Life in Stepping Stones

I was hesitant to say the least about the topic of yesterday’s theme day, as I wanted to make sure I approached the subjects correctly. I researched far and wide across the internet and mostly, I came up short. There are a lot of people who feel prejudice is too sensitive of a topic for kids, especially around the preschool/kindergarten/early elementary school age. But I thought about it. When you’re black, or Jewish (as I am), you don’t choose at five years old not to be discriminated against. You don’t choose if people threaten you or insult you because of how you look or because you choose to wear your Jewish star. You don’t choose if people look down on you because there’s something they decided they don’t like. You don’t choose whether your holidays are completely ignored by every public school and your slapped with days of makeup work assignments because you stayed home for a Jewish holiday. Prejudice, racism, antisemitism, ignorance, and hate doesn’t have an age. Maybe this is because I grew up watching Party of Five at four with my parents and learned about topics that were also deemed “inappropriate” for my age, but I feel very strongly that kids can handle a lot more than they are given credit for.

In my research for today’s assignments, I found mostly websites dissuading people from teaching these lessons. People saying it was too mature of a topic for small children. People saying discussing it will create racism in your child. I don’t believe that. I believe education on these powerful topics is key to changing our world. Amazingly, most of these comments came from people who don’t want racism and hate that it exists, yet they don’t understand how vital it is that children learn these lessons early on. We don’t want to create children who ignore the hate around them. We don’t want to create children who are colorblind or blind to how other people are treated for their faith. We don’t want to create children who are ignorant to other people’s problems. To promote real change, it begins with real understanding.

Storytime

My lesson began the night before. My son crawled into bed and we pulled out the new book we bought from the Ordinary People Change the World series. It was “I Am Anne Frank”. Honestly, I didn’t know it was possible for a writer to explain the Holocaust and antisemitism in a way that a five year old could understand. It was perfectly written. Informative enough that my son was asking questions, and tame enough that he wasn’t traumatized when going to sleep, but it still made him think. Three quarters of the way through the story, I started crying. Bailey could see the effect this story had on me. It was an effect I didn’t even know about until I read the book. I spent my childhood believing that this was so long again that it could never happen again. I knew it was horrific but I didn’t personally feel the pain of it. For the most part, as a child, I chose not to wear my Jewish star and felt hesitant to tell people I was Jewish. I didn’t know why I felt this why, but I largely ignored the feeling. Now, with our current political climate, I understand. These feelings of antisemitism and racism have always been there among some people, but now, it feels more real to me than ever. Hate has been brought into the light these past four years and the underlying feelings and fears I carried as a child, have been put into the spotlight for people of various religions, races, sexuality, and gender. People have been encouraged these past four years to be cruel and insult people for who they naturally are. People have been encouraged to blame people who are naturally different from them for their problems and fears. This attitude is exactly what led to the Holocaust.

My son asked me how Anne Frank died. He asked me if the Nazis died. He told me it was a sad story but I explained to him the beauty of Anne Frank’s hope throughout it. That even though she died, and even though she lived two years in hiding, she saw the beauty in everything around her and chose to feel love instead of hate.

The following morning, we read “I Am Rosa Parks”. After reading the story, we flipped back through the pages as I discussed the different experiences that Rosa went through. I asked Bailey how he would feel if when we went to our park and if the water fountain right by the playground had a sign that said “No blue eyes allowed”, and he’d then have to walk all the way to the other end of the park just for a drink. He said it would make him feel really sad. I explained that Rosa lived every day of her life like that. Throughout the story, I’d ask Bailey the same question. “How would you feel if you couldn’t get on the front of a crowded bus because you had blue eyes?” “How would you feel if people threw trash at you because you had blue eyes?” “Sad”, he said. “That was mean”, referring to what happened in the book, he said. When the book came to the end, he shouted “Hooray!” because Rosa was finally allowed to sit anywhere she wanted on the bus, drink from any fountain she wanted, and enter any elevator she wanted.

Bus Craft

For our first activity, I created a paper bus. My son cut out the windows and the wheels, and drew people of all races inside the windows. It took some explaining to him and I had to remind him why we were doing the project a certain way. He saw four windows and immediately wanted to draw each member of our family, but that wasn’t the point of the project. He became frustrated with me but finally (after a short tantrum), he stopped, and listened, and heard me when I explained we weren’t drawing his story, we were drawing Rosa’s.

Does Color Matter? Activity

The one website I found that actually dealt with teaching a young child about racism, Surviving a Teacher’s Salary, gave me this idea. On the website, the mother suggested using a brown shelled egg and a white shelled egg, opening them up, cooking them, and asking the child if they can tell the difference. I didn’t have eggs for this experiment, plus there’s an egg shortage starting to happen at the stores again! Instead, I took out two small glasses of milk. I poured milk into each glass and added brown food coloring to one. When my son drank them, I asked him if one tasted different. He said no. I asked him if one tasted better. He said no. He said they taste the same. I asked him if the color made a difference in how they tasted. He shook his head, and once again, he said no. This activity opened up the chance to talk about how Rosa was treated differently just because her skin was a different color. I explained that even if people look different, we are all people on the inside. No one is better or worse than someone because of how they look.

No Blue Eyes Allowed! Activity

To give my son a sense of the segregation that Rosa and Anne both experienced, I set up signs around the house saying “No blue eyes allowed” and “blue eyes allowed”. I knew this activity would be a fine line between a powerful lesson and my son thinking it was a game (which I did not want to have happen). When I first put the signs up, he was excited. He thought it was going to be a fun game. We started downstairs in the bathroom where I put a sign that said “No Blue Eyes Allowed”. He had to go upstairs to use the bathroom. I put a sign at one entrance to the kitchen that said he wasn’t allowed, and a sign at the other side that said he was. He chased me, like he normally does, through the kitchen and found it was very unfair that I could tag him from wherever, and cross the line, but he had to constantly stop, turn around, and go the other way just to try and get me (which he never could, and this is a kid that loves to win). When he had to use the bathroom, he sighed in annoyance and headed upstairs. This is where things started to shift and the lesson truly began. While he was in the bathroom, I put a sign by the office door where he plays that said he wasn’t allowed. I put a sign at his bedroom that said he wasn’t allowed. And I put a sign at the bottom of the stairs that said he was no longer allowed. He started to get frustrated. Where could he go? He couldn’t go anywhere. Meanwhile, I was dancing downstairs, talking about getting myself a snack in the kitchen, and going about my day because I have green eyes. Within about 10 minutes, he was on the stairs pouting saying how unfair it was and that he wanted a snack, and he wanted to play. As a parent, there’s a fine line between teaching your child a lesson and causing a complete nightmare for yourself the rest of the day. Knowing that, I ended the activity at what I felt was the perfect time. He was understanding the point and the frustration that Rosa and Anne felt. I told him that’s how they felt every day with everything they did. He said that was wrong and people should be allowed anywhere. He then came up with the next activity…and I am so proud of him and his beautiful heart for thinking of it.

Everybody Welcome Sign Art Craft

He turned to me after the “No Blue Eyes” segregation activity and said, “Mommy. We need to make a sign that says everybody is allowed and it needs to have lots of sequins!.” Beaming, I headed upstairs with him and we sat in the office. I wrote the words “Everybody Welcome” with a yellow highlighter and let him trace the letters with different markers. Afterwards, he smeared glue across it, tossed confetti over it, dropped sequins across the edges, and proudly showed it off to me. He said we needed to put the sign downstairs.

Settling in for a Movie

Originally, I planned to watch the Xavier Riddle and The Secret Museum episode about Rosa Parks. Sadly, it wasn’t available on the PBS app at this current time. We watched a short clip of it that was but I hope PBS Kids rereleases the full episode at some point. I also thought about watching The Sound of Music with him. We’ve watched it before but I wasn’t sure it would hold his attention the full way through. After doing a quick google search, I found three animated movies that were suggested to discuss the topic of racism. The movies included Hotel Transylvania 1, Finding Dory, and Zootopia. Having watched the first two before, I decided to go with Zootopia, and boy, am I glad I did. Honestly, before I read about it, I thought it was some movie about a zoo or something. I had no idea how in depth Disney got on the subject of racism and discrimination. I was truly blown away by this remarkable children’s movie and it is hands down their best.

For those who haven’t seen it, I don’t want to spoil it, so skip this paragraph and move onto the next! The movie is about a female bunny, Hopps, who dreams of being a cop. She ends up hired in her dream job through an affirmative action type program and then gets given the job of meter tickets because her boss doesn’t think she can do anything else. Along the way, she makes friends with a fox named Nick, even though her bunny family had always warned her against them because they were supposedly predators by nature. After a crime spree, Detective Hopps, goes on camera during a press conference and says it was all caused by predatory animals because thats how they’re born. She gleefully speaks to Nick afterwards, ignorant to what she has said. Hurt, he leaves and she realizes the gravity of what she said. Disappointed in her own actions, she quits her job. When she discovers the real cause, she returns to fix the upset she has caused and solve the case. In the end, she discovers that certain people in power were drugging these predatory animals to make them predatory again and to create a constant state of fear amongst the prey animals, all to remain in power.

If you haven’t seen the movie, please watch it with your child, and if you don’t have a child, please watch it. Zootopia was beautifully done from the animation to the storytelling and the fantastic messaging about racism and discrimination throughout.

Zootopia is available on Disney+ for free with subscription and on Amazon Prime for purchase and rental.

I was extremely pleased with how the day progressed. Even though it wasn’t always “fun”, my son learned a lot. He tends to absorb things further the second time around or as the days progress and the information settles in, so I’m very curious how he’ll react next time we read these books together. I think he’ll pull from the experiences we shared today and understand the material even more.

I have a lot more theme days planned ahead for my son’s preschool homeschooling! On a serious note, I’m planning to do a day about the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman. On the fun side, I’m also planning a 1950s day with plans to learn about Lucille Ball, create our own drive-in theater at home, make milkshakes, and more. My husband will be doing a day about New Zealand and I’m excited to research other countries to create days about those too. I plan to do some career days, and I know he’s going to be thrilled when we do the Spy themed day I’m planning. This upcoming week will mostly be focused on Chanukah including fun crafts, recipes, and books! It’s extremely important to me this year that our son learns about Chanukah. I feel a little like Ross from “Friends” and I’m hoping I don’t need a Holiday Armadillo costume, but every time I mention Chanukah, our son shouts Christmas. We’ve always celebrated Chanukah, but again, Christmas is what he sees most of, from the music playing in stores, to the beautiful displays, to the activities in school, and the celebrations on TV and in movies. Since he doesn’t go to a Jewish preschool (or preschool at all right now!), it is my job to make sure he learns about Chanukah. I’m excited to teach him this year and I’m also excited to share our Chanukah theme days with all of you! But if anyone knows where I could get a Holiday Armadillo costume, that’d be cool too.

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