Enrich knowledge about cultural practices and observances through a "Holidays Around the World" program at the beginning of the year. You can search and select country holidays on a websites such as Earth Calendar. Then create a world festivities calendar, matching the theme to the monthly celebration. For instance, if you were to select Cinco de Mayo, you could dress the month of May in bright colors and decorate it with Spanish vocabulary and pictures of other elements that represent the Mexican culture.
Divide the number of students by 12 and have each group host a monthly holiday party. Holidays that fall outside of the school year can be added on as double celebrations at the end of the year.
Randomly assign groups an equal number of holidays. For each holiday assigned, groups will distribute holiday-hosting duties among group members. Duties may include bringing in music, instructing the class on a dance, providing cultural food or teaching students about the celebration's historical background. Education World has innovative ideas for world celebrations.
Globally Fit
Recognizing global sports will promote physical fitness and multicultural education simultaneously. The following is a game from Ghana that you could incorporate in your multiculturalism physical education program.
Instructions:
1. Mark an area with the masking tape or chalk of approximately 5-to-10 feet square on the ground "The Home of the Snake."
2. Choose one student to stand inside as others line the outside and skip around the perimeter.
3. The student inside (the boa constrictor) attempts to tag students. If a student is tagged, he or she must go inside and connect to the boa constrictor.
4. The two students must join hands.
5. Using only their free hands, the students attempt to tag the other students.
6. Remaining players must stay close to the outside of the snake home, skipping and dancing, and as students get tagged, the boa grows.
7. The game is over when only one student is left on the outside.
Connecting children with classrooms of foreign cultures is a very valuable dimension for a multicultural learning program. Epals is a novel tool for teachers looking to weave multicultural learning into many subject areas. This online global community on the Web has participants from 200 countries and territories speaking 136 languages. This platform enables your classroom to view videos that others around the world have uploaded on subjects from science to storytelling. Epal is a great way to expose students to foreign languages and students from around the world.