Our first Cultural Celebration bags went home to families this week with materials about Día de Los Muertos! Materials were funded by the Guilford Fund for Education (GFFE) through their grant awards.

Inside, families will find a packet with educational resources for parents, a recipe for sugar skulls, and a reusable sugar skull mold. Children can also participate in skull decorating and coloring activities. The kit includes three books about Día de Los Muertos that help children learn about the celebration through narrative and visual storytelling.

“We want our school to be a place where a wide range of cultures are represented,” said CNS Director, Rachel Daniels. “We see value in children exploring and understanding the many ways people live and appreciating the differences in experiences across cultures. This allows children to feel included if their culture falls out of the mainstream, and also gives children who might be part of a more mainstream culture a chance to discover what other families celebrate.”

These take-home resources build on the in-classroom curriculum with the CNS Cultural Enrichment program, which was also funded through a GFFE grant award. “Young children love holidays and celebrations,” said Daniels. “Learning about as many as possible at an early age prepares them to be kind, accepting citizens of the world.”

We are so grateful to GFFE for funding this initiative and are excited to see the impact of this program on our community.