Culture of Kindness Part 2

Earlier this year I wrote a post about teaching kindness to our kids by studying world geography in homeschool: Homeschool: Culture of Kindness.

I had to write a part 2 because last time we’d only gotten through 3 continents, North America, South America, and Europe. Today I’ll give an overview of what we learned and celebrated about Asia, Africa, and Australia/Oceania. I’ll also talk more about what we can do as parents to teach our kids kindness and tolerance for others.

Learning about Asia

When teaching kindness we have to accept and pass on that other’s differences, as long as they aren’t harming anyone, should be accepted and sometimes celebrated.

Asia, as our world’s biggest continent, has some big things going for it. It has the world’s largest country, the world’s tallest mountains, and the country with the most people. From the part of Asia we call the Middle East came the world’s three most widely practiced religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. There’s just more variety in Asia than I can get to in a few paragraphs, so I’m not even going to start.

When it came time to celebrate Asia, we looked to Japan. They have a celebration of cherry blossoms every year, where they have picnics and read poetry among other things. I loved the idea of celebrating nature, which is something I’ve always found joy in. We made cherry blossom art work, and each wrote a haiku, which is a simple kind of Japanese poetry. I was proud of our creations.

South to Africa

Our kids and I learned that Africa has hundreds of different tribes and languages. Part of the reason for that is Africa’s climate. There is a huge hot dessert, lots of jungle, and big grasslands there. It’s right over the equator, which makes for very little temperature change. Instead of cold to hot seasons, they have wet or dry seasons. The soil there is not very fertile, which makes it hard to plant crops for more than small groups. These things all made it easier to live in small groups.

The village is an important part of African heritage. Within a village everyone has work to do, even the children. In Africa’s more recent history other governments took over and grouped those villages into countries. Much of the land has been given back to the natives, but that outside influence made lasting changes.

For our African celebration we dressed in colorful fabrics, made some drums, and sang together a song we’d been learning that came from Kenya. My kids really enjoyed that. It was a song about the ripening of maize, which is an important food crop in Kenya. Opening their minds to different ways of living helps in teaching kindness and tolerance.

Oceania, Antarctica, Australia

Did you know that the south Pacific has over 25,000 islands?! That’s amazing! But they’re small enough that all of them combined are smaller than the area of Alaska. The people in these tropical islands use boats to visit their neighboring communities. We had fun talking about Disney’s “Moana” to help us make mental connections to the islands of Oceania.

Instead of being run by one government, Antarctica is run by a treaty of several governments. The “Antarctica Treaty” is an agreement that the land and life there will be preserved and that any scientific findings will be shared freely. I found it really refreshing to find some evidence that the people on Earth can share!

Australia was fun to learn about, with it’s many unique animals and fun lingo. We had our own version of “Australia Day,” where we tried to talk like an Aussie, colored Australian flags, had a lamington eating contest, and a few other little games. Of course my kids brought up “Bluey” to make a connection there. Having fun with foreign ideas is a great way of teaching kindness.

Teaching kindness by example

Last week I took our 15.5 year old daughter to the MVD to get her drivers permit. Yikes! Teaching driving is one of the scarier parts of parenting for sure!

Looking around at the people at the MVD, it was easy to see that there was quite a variety in race and ethnicity just in that room. When it was our turn to be helped, the man who helped us looked different, and spoke differently than us. I really enjoyed listening to his accent, so I told him, “I like your accent.” I hadn’t thought about our daughter overhearing, but she agreed quickly. What came next was a happy conversation that left all three of us smiling.

As we left I thought about the power of example, and that by sharing a few kind words I was teaching my daughter to do the same. Whether we’re being tolerant of differences, offering a compliment to someone, or keeping quiet instead of fighting, our kids are watching. When they see kindness, they learn to be kind.

Thanks for reading my post. I hope you’re enjoying your adventure.

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