At Your House, At My House — The Tradition Swap

The child interviews someone from another household about how they do an everyday thing — breakfast, bedtime, birthdays, saying hello — and compares it with how it is done at home.

  1. Choose one everyday topic together: breakfast, bedtime, birthdays, a favourite celebration, what you call your grandparents, how you say hello and goodbye.
  2. First draw or tell “how we do it at my house” on the left half of a sheet of paper.
  3. Pick someone to ask — a grandparent, a neighbour, a friend’s parent, a relative on a video call, ideally someone who grew up in a different family, region or country. Help the child practise the question: “At your house, how do you do birthdays?” and a follow-up: “Can you tell me more about that?”
  4. Let the child ask. Stay nearby, but let them do the talking and the listening.
  5. Draw “at your house” on the right half of the paper. Look at both sides: “What is the same? What is different? Is there something you would like to try?”
  6. If you can, try one thing — a breakfast food, a birthday song, a greeting in another language — and say thank you to the person who shared it.

Variation: Use a picture book or a letter from a relative as the “interview”, or swap with a friend’s family and each try the other’s Saturday breakfast.

Requirements

  • Space: Anywhere — home, a neighbour's doorstep, a video call
  • Surface: A table or clipboard for drawing
  • Materials: Paper folded in half, crayons; optional phone or tablet for a video call
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child + one person to interview
  • Supervision: Moderate — adult arranges the interview and stays within earshot

Rationale & Objective

Anti-Bias Education warns against the “tourist” approach to culture — costumes and exotic festivals once a year — because it teaches children that other cultures are strange and far away. What works better at 5 is noticing that real people nearby do ordinary things in different ways, and that our own way is one way among many. Rogoff describes culture as exactly this: the everyday routines of a community that feel “just normal” until you see another one. The “funds of knowledge” approach (Moll, Amanti, Neff & González, 1992) likewise treats households as rich sources of knowledge worth asking about. Starting with the child’s own half of the page matters: Te Whāriki and the EYLF both tie respect for others’ cultures to a secure sense of one’s own. The interview format practises the subdomain skills shows interest in others’ cultures, traditions, or family structures and asks questions about differences in a respectful and curious way, and it matches the EYFS early learning goal of knowing some similarities and differences between cultural communities drawing on children’s own experiences.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: assumes everyone does things the way their family does; calls other ways “wrong” or “yucky”; needs the adult to ask the questions
  • Developing: asks the practised question and listens to the answer; can name one thing that is the same and one that is different
  • Proficient: asks a follow-up question of their own; describes the other household’s way accurately and without judgement; willing to try something new
  • Advanced: suggests new people and topics to ask about; brings up comparisons unprompted (“at Yusuf’s they take their shoes off too”); explains to others that different is not wrong

Safety Notes

  • Only interview people you know and trust, and stay within earshot; ask the person beforehand whether they are happy to be asked
  • Check for food allergies and dietary rules — both your child’s and the other family’s — before tasting or sharing food
  • Teach that “I don’t like it” is fine but “that’s disgusting” is hurtful; a child may decline to try something politely
  • Do not ask one person to speak for a whole country, religion or culture — it is simply how their family does it
  • Some topics (religion, who is in the family, why someone moved country) can be private or painful; let the interviewee choose what to share

Hints

  • Playfulness: make a paper “reporter” badge and a pretend microphone; let the child stamp or sticker each completed interview
  • Sustain interest: collect the two-sided pages in a folder as a “How People Do Things” book; choose a new topic or a new person each time
  • Common mistake: choosing only far-away, exotic examples. The most powerful comparisons are with people the child actually knows — the family next door, a cousin’s house, Grandma’s childhood
  • Limited space: needs only paper and a phone call; or skip the drawing and talk it over on the walk home
  • Cross-domain: asking questions and retelling what someone said (language); drawing and early writing of labels (literacy); finding the person’s home town on a map (knowledge of the world); trying new foods (health)
  • Progression: compare with a grandparent’s childhood → interview a neighbour or friend’s parent → child thinks up own questions → try one of their ways at home → invite them to try one of yours → learn a greeting or song in their language

Sources

  • Derman-Sparks, L. & Edwards, J.O. (2010; 2nd ed. 2020 with C.M. Goins), Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, NAEYC — culture in everyday family life; critique of the “tourist curriculum”
  • Moll, L.C., Amanti, C., Neff, D. & González, N. (1992), “Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms,” Theory Into Practice
  • Rogoff, B. (2003), The Cultural Nature of Human Development, Oxford University Press
  • Te Whāriki (New Zealand early childhood curriculum, 2017) — Belonging and Contribution strands; languages and cultures of all children affirmed
  • UK EYFS — Understanding the World (People, Culture and Communities) early learning goal
  • EYLF (Australia) Outcome 2 — children respond to diversity with respect
  • Polish preschool core curriculum (Podstawa programowa wychowania przedszkolnego) — sense of belonging to family, nation and preschool group; fostering willingness to learn about other cultures