Page 3 - LESSION 12.pmd

Planning Developmentally Appropriate ECCE Curriculum

children’s environment. Talk and discuss about those vegetables, which the
children eat and are familiar with, instead of talking about fruits like strawberries
and cherries that children may not have seen. That ensures that teaching and
Notes
learning become more meaningful and joyful. Lesson that are theme-related,
like, food, can have visits to local shops for children to make connections.
Celebration of local festivities, national days and regional food days will help
children to understand diversity in simple ways. Using multiple methods make
ECCE programmes and theme teaching more interesting and contextualized.

In India, diversity can be of two ways; one, where families live in different social,
physical and cultural contexts creating a unique milieu, and second when, in
one class, there are children from different contexts. Either way, some children
find themselves part of a largely majoritarian culture that is not totally their
social identity. One uniform curriculum will not work in different spaces. Rural
children will respond differently to means of transport or what they see in the
environment than urban children will answer. An urban child from a poor family
may have only received food from places of worship. Their understanding will
vary. A village child may say “ The temple is where I meet the priest” while one
urban disadvantaged child may reply “The temple is where I get something to
eat”. One of the major principles in planning is to attend and address children’s
social realities and not expect responses to curricular content to emerge only in
a specific direction. In fact, it is from the variety in children’s understanding that
we can sow seeds of appreciating differences.

12.2.1 Multicultural Indian Society

India being a multicultural and multilingual nation, we have to guide our thinking
in how we deal with children in group settings, especially when dealing with
children in the early childhood stage. Children from varied cultural backgrounds
enrolled in one preschool would gain by finding a social identity. The context of
children’s social and cultural contexts can find a place in the curriculum in many
ways. Food habits, celebration of festivals, clothes, customs and rituals impact
children’s approach to the school. For example, a child not knowing the language
of the classroom transaction may feel neglected or a child from a rice-eating
family may withdraw finding difficulty in eating chapattis or be a little reserved in
celebrating unfamiliar festivals. With immense diversity and absence of inclusive
practices, the child may find it difficult to adjust and learn and may even opt out
of school because of diverse backgrounds. For example, for the theme, Our
Environment, each child may name objects from her/his environment with amazing
results. Children living near the sea shore may include sea shells, pebbles and fish
while those living near a forest may include nest, beehive etc. Allowing children
to participate and listening to children permits free expression and involved
children.

38 EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION