Community Helpers: An Overview

One of the big curriculum elements in kindergarten is the theme of community workers. The idea is to introduce children to the neighbourhood and the city and the many people who help make it work. Who are they? Where do they work? What do they do to help us? It's a great idea, teaching them about these important cornerstones of the community, these everyday heroes, as it were. Not only so that they can appreciate them and their contributions, but also so that they gain a greater understanding of the world around them.

It's something that we as parents are so accustomed to living with daily that we sometimes forget to really stop and explain it. If it's an idea you'd like to bring home with you, this post is a starting point, a source for some general overview books. I'll follow up in the next little while with some posts about specific professions as well, as many of them are of interest to children. I mean, fire fighters? Seems to me those are of interest to lots of people...

Stella Louella's Runaway Book, by Lisa Campbell Ernst

Stella's library book is due by 5:00, and it has disappeared. She follows the trail of people who have passed it from one to the next, and as she does, the group of people helping her look grows behind her. Along the way, she meets and gathers in lots of people in her communityand the sense of true community is on full display, as each is concerned with helping her on her mission. By the end, she has what seems like a good portion of the town's population running around with her. This book features Ernst's trademark illustration style, and is a serious delight to read aloud as it plays with fun language, works the storyteller-style repetition as the group grows, and even provides clues to a riddle at the end. This is just a terrific title for sharing.

What Do People Do All Day?, by Richard Scarry

This fantastic book is a classic for good reason. It introduces the concept of work and workers and why people work, then goes on to introduce a solid set of different workers and their work in short stories of four to eight pages each. The stories contain a stunning level of detail in the text and illustrations both, making them wonderful to explore together again and again. I had forgotten how good this was - I may go buy it for Pumpkinpie now!

This Is Me and Where I Am, by Joanne Fitzgerald

This book is great for putting the idea of neighbourhood into context. It begins looking at the worlds, and then begins to focus in closer and closer, down to one country, then one city, one neighbourhood, one street, one yard, one house, one room, one bed, containing one child. it then pulls back out again to show the child within his/her room (its ambiguous), house, yard, street, neighbourhood, city, country, and world. It's an interesting book, and helps a child understand the way those terms are related in a nice clear, simple presentation.

Career Day, by Anne Rockwell, ill. Lizzy Rockwell

On Career Day in Ms. Madoff's class, the children bring their parents, who work a wide variety of jobs - mostly in the community, though some further afield. Each has an illustration of the person in the class and in their work environment, paired with a couple of lines briefly touching on what the job title means. This is a good way to introduce a host of different vocations in one fell swoop, but does not go into detail on any one of them - you could follow up with books with a narrower focus where your child shows interest.

When We Grow Up, by Anne Rockwell

Like Career Day, this book covers a swath of differnt careers without telling much about any one of them. In this case, we are shown a great number of children and what they want to be, with one line about each paired with an illustration showing them both as a child and as an adult doing their future dream job. This being a much older book has a different feel - the illustrations are drawings, and simple ones at that, the colour palette very limited, and the overall impression pretty retro. Still, if you're looking for a book about professions for a young child, it has the right level of complexity, as Anne Rockwell does picture books about the world around very well.

In the Middle of the Night, by Kathy Henderson, ill. Jennifer Eachus

This soft book speaks of the night workers, the bakers and mail sorters, officer cleaners and hospital staff, stargazers and delivery drivers who help make the world ready for us in the morning. Framing the story is a baby's bedtime, a birth, and a mother looking at the early morning sky as she walks her wee one. The book has a soft, foggy quality to its illustrations and a lyrical text that give the book on the whole a dreamlike feeling. Quite lovely, and different from other books about occupations. It would make a wonderful bedtime tale.

Coming Soon: Building a City and Keeping It Clean.

Originally posted on MommyBlogsToronto/Better Than a Playdate.