Diversity Quilts for International Week

Last year, for our International Week, we sent home a square of colored construction paper to all of the students at our elementary school with the instructions to “share something about your family’s culture: something you celebrate together, something you enjoy to do together, something that represents you and your family.” We got a lot of positive feedback that lots of the kids worked with their parents to come up with what they thought represented their family (I know that we did!). We gave each class a different color, and then put all of the classes in a grade together to make a quilt:

What’s great about a collaborative project such as this, is that the entire school can participate (K through 5th), and the colorful, school-wide display unites the students and staff. As kids walked through the hallways, they were admiring other quilt squares, and marveling at the details that some of the kids put into their squares. I wish I would have taken more pictures- some of the squares were incredible!!! The kids were allowed to use colored pencils, markers, crayons, cut out pictures from magazines, use real photographs, words, images- whatever they wanted to use to represent their families. The older grades had the kids write out a paragraph on the backs explaining their choices. The younger grades had the kids get up in front of the class and talk about what images the chose and why.