CMs: how to note 'start points' & 'cultures & beliefs' theme for U2's?

[lollipopmother]

Two questions in one today!

I have failed to note down any 'starting points' of my mindees although all of them started in the last 6 months so it won't be difficult to remember or go through their diaries. How do you note down your mindees starting points? Mine are all under 2 so the learning goals are a bit far away .... any ideas?

Also, I have very little in the way of resources for view,cultures and beliefs, I have some puzzles and dolls showing different ethnicities and a couple of books with nice pictures but I have nothing else. What do you use to cover this topic and what sort of activities for under 2s would you do? On ths plus side, I do take them to our local children's centre which is very culturally diverse so they're not leading completely sheltered lives!

Any help greatly received, thank you!

Booooo, no one have any ideas?? Please?!

okay

cultures and beliefs shouldn't be shut away in a topic all by themself but should permeate throughout your setting; so put up a welcome poster in many languages, make sure that the children have access to the dolls and puzzles, print off photos of children around the world and pop in an album for the children to look at, get CDs of music around the world

I often take a festival/celebration and extend it by food/song/dance/textiles

Starting points - I have an All About Me form that I get the parents to fill in right at the start of a placement, then I spend perhaps a month observing the child, using lots of post-its to see where they they are in relation to the age bands in the guidance

When I went to a training course at the local council, they said we should not be doing cultural 'stuff' just for the sake of it, but should reflect the cultures of the children in our care and introduce them to others. Like BALD said, it should come through in daily activities. We have made our own welcome at the front door, reflecting the flags and languages of the children in our care, because the ones you can buy do not have languages on them to match our mindees, so it is pointless to put them up.

Like HSMM and BALD i have found that diversity/culture and religion runs through things that you do - everyday life, policies etc. i bet you have more resources than you know about.

you can download lots of stuff from the internet, borrow books from the library etc.

Thanks for your replies - so far I have just let the children play with whatever they want to play with and as you say, sometimes they choose the ethnic dolls, sometimes the languages/countries puzzle etc so maybe it's not as bad as I think. I have some lovely books too so they do have options.

I am very concerned about the starting points that I should've recorded but I do remember how they were when they first came so I could do some sort of tick list of the age-bands, I know tick charts aren't the best but I expect better than nothing???

Oh, and thanks for he 'welcome' poster idea, I already have a world map with little stickers on the countries that my mindees come from, I think I might extend this a bit by making each mindee their own poster because I've been trying to get pics of their family members for the last 5 months but parents never seem to want to participate - I thought it'd be nice to have an 'about me' poster for each child with pics of mum/dad/gran/grandad etc but it's been a bit of a flop tbh.