Compile child-friendly ethnic recipes contributed by families and create a classroom cookbook. Create a unit on bread-baking. "Challah," and "naan" are savory breads. "Churros" and "baklava" are dessert breads. "Read "Bread Bread Bread," by Ann Morris as a complementary activity.
Use leftover flour from bread-baking for an art activity. Help children roll out the dough. Press their hands into the dough for prints. Give the children a small plastic knife to cut around their hand-prints. Lift out the prints to dry or lightly bake. The children will paint the hand-prints. Finished hand-prints are displayed with the quote, "Many Hands Make Light Work."
Use movement and music to celebrate cultural dances while introducing different languages.
"Uno-Dos-Tres" is a Spanish count-to-10 game that is sung or chanted while children hold hands in a circle. Each time numbers are chanted, a corresponding number of children go in the middle. The game continues until 10 children are dancing in the middle.
"Uno dos tres
Uno dos tres
We're three children dancing, and in Spanish that's tres.
Uno dos tres
Quatro, cinco, seis
We're six children dancing and in Spanish, that's seis.
Uno dos tres
Quatro, cinco, seis
Siete, ocho, nueve
and one more makes
Diez"
Make easy maracas out of small juice boxes. Cut off the tops. Instruct children to fill their empty boxes with bird seed. Tape the top closed and give children tempera to paint their maraca boxes. Use different ingredients to vary the sound. Rice, beans, pebbles and gravel each create different pitches.
Begin a unit on friendship with a field trip to a diverse neighborhood such as Chinatown or Little Italy. Take the children on a "Guess It" multicultural walk. Ask the children to observe the businesses and restaurants. At school ask the children to write a "Guess It" poem describing the place they liked the best, without mentioning names. Ask students to guess each student's favorite place. Write thank you notes to the proprietors.
Craft a giant paper globe that children can color. Cut out the word "Hello," to play "Pin the Hello on the Globe." Wherever the "Hello" is pinned, the class can study that country and learn how to say "hello" in that language. Contact a school from that country for students to write pen-pal letters.
School cultural festivals combining music, cooking and crafts affirm the diversity and identity of students and their families. Avoid the "tourism" syndrome described by the author of "Anti-Bias Curriculum," Louise Denman-Sparks. "The tourism approach" involves a superficial view of the culture. This method brands other cultures as "exotic," instead of focusing on inclusion. Integrate multicultural activities in an ongoing curricula instead with a specialized focus.