We are all more aware now than we were ten years ago of the vital importance of outdoor play, but this is not always reflected in every area of our work. Look at any book or video offering ideas on activities around cultural diversity and the chances are that all of the pictures of settings will show children inside the nursery or pre-school. Planning work on cultural diversity should include thought given to activities you can conduct outdoors.
In the communities in which they have their origin, many of the festivals are celebrated predominantly outside. Processions are a key example. If you are celebrating a particular festival, think about the activities connected with it that could happen outdoors.
Traditional stories, or those taken from picture books that have a particular relevance to cultural diversity, should form part of any planning for work on cultural diversity. However, story time is most often conducted in a quiet corner inside the setting. This supposedly encourages the children's concentration on what is happening. Yet traditional storytellers in many cultures (including more rural parts of Europe) often conduct their sessions outside. Perhaps it requires a bit more in the way of performance than some people will feel they can manage, but now that it's summer and the outside should be more inviting, outdoor story sessions are a real possibility.
Children's games show amazing similarities around the world and this can be the basis of interesting work with children, especially for those in out-of- school settings where young children will have begun to play games with rules. Issue 11 of the online magazine Topics (for those learning English as a second language) has some very useful information on games as background for this kind of activity.
