The children have been asking an endless list of questions about their world, such as the many different cultures and lifestyles that other children experience on a daily basis. We have been visiting a wonderful book called, “Wake Up, World! A Day in the Life of Children Around the World” by Beatrice Hollyer.
Exploring Different Cultures and Lifestyles
This book allows our students the ability to explore eight different children who live throughout the world and what their lifestyles are like compared to their own experiences. The discussions about the different mealtimes, school schedules, and daily routine chores have been just wonderful. As part of these discoveries, there has been a total explosion of map-making and discovering different stories that go along with each continent in our world. Our students get a chance to visit Paige who lives in the United Kingdom, Natali from the United States of America, Cidinha from Brazil, Anusibuno from Ghana, Shakeel from India, Alexis from Australia, Linh from Vietnam, and Sasha from Russia.
One of the interesting stories the child discovered is that many of the children throughout the world do not have a morning routine like theirs. Some children sleep in a hammock or on the floor that is covered with a mosquito net. Other children share their bed with all of their siblings or other family members or even sleep outside if the temperature is too hot inside their houses.
Some children do not have indoor plumbing and must do all of their washing or cleaning including hygiene outside using small bowls of water to even brush their teeth. Some of the children must do early morning chores before breakfast such as feeding livestock or caring for younger siblings if their parents have to go off to work early. Even the choices of food or breakfast routines can be very different throughout the world from our students. All of these conversations are extremely exciting and offer other opportunities for my students to explore those topics that interest them. Look at some of the map work the children are doing in class and encourage your child to talk about the world around them.
