We zoom out to our local community, Then we zoom out even further to our global community. And we can use that as a launching off point for talking about how to take care of our global community, how to respect differences.
~ Zeba from Episode 112 of The Kindergarten Cafe Podcast
Episode Summary
What should kindergarten social studies actually look like across the school year?
In this episode, I’m giving you a big-picture breakdown of how I teach social studies in kindergarten, how the family unit fits in, and how I structure my curriculum to help students explore their classroom, local, and global communities.
If you’ve ever wondered how to make your social studies lessons more meaningful, inclusive, and connected to the real world … this one’s for you.
In this episode I share:
- How I structure the year around different types of communities (classroom, neighborhood, global)
- Where identity, belonging, and rules fit into the kindergarten social studies standards
- My favorite way to introduce maps and geography (plus the perfect book to support it)
- Why I tie lessons to real-time holidays and celebrations  even if no one in class celebrates them
- My go-to books and videos for teaching traditions, culture, and inclusion
- How I help students understand their role in a global community
Related Episodes:
Resources:
- Social Studies Mentor Texts
- Community Helpers Bundle: A Social Studies Unit with Literacy Connections
- Me on a Map – Social Studies Geography Mapping and Community for Kindergarten
- Seasonal and Holiday Favorite Books
- Social Studies for Kindergarten: Mapping Standards
Connect with Zeba:
- Instagram – @kindergartencafe
- Facebook – @kindergartencafe
- Website – www.kindergartencafe.org
- Tik Tok – @kindergartencafe
Read the Transcript
[0:00] Hello, teacher friends. It’s Zeba from Kindergarten Cafe, and today we’re talking about social studies. If you missed it, the last episode that I put out was all about the family unit, teaching about families. And I said that we would be zooming out this episode to talk about the big picture in social studies. So I will talk about how the family unit fits into the bigger picture. But if you didn’t listen to that yet after this episode, definitely go back and listen to that.
You’re listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast, where kindergarten teachers come to learn classroom-tested tips and tricks and teaching ideas they can use in their classroom right away. I’m Zeba, creator and founder of Kindergarten Cafe, and I help kindergarten teachers with everything they need from arrival to dismissal in order to save time, work smarter, not harder, and support students with engaging and purposeful lessons. I’m here to cheer you on through your successes and breakthroughs and offer support and resources so you never have to feel stuck or alone. Ready to start saving time and reducing your stress all while using effective and purposeful lessons that students love? Let’s get started.
[1:21] So I mentioned briefly in the last episode that the goal, the main big picture of kindergarten and social studies is all about communities and the different types of communities. And we start with the smallest communities to the child, and then we expand outward. Right. But I like framing the year around different kinds of communities and having that be like a main goal to keep coming back to. So our first community that we’re learning about is the school community and the classroom community. So when you’re talking about rules and jobs and making sure everyone feels like they belong in the classroom, that’s all social studies, believe it or not. You know, getting to know the people in the whole school, getting to know the spaces in our classroom and the people in our classroom. And yeah, talking about rules, that is a big social studies standard, right? That like there are rules that we follow to be a safe and productive member of our community. And making sure that everyone feels like they belong, that everyone feels respected, is an important part of social studies. This is where any kind of identity work that you want to do with your students fits in. So self-portraits, learning about different kinds of skin color, learning about families.
[2:49] So this is where the family unit fits in, is this smaller communities of learning about our our smallest communities and the people in our class right so we’re learning about their each other’s families we’re learning about things that they like and don’t like things that they’re good at not good at yet you know that kind of identity work or that kind of family study all fits in with this study of like our local school community or classroom community, making class books that highlight who’s in the classroom or, like I said, things they like, things they don’t like.
[3:21] That all works towards a social studies goal of learning about the community, our local community. After we’re done with that kind of small school, classroom, family, community work, we expand outward to more of the neighborhood community. And this is where we talk about community helpers. So I have a whole community helpers resource to help you. But learning about the people who help our community and help our community run, stay running smoothly, like firefighters, police officers, doctors, teachers. And I make sure to combat any stereotypes here. Like I don’t say mailman or fireman. I make sure to say firefighters, mail carriers, right? Because it’s not just men that can do it. So that’s a little switch you can make.
[4:12] And also making sure to find pictures or visuals of lots of different looking firefighters. It’s not just white men. It can look like lots of different skin colors and races and genders. So it’s not, you know, just showing that firefighters don’t have one way to look or whoever that you’re talking about. This is also a great way to introduce mapping and to talk about local community maps, like maps of the neighborhood, maps of the town. I forgot to mention previously, but maps of the classroom, maps of the school, it’s really easy to start with maps of places that they’re very familiar with, right? Map of their bedroom, things like that. So this is when I would start to introduce that idea of mapping, but I would start it with the small spaces. The small communities that they’re mostly familiar with. And then we expand out to our global community. And this is when we do more of the mapping work, where we introduce the whole world. We talk about what a map is, how there’s different continents and oceans, and how some of our world is made up of land. So it’s made up of ocean and water. And a key point is green represents land, usually, and blue represents water.
[5:32] But showing different kinds of maps, too, of, like, there are maps where there’s different colors for each country, or there’s lines that show the border of each country, or you can find the capital with the star. Like, I’m not expecting them to memorize all this, but it’s more of an introduction. They’ll keep getting more work with that, but it’s an introduction to a map shows you about a place, and there’s different ways to represent that, And that there are different places in our community that we are not just a part of our family or our school or our neighborhood. We’re a part of a global community, too. And so it’s a great connection here to talk about how we take care of that global community. Great connection to Earth Day, taking care of the Earth, resources like that, connecting to science, if you want, with taking care of water supply and how living things need food and, you know, making sure the animals have what they need to survive, things like that.
[6:30] This is also a great connection to learning about different celebrations and traditions. So I talked a little bit in the last episode about inviting families in to share about their favorite traditions or celebrations.
[6:43] But even if you don’t have someone to come in and talk about a celebration tradition, if there is a major global celebration, learn about it. Even if none of your students celebrate it, learn about it. Learn about Diwali. Learn about Ramadan. Learn about Lunar New Year. Learn about Veterans Day.
[7:03] Learn about different ways to celebrate Thanksgiving, right? There’s lots of things that you can do. And so one of the things that I always love doing is doing winter holidays around the world or New Year’s around the world right before and after our winter break. One it’s just a little bit something different something fun but also it gets the kids introduced to different kinds of holidays and they start to see that a lot of the winter holidays no matter where you are in the world have to do with light because it gets dark in the winter right and so I think that’s a good like common thread between all of them and a lot of the new year’s ones have to do with goals for the new year hopes for the new year things like that and so finding things that are in common between all these holidays, I enjoy doing with the kids. But anytime there’s a holiday, even if, like I said, even if the kids aren’t celebrating it, I like to talk about it around the time that it’s being celebrated, right? So I know some people do holidays around the world like I do, but they’ll include like Ramadan, which falls in a different month each year, but.
[8:09] It’s not always, it’s not typically in the winter or it’s not always in the winter. It changes, right? Or they’ll include Lunar New Year, which is in the winter, but it happens more in January, February. Or like St. Patrick’s Day. I don’t know, like different holidays they might talk about at the same time versus at the time when they’re actually happening. So I prefer to talk about the holidays around when they’re actually happening. So talking about Ramadan when it’s actually happening.
[8:39] Talking about Holi, the Hindu festival of colors. Talk about that when it’s actually happening, even if no one in your class celebrates it, right? Talk about Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, the day after Halloween. Even if no one in your class celebrates it, it’s just more relevant to the kids when you’re talking about it when it actually is happening, as opposed to, oh, in the spring someone celebrates this. That’s too abstract for them. If someone does celebrate it, invite them in to talk about it. That’s great.
[9:10] You know, holiday, even if it’s a holiday, I said this in the last episode, but even if it’s a holiday that the majority of your class celebrates, the majority of your class celebrates Easter, I bet you they have different traditions and ways to talk about it. So you can still invite families in to talk about it. Right. But it’s a great learning about holidays and learning about traditions is a major focus of kindergarten social studies. And so it’s really great when you can be relevant the kids in front of you by sharing about their celebrations and traditions in the class or relevant when you’re talking about it happening right now. Like even if no one’s celebrating it this is holiday is happening this weekend so let’s learn about it right even if you don’t have the paid version of green pop junior they do a free weekly video and if there’s a major holiday they do often have a video about it where you can find other videos on youtube and then i have a lot of books in my amazon store that i’ll link that might be about those holidays as well so.
[10:10] The book that I like to launch all this talk about traditions and celebrations is our favorite day of the year because it showcases that everyone has a different favorite day, a different celebration, tradition, things like that.
[10:23] And they’re not all the same time of the year. So that’s a great one to start with. But yeah, so we start with our individual community, our family community, our classroom community. We zoom out to our local community and then we zoom out even further to our global community and we can use that as a launching off point for talking about how to take care of our global community how to respect differences and you know green usually means land and blue usually means water you know big picture things like but no really like an introduction to mapping and thing one activity i do love doing is me on the map and it really visually showcases these different.
[11:03] Concentric circles, if you will, the growing communities. So you start with your house, then you go to your street, then you go to your neighborhood or town, then you go to your state, then you go to your country, then you go to your continent, then you go to the world, right? So it just zooms out for the kids, the different communities they’re a part of.
[11:20] So I do really like doing that activity with my students every year. So that is social studies in kindergarten. If you have a specific unit or lesson or thing you want help focusing on, let me know. We can do a deeper dive. But in the meantime, I hope this helps give you a bigger picture of teaching social studies in kindergarten.
[11:44] Thanks so much for listening to the Kindergarten Cafe Podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes for more information and resources, or just head straight to kindergartencafe.org for all the goodies. If you liked this episode, the best ways to show your support are to subscribe, leave a review, or send it to a friend. I’ll be back next week with even more kindergarten tips. See you then.