How do you answer this answer this?

[mumo3g]

Most of our mindees are white british. For the holidays we have a boy that is of indian desent. His friends are starting with us tomorrow. One of our white british mindee's when we told him they were starting tomorrow said "what colour are they?" We changed the subject.

What is the best way to handle this without him coming out with racist comments unentionally and cause offence. He is nearly 3 but he is very good with his speech. You can hold good conversations with him.

Whoops .. you know what I mean.

Well, what colour is he? What colour is his hair, skin, eyes, clothes? I don't think glossing over the question is the best way to handle children noticing or being curious about differences or similarities - neither the question nor answer is racist.

Maybe now would be a good time to do a bit of a "all different and all the same" type project - what do we look like, what are our likes/dislikes, where do we (or our parents) come from, where do we live etc.

i had this when the first black child joined my class. I answered all questions honestly, and encoraged the children to find a similarity for every difference they could see. It worked well and helped all the children and seemed to rub off on the parents too.

Just answer. Why avoid it?

It's not racist to describe someone's skin colour! It's a simple fact, just be honest and tell children the ceebeebies motto, 'we are all different and we r all the same!.

these "All kinds of... " books are great

There is a whole range of them on amazon

I think its best to answer the question.

I have a mutlicutural setting. One little girl who is white british has been with me since she was 12 months old. One day out of the blue she asked me "why are you brown". It was interesting question. I was not offended by the question. It was an opportuntiy for me to explain the difference.

When she first came to my house as a baby she looked at me with a curious look. It could be that I was the first black person she has ever seen.

Children see the different colours but it what is said to them about the diffferent colours.

Its an opportunity to talk about the different skin colour.

rainnie You dealt with your situation very well. As a child I joined a school where my family was the only black family in the school, me in the class.

Anyway sorry it not about me but about answering the questions the best way possible.

How to answer you ask? sorry strayed a little..

I would get a book on this from the library or see what is on the internet to explain the answer.

Our DC's nursery is multicultural, they go with "pink" and "brown". I remember when I was little meeting my Nigerian uncle for the first time, I was really confused that he was called "black" as I could definitely tell that was not the real colour!