Our Global Community Series

I've decided if you muddle long enough, the mud settles guiding the confusion to settle for a bit and clarity to float to the surface.  After muddling this year with the Common Core and our new state curriculum for science and social studies, I decided I needed to purchase some books as I thought about content learning for next year.  This is day three for sharing some resources that are helping bring clarity to my muddling.

Today I want to share with you a collection of books I've found to use with social studies.  In Ohio, kinders have the topic of History and one subtopic is Heritage.  Exact bullets state - Heritage is reflected through the arts, customs, traditions, family celebrations and language.  I looked up the definition for each of the ways to reflect heritage and holidays is not part of each.  Holidays could fall under family celebrations but it's not the soul means to learn about heritage.  Also our focus is to be on heritage within our room, learning from our classroom community.  These titles will help our students think about a world bigger and different than their own.

Our Global Community is another series from Heinemann includes these titles; clothing, families, farming, games, homes, markets, music, and schools.  The photographed illustrations are rich and beautiful with visual images that are unknown to my classroom community.  What a great visual for seeing different cultures.  The books have a very similiar format.  The table of contents have these great titles Schools Around the World, Types of Clothing, Why People Play Music, Types of Games, What Families Do Together, Markets Around the World, and Types of Homes.  Each book ends with a picture glossary which will be very helpful in supporting our young readers.   The text is limited per page, short, and I believe accessible to young readers.  The homes book alone is quite fascinating.  For example, my students would rarely think of  "Houses made on stilts."  or people living in mud houses.  I can't to discuss heritage that stems from our classroom community and to have some new resources to help us think outside our community when our community looks the same.