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Clothes – one of the ways how to learn about the differences between cultures
One of the ways in which to teach children about different cultures is teach them about the traditional dresses of different nations. More frequently than not those are special, celebratory clothes, that tell a special story about the history and characteristics of the culture.
One of the ways how to go about this is to tell children on which occasions these clothes are worn and what elements they contain. It is very good if children can see these clothes in person, but there are other creative solutions how to go about it. Here are some ideas:
- If one of the children in the class ints in a choir or dances in a traditional dance group, he or she can bring their traditional clothes to the kindergarten. It is important that the children get to touch all of the fabrics and if someone knows, they can tell everyone how to, for example, tie the traditional shoes, count the pearls in the crown or name all of the colors in the skirt.
- Another way is to make paper silhouettes and let kids color them with the appropriate colors. Printed pictures can be used as the examples.
- Just as well, a game can be made out of it – having a paper doll with different paper dresses, which children can switch depending on where the doll is going and which culture it has to visit.
- To get to know the clothes another activity that can be done is finding pictures in books and journals that can be researched with children, while finding different elements and interesting bits on them.
- Videos from big celebrations can be used as well.