Pre-K students in the Riverdale Y Early Childhood Center have spent the last two weeks celebrating the diversity that makes our school so special. Children as young as three already know that no two people are the same and that the world includes people who speak different languages and look different from each other. At our own school, children speak Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, Mandarin, Albanian, Italian, Vietnamese, Greek and Gujarati.
Leading up to the MLK Day of Service, we talk about how we are both the same and different, some of us have blue eyes, curly hair, a mouth with a lost tooth, or black or brown skin.
We also talk about exclusion and how it feels when you say, “You can’t play because your hair isn’t like mine,” or, “I’ll play with you when you’re older,” which I recently heard in a classroom.
We celebrated the uniqueness of each child by asking, “What’s the best part of you? What do you like best?” These photos represent the radiant, exuberant spirit of each child, as they selected and displayed their favorite attribute. We wonder, who had more fun with these photos, the kids, the photographer, or you, the viewer
