of your family, as long as you have someone who loves and cares for you.
It’s essential to build good relationships with families – they matter, obviously! Families are your kids’ first teachers and their first experience of the world. They are where your kids come from, the social structure that hopefully supports and nurtures them. It’s not always true, but in the majority of cases, their family is a child’s first safe place. We want to build on that and reinforce the bond as much as we can.
Thinking about what makes up a family
A nice way to explore family structures is through making representations of family members. You can encourage kids to draw their family members or you can stick photos or pictures of different family members on blocks in your block corner. You can also make puppets with a range of people so kids can construct or represent their own family members.
You can ask the kids what they call each of the people who are in their family. Watching kids engage in these types of activities also gives you a window into their feelings. It’s a good opportunity for teaching vocab about families, feelings and the home environment. If you have kids who speak English as their second language, you can ask what they call their family members. You can learn greetings in a child’s home language to show you respect and appreciate their cultural background.
Greeting families in their home language
All of your kids will learn by watching and listening how you interact with them and their families. It would be nice to make a poster of a variety of greetings in different languages together and learn how to greet each other with them. I had the warm fuzzies one day when I overheard a boy say to his friend, ‘yiradhu marang’ which is a Wiradjuri greeting we’d learned.
There’s a link below for some posters of greetings in a range of languages. Some of them have room to add photos of kids who speak those languages. It’s a nice way to make kids who speak a second language feel seen and respected. This set is available in my store and if your language isn’t included, email me and I’ll add yours to the product for you.
If you would like these family puppets, add your name below and I’ll send the activity to you. You can check out the All About Me! unit by clicking on the picture below (there’s a free preview you can download to check out the included activities). If you would like to listen to the podcast version of this email series, you can find the player at the bottom of the page.
Thanks for reading this email series – stay tuned for the next theme!
