Celebrating culture at the Carnegie Center

One of the things that I love most about the Carnegie Center is their acceptance of diversity. Actually, not only do they accept diversity, but they celebrate it. At the most recent event I attended at the Carnegie Center, they made it a point to do just this. We had the tables set up with crafts for the children, some of which were loosely based on thanksgiving, which was coming up soon. When the children came, we gave each of them a piece of construction paper that had been labeled to look like a passport. For each craft that they did, they would get a stamp on their passport. The kids made bracelets, colored, did origami, made head dresses, and made  turkeys out of foam and feathers.

                                     A turkey made by one of the children.

 I think that it would have been more meaningful to match the stamp at each table with a craft that was similar to something done in the place on the stamp to be more consistent with the idea of teaching diversity, but it was neat to watch the children discover different places they didn't know about. It was also interesting how many of them did not know what a passport was. After we did crafts, we watched a performance by “Music Works”, which is a small orchestra consisting of local children. Some of the children said that they had been practicing with their instruments for years, which astonished me because they didn’t look any older than 8 years old. Although I’ve never been into music that much, it was really impressive what those kids could do with instruments I didn’t even know existed when I was their age. Altogether, I enjoyed myself quite a bit more than expected. 

                                                                   A brief description of the events that took place.