Multicultural Books

The books below depict cultural differences. The English Language learners will feel appreciated by understanding that it is okay to be different.


What a Wonderful World, by Ashley Bryan

This book illustrates the beauty of the world and its natural features such as trees,
beach, land, mountains etc.

Abuela, by Arthur Dorros.

The story depict Abuela and her grandmother flying through out New York City. The words both reads in English and Spanish throughout it’s content. This book will help the ELL child to

I Am An American, by Charles R. Smith Jr.

The books shows different children who were born in America, but their cultural roots is from another culture, such as Chinese, African, Jamaican, Hispanic, Haitians, Asians etc. The book illustrates that even though we are of different cultural background we are all Americans.

All Kinds of Children, by Norman Simon.
The content of the book help children to understand that they all have the same basic needs even though they have cultural differences. It shows that all children within our community and around the world sleep, play, go to school and have families even though they are different.

The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle. Copyright secured 1977.

This books illustrates the Grouchy Ladybug who did not say please or thank you. He would not share, it thought it was bigger and more important than anyone else and he was always ready to pick a fight. This book will teach children how be nice to each other and the fact that we all needs friends.


Hands are Not for Hitting, by Martine Agrassi.

The first page of the books illustrates the hands of children from different culture. The words above the hands reads, Como estas, hello, etc. The pages that follow shows the different ways we can use our hands positively versus negatively. For instance, we don’t use our hands to grab toys or hit our friends. We use them to fix puzzle, write, and eat our food.


My Nose Your Nose by Melanie Walse.
On each page the book compares the difference between two children, for example. “ Agnes has blue eyes and Kits eyes are brown eyes but they both close their eyes when they go to sleep at night”.

The Family Book, by Todd Parr.

The book illustrate the different types of families and show even though each family may have different skin color and may speak a different language, they all have similar needs such as food, and a place to live. It also shows that it is ok to have a single parent family versus a family with both parents.


It’s Okay to be Different,by Todd Parr .

The illustration and content of this book shows children who are different in many ways such as, a child in a wheel chair, some children have big nose and some have small nose and some children are tall, while others are short.

Teachers Role and Obesity

Obesity is affecting the children and youth of today.  As teachers our role is to help the  children and parents within our care understand that there are ways to prevent obesity.

According to an article entitled, The Role of schools in Preventing Childhood Obesity, by Howell Wesherler, Mary L. McKenna, Sarah M. Lee and William H.Diaz  “ The physical activity and eating behaviors that affect weight are influenced by many sectors of society, including family, community, organizations, health care providers, faith-based institution, business, government agencies, the media and schools. The involvement of all these sectors will be needed to reverse the epidemic”. (Pge 1)

As educators we need to ensure that healthy eating habits are apart of our daily curriculum, which will help to reduce obesity. We should include the food pyramid guide when teaching lesson about nutrition. We need to educate parents to send in healthy snacks and food to ensure that children are eating junk food, such as apples, carrots etc. Monitor how much food children are serving themselves, if your school does family style during breakfast and lunch time. Teachers along with administrators must ensure that the vending machines that are placed in their program has promote healthy snack. Teachers along with administrators must ensure that the vending machines that are placed in their program have healthy snacks. We should conduct annual assessments of children weight, height and body mass index and make this information available to the parents. We need to be sensitive of children who are obese in our classroom and to treat them with much respect as the other children. We need to and also to look out for bullies who will tease obese children and talk to them about differences.As teachers we have such great influence on the children we serve and we must ensure that we give the children and their parents the opportunity to learn and practice healthy eating habits and exercise.

 Finally, according to the above mentioned article, “obesity is one of the greatest public health, social, and economic challenges of the 21^st century. Without a strong contribution from schools we are not likely to reverse the epidemic”. ( Pge10)  We must play our part as teachers to help reduce obesity in our young children.

Block Play

Block play is a very important aspect of each child’s play during the early years. As children are engaged in building different structures, I can see future scientist, construction workers and architects. I have been teaching for seven years and I have seen some simple to elaborate structures that children created with meanings. Some teachers in Day Care and Head Start programs refuse to open the block area within their classrooms. The reason they give is that, they fear that children might hurt each other with the blocks instead of building something constructive. I often tell those teachers to explain to the children that blocks are for building structures and not for hurting each other. When children are engaged in block play it is very important that teachers give them encouragement, guidance and proper supervision.

Block play incorporates all the different subject areas such as Math, Art, Social Studies, Science, Language Arts and Physical Development. Harriet Johnson(1997) state “blocks have been found to be the most useful tools for self education that children can play with and work” (p.98). Children really enjoy talking about their structure and what it represents. I am very impressed when I teach anew concept and see the children create a structure which is a follow up of what they had learned. For example, we talked about the fire station and the work of fire fighters. The children went to the fire station and they came back and were constructing a fire station and to add to it use the fire men props we had to go with their structure.

It is very important that teachers allow students to work in the block area. The benefits that the children gain are social skills, problem solving techniques and creativity.