I have come a long way on the this concept in the last five years or so, since starting the quality improvement rating system. Our family and home daycare has always been a safe place for families of any culture and heritage, but because we live in a predominately white, Christian community we were not necessarily putting the rubber to the road. But after learning about the “tourist view” concept early on in my training with FCCERS-R, we have made it a priority to expose our children to as much natural and healthy diversity as possible. We have incorporated multi-cultural baby dolls, foods, and books into our play spaces. We have books and pictures around the house that depict people of all races, ages, and abilities is strong positions. We do have some materials with traditional cultural images, but those are used sparingly. We want our kids to learn to look past color and abilities very early on in life.
All this became super relevant to us in the last two years or so because we now do have some diversity in race, culture, language and ability in our enrollment. Because we already had these practices and materials in place, it has been an easy transition!