Celebrating Diversity In Action Through Books ¡Celebrate DÍA!

While you are reading this you probably realized that I’ve been thinking about books a lot lately, and it’s true! We love literature and enjoy it year-round, but in April we always enjoy celebrating diversity in action through DÍA by supporting books from Latino and other authors of color to encourage the creation of more stories about and by American Latinos and other kids of color that our children can enjoy.

Celebrating diversity in action by joining DIA is a fun way to engage your kids in reading while attending (or creating!) an event that promotes the joy of reading and supports authors of colors. The annual celebration happens all over the United States on April 30th and is called Children’s Day/Book Day (Día de los Niños/Día de los Libros) and is known as DIA.

While DÍA’s date falls on a Sunday this year, and many programs probably already happened this week, that’s not a reason to stop the fiesta! That’s why I decided to prepare a small program to do with my kids at home this coming Sunday. Of course, I wasn’t going to be celebrating diversity in action with my children without inviting you to do the same in your own home.

The first thing you need to know about celebrating diversity in action at home is that it can be as small and simple or as big and elaborated as you want it to be. You can turn your program into a party and invite cousins and family friends to your home to increase the fun and create an even closer bond for your kids with literature and reading.

Celebrating Diversity In Action At Home For Ages 3 to 8

One of the advantages of celebrating diversity in action in the comfort of your home is that you can customize the program to your needs based on the ages of your children. Library-run programs usually have a separate group for preschoolers, one for kindergarten to second grade, another one from third grade to fifth grade, and then sixth to eighth grade. Here at home I have one preschooler (3 years old), one boy who is finishing kindergarten (who turns 6 in August), and my girl who is finishing second grade (turns 8 in September), so I wanted to create a program in which the three of them can be included and is engaging enough for each one of them.

When I was getting ready to create my program for celebrating diversity in action, DÍA, I went to the official DÍA website and reviewed all of the resources they have to help libraries organize the events and they have material you can download and print to guide you in creating your own program. They have book and activities suggestions that help make it easier for you to get prepared. 

For our program I decided to do two STEM-oriented projects that can engage and excite my 3 kids. One of the activities we will do is edible and the other one is not edible but just pure fun. That way we can explore science and taste it, too! Let’s follow the easy steps for our home-based program:

1. Read the chosen books. Head out to the library or the bookstore and find 5 titles written by minority authors that relate to the activity you are going to do. Or, you can just pick books you already have at home! You can follow the one I’ve chosen to do, or decide on different books and projects all together and use this just as a simple guide. The books we will be reading are: “El pan perfecto” (The perfect bread), “Ladder to the moon” and “The storyteller’s candle”.

2. Get hands on. After reading the books, you can start on your project. Since we are reading a book about making bread, that’s what we are going to do. We’ll make bread together, which is a great sensory activity for my toddler and also good science activity for the older two. I’m choosing to make breads in different colors, so my toddler can practice that as well.

3. Science fun. While our bread is in the oven, we will do a fun science activity that the kids will find really cool. I found a Baking Soda & Balloon experiment online that we will be doing. My toddler can still participate, because it is easy to do, and it will be fun and educational for all.

As you can see, celebrating diversity in action is easy and fun, and I hope you get to doing that this weekend with your kids!

Have you heard about DÍA before? Have you attended a library-run event?

[dania]