As part of the Cultural Competence Cluster, Kate needs to be able to identify and support the cultural identities of the children at work, their families and their local community.
This includes:
supporting activities to encourage and promote participation by all cultural groups;
providing opportunities for children and families to share information about their culture; and
helping all children understand and experience cultural diversity through inclusive learning environments and learning experiences.
Kate herself chose to investigate Indian culture because she loves all things India, especially Bollywood Music and her parents have travelled to India. There are also a lot of Indian children at HEY and Kate has been exposed to elements of their culture before, including 2019's Diwali celebrations when parents came to share aspects of their culture with the Penguin class Kate was volunteering in at the time.
Project India also illustrated how projects in early childhood can lead to very rich learning that challenges children and leads to higher order thinking, problem solving, research and deep understanding of concepts. Through Project India Kate got a much deeper understanding of Indian Culture than she had previously. Kate learnt to ask questions and be curious and she embraced Indian culture wholeheartedly.
Project India contained some of the following explorations and experiences for Kate, that she wanted to learn abut specifically:
Facts about India
Different Places in India
Indian Culture in General
The Love Story of the Taj Mahal
Hindu Weddings
Planning a Trip to India
Festivals - Hols and Diwali
Bollywood (Movies and Music)
Indian Food
Myths and Legends (stories of Lord Ganesha for example)
Mandalas and Henna Tattoos
Indian Clothing (Saris)
We went into a lot of depth for some of these topics and others such as Myths and Legends fell by the wayside as Kate "was not a fan". The more real and in line with her interest the experience was, the more Kate loved it. The more abstract the topic was the more easily Kate became distracted.
Some of the learnings from Project India in terms of gaps in Kate's knowledge that could be followed up on in the future are:
knowledge of shapes and ability to draw them as well as recognise what they are;
exploration of the "meanings" behind rituals and symbolism in general eg: see our exploration of Holi colours for an example of how to do this.
This will help Kate in her work with children and learning how to see/understand where the learning is behind all the fun activities.
Not being interested in a topic or abandoning a project half way through is not a bad thing though! It teaches Kate and children to explore for exploration sakes, rather than to achieve anything in particular. It also helps them to love and "feel" the learning experience just for the sake of learning and feeling. So Project India in that respect was a resounding success. The measure of this is that Kate is still talking about India and still gets henna tattoos from Emily regularly.
India is an interest that can be followed through with for a long time to come and used as a base not only for developing Kate's cultural competence but her confidence and ability to dream big.
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