Preschool Social Studies Activities

It's Wednesday, so it's time for me to round up some activities that meet a specific standard, we started social studies last week, so we'll continue with that domain today.

Remember, the Standards that I use every day, and am most comfortable with are Ohio's Early Learning Development Standards - you can review them here, however I've found that even if your State's standards differ, many of these activities can still be aligned similarly. I've rounded up some great ideas today!

Domain: Social Studies
Strand: History
Topic: Heritage

Helping children learn about their heritage can be a ton of fun, but it can also be very confusing.  To make sure that talking about heritage is developmentally appropriate, I like to focus on the culture of the child's family unit.  This ensures that they understand what we are talking about, and that they can become the teacher and share their family's traditions with their classmates. This is the perfect time of year to explore family heritage because holidays are very much associated with cultural heritage.  One of my favorite ways to encourage families to help me with this is to simply ask them if they have any family traditions that they would like to share with the class. This is a clear invitation for them to come into the classroom and do an activity with the children, and I usually have at least one parent agree to come in.  

Here are some other ideas:

Multicultural Doll Clothes - These are from Kaplan, but you could easily make your own

Sharing stories from other countries gives children the opportunity to appreciate these countries in a language they know well - books and stories. Blessed Beyond a Doubt has an amazing list of stories and their country of origin. 

Explore art from other cultures.  Mommy Labs has a great post about creating Rangolis for the Indian Celebration of Diwali.

Introduce familiar words in a number of languages.  This color hunt idea is from No Time for Flashcards. 

Get your students up and moving to songs from around the world. Kid World Citizen has compiled a great set of You Tube music videos for your class to explore. 

These are just a few ways to help children begin to understand that there are other cultures in the world, and begin to celebrate their own families' personal cultures. 

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