I guess for me it's VERY important to teach about diversity and tolerance and that starts when children are very young. My parent's and I grew up Catholic however now I consider myself Christan. Even though my parents were hard-core Catholics they encouraged me to learn about other cultures and religions. They spoke to friends and neighbors of different religions and had me visit with them on their days of worship and go with them to services. I learned a lot about other people. I continued to do this as I got older and in high school I even studied with Christians, Jehovahs witnesses and Jewish people. It really opened my eyes to how similar our religions really were and I learned the reasons for their beliefs.

This I think made it easier for me to be more tolerant and open to respecting other people's beliefs. I run my daycare based on this idea also. As soon as potential clients walk in the door I let them know that we learn about and celebrate ALL types of holidays and celebrations. I guess it depends on the families that I have enrolled and what their customs are. I enjoy hearing about their cultures and customs and then finding a fun way to incorporate that into daycare. Somtimes we make food, check what horoscope sign we are, play a game they teach me, sing songs, make a craft about our animal sign (chinese). None of the families that sign up have ever had a problem with it maybe because when we do a project like this we don't go deep into religion or label.

For example I had a little girl and they were Jewish so I would say something like "Suzie's mommy shared some fun facts with me. Suzie's family believes that a long time ago there were people that wouldn't let families like Suzie's believe in what they wanted so those people tried very hard to get their temple back. When they finally did they wanted to celebrate by lighting a flame with oil that would last forever but they only had enough oil to keep the flame burning for one day. But do you know what happened? The oil kept the flame burning for 8 whole days until they could get more oil! Isn't that amazing? Suzie's family now lights a menorah with 8 candles on it. They light one candle each day to represent all of the days that the flame stayed lit with that little bit of oil." We do the same for Santa, Jesus, the Easter bunny etc. As odd as it seems even my Jehovah's witness family was fine with us having a Christmas tree, however I respected their request to not give their children Christmas gifts and gave the rest of the DC kids their gifts after this family went home for the day.

Of course I consider myself very lucky to be able to do this and because it's so easy and fluid when we do. Like I said however, my familes know ahead of time that it's important for me to do this and to be able to have all of the children celebrate their beliefs, customs and cultures here in small ways.

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