Mama Bear Activities

June is Pride Month! Although this is the perfect time to dive into the subject, it’s important to have an open dialogue about Pride and the LGBTQ+ community every day of the year! It can be a tricky subject to navigate, especially when kids catch you off guard with questions you may be unsure of how to answer. The most important thing (in my opinion) is to lead by example! Learn and grow together. If you are unsure of something, find more information about it! Luckily there are SO many amazing books out there geared towards kids in simple language to help you out! The world is changing, it’s our responsibility to continue to teach our children love, acceptance and diversity. In the end: love is love is love! No matter what it looks like!

The beauty of children is that they are not clouded by predisposed judgements about how people “should” look or act. Talking about Pride doesn’t need to be an elaborate “thing”, especially with little kids. It involves small tweaks, careful language and taking advantage of organic teachable moments.

What does that look like?

In our house, it’s as simple as not reinforcing gender roles/stereotypes. Boys and girls can act/dress/do whatever they like. Blue and Pink are not “boy” and “girl” colours. Sure, my daughter gravitates towards pink, but if she chooses to wear traditional “boy” clothes and play with trucks that’s fine too (Usually she will be playing with dump trucks in the mud with a dress). My son enjoys dress up, has had his nails painted (to match his sisters) and loves having blue streaked in his hair but is your “typical” boy. Kids don’t see the world through our eyes, they gravitate towards things they like and don’t give it much thought otherwise.

When Reilly says “only boys can play with dinosaurs” or “pink is for girls”, it doesn’t become a sit down after school special, but a simple “Nope, boys and girls can play with all toys” or “boys and girls can love pink”. And then we move on.

Now realistically, we aren’t going to be fortunate enough to organically encounter every possible scenario that allows us to teach our children love and acceptance. That would be too easy. That’s where books come in (books, glorious books).

It’s important to read books that have diverse characters: Different races, cultures, family units and those with LGBTQ+ characters. We are so fortunate that in 2019 there are so. many. choices. Gone are the days when you could only find stories with hetero-normative Caucasian main characters!

I could spend another month, talking about this and sharing amazing books that I’d recommend. But this will get you started:

Do you have any favourite Pride books you read to your kids? I’d love to hear them.

Pride: The Story of Harvery Milk and the Rainbow Flag

By: Robert Sanders

This book is geared towards audiences a bit older than my kids, but still a good read. It outlines the story of Politician and Activist Harvey Milk and the beginning of the Gay Pride Flag!

It Feels Good to be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity

By: Theresa Thorn

From birth, we are taught to identify people as boys or girls, based on what they look like. What about those that don’t fit that mold? This book is fantastic at introducing young children to gender identity and terms such as “non binery”.

Jacob’s New Dress

By: Sarah Hoffman

“Jacob loves playing dress-up, when he can be anything he wants to be. Some kids at school say he can’t wear “girl” clothes, but Jacob wants to wear a dress to school. Can he convince his parents to let him wear what he wants? This heartwarming story speaks to the unique challenges faced by boys who don’t identify with traditional gender roles. ” (Amazon.ca)

Maiden & Princess

By: Daniel Haack & Isabel Galupo

This is a modern Fairy tale about a brave maiden, invited to a Prince’s ball, who finds love in a most surprising place!

Prince & Knight

By: Daniel Haack

This is a modern Fairy tale about Prince who falls in love with a valiant Knight after saving the kingdom from a Dragon together!

Queer Heroes

By: Arabelle Sicardi

Celebrating the achievements of 53 LGBTQ Heroes from Past & Present. Learn about many different people such as Frida Kahlo, Freddie Mercury, Jazz Jennings, Marlene Dietrich, Oscar Wilde and more!

Although this is not a book, this article from CBC Kids is a great one to add to your reading list.

https://www.cbc.ca/kidscbc2/the-feed/they-them-their-why-some-people-use-these-pronouns-instead-of-he-or-she?fbclid=IwAR2VeFH5wbjr2ZvGT4KH589ZKA9lV-y8wE28gkMy6y0lTYBJuwJydOxkNCc

Conclusion

As a 33 year old cisgendered woman, I get confused and overwhelmed with the many new and evolving LGBTQ+ labels. This is all new to me, but I will continue to evolve and educate myself. I think the takeaway from this is that, even if I don’t fully understand the labels (or lacktherof) and their meanings I fully respect and support someones desire to feel included. If a label helps you feel understood and accepted. I see you and I support you. If not being labeled makes you more comfortable- that’s great too! And to be honest, what you do, who you are and whose bed your boots are under, doesn’t concern me one bit. I care if you are a good person- the rest is none of my business! Everyone deserves to be loved, to feel safe and to be accepted for who they are. Period.

I truly hope to create an environment where my children feel comfortable in the skin they’re in and love and accept others. If this topic makes you uncomfortable (read: angry and upset), you need to seriously lean into those feelings and explore why other peoples happiness concerns you so much.

Happy Pride!

A little about me

I am a Primary/Junior Teacher living in the country in Ontario, Canada. I am married to my wonderful husband Chris, and together we have two little cubs: Reilly: who is 3.5 years old and Charlotte (aka Charlee): 2 years old. I currently work part time as a supply teacher which leaves me plenty of time to home school the kids!

Why did I start homeschooling?

Good question.

I started my Instagram account about a year ago to chronicle our play based learning and to hopefully inspire other parents looking for easy, educational activities they could do with their kids. I love finding amazing accounts and activities on Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram to tweak for our family’s needs and add to my own content. Why reinvent the wheel when social media is an endless supply of inspiration from like minded parents/educators with great ideas?

As long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a teacher. I started teaching in 2009 in Ontario, Canada and was a supply teacher for several years. I love the flexibility of being an Occasional teacher and really enjoy learning from other teacher’s classrooms, routines and teaching styles. I was able to gather so many different ideas to keep in my back pocket, which has helped me significantly in my own classroom and now homeschooling journey.

Shortly after I was married, in 2014, I was expecting my son, who was born October 2015. Seventeen months later, I had my daughter (April 2017). I had put my son in daycare for a few months in order to go back to work before my daughter was born, but found I was not getting enough work to justify him being in daycare. He loved his daycare experience, the socialization and the environment. I knew I wanted to create this similar atmosphere in our home.

After my daughter was born, my husband and I made the decision that I would stay at home with our children (at least for the immediate future). I was fortunate enough to be granted an extended leave of absence from my school board that directly followed my one year maternity leave. This decision made sense financially, but it also gave me the opportunity to homeschool them until they started public school. If I was going to be a stay at home mom, I wanted to use my educational background and make it count! Going down to one income certainly has its challenges, but being able to be home with the kids everyday more than makes up for it. When my children are older I will still be able to rely on supply for more part time work, but be able to volunteer at their school and go on field trips with ease. I am thankful for this flexibility that isn’t found in many other careers.

Our homeschool journey hasn’t been linear. It really got its start a year and a half ago. My son’s vocabulary was on the lower side, and he had been referred to a speech therapist. However, the wait list was 9 months. I am not one to sit and wait idly, so I started educating myself by reading language/speech books and decided to start officially homeschooling him to help bridge the gap as much as I could. Thankfully my teaching background helped immensely with that. My specialty is Kindergarten to Grade 6, so there was definitely a learning curve adapting content (not to mention my mindset/expectations) to pre K. The plus side of it is that I understand what skills and knowledge my children need when they go to kindergarten as a baseline. Since we started our homeschool program, my son’s language has increased significantly and he is almost 100% caught up-I’d like to think it’s a result of working closely with him over the last year.

Navigating the Homeschool Life

My main concern with homeschooling has always been the socialization aspect. Peer learning is so essential in childhood development; I did not want my children lacking that because I did not have them in a formal preschool full time. I did enroll my son in a formal preschool two mornings a week this past year and it really helped to bring him out of his shell. To say he flourished would be an understatement. That, paired with our at home learning created (In my opinion) the perfect balance between home and traditional learning. My daughter will attend the same preschool in September when Reilly starts Junior Kindergarten.

I have also been able to remedy socialization through playdates, library programs and provincial early years children’s programs. There is an abundance of activities and programs in our area that are free (or very low cost). We take advantage of as much of these as possible which also helps to keep a routine and break up the monotony.

Our Homeschool Style

Our homeschool style is laid back. Some days/weeks we have themed activities and structured “lessons”, while other days it is a lot of hands on, organic learning and outdoor exploration, incorporating math and language. There are also days when we don’t do any formal education. It’s a balance. I don’t force structured learning if my kids (or myself) are sick, having an off day or [insert life throwing something unexpected at you!]. At the end of the day, I want this time to be fun and educational. If they aren’t enjoying themselves and it’s a chore, it’s not worth it! That being said, I try and accomplish at least ONE thing during those “off” days. Whether that is a silly science experiment, arts and crafts or maybe we just practice our ABC’s on the white board on the couch. Now that preschool is out, we will have more structured learning, in order to help prepare Reilly for the routines of Kindergarten.

Although I do not intend to homeschool my children past preschool age, I am so fortunate for the opportunity to be able to apply my teaching skills in a different environment and to help my children grow and succeed. At the end of the day, I’m just a mom, standing in front of my kids, trying to make every moment count.

If you want to see more, please follow me on Instagram @mama_bear_activities