Educational project
How much Africa do we have in our everyday life?
Ancestry, identity and Afro-Brazilian culture through the many languages of childhood.
Introduction
The project “How Much Africa Do We Have in Our Everyday Life?” was born from the wish to offer children meaningful encounters with African ancestry and its contribution to shaping Brazilian identity and culture.
Through listening, research, play and the many languages of childhood, we seek to make the African presence in our everyday life visible, recognising its influence on art, music, dance, literature, food, games, language and the different ways of living and celebrating.
To encourage these discoveries, we set up the African Territory, a permanent learning environment for investigation and experimentation, where children can explore different materials, images, cultural objects, stories, sounds and forms of artistic expression.
More than presenting cultural elements, the project aims to build experiences that help children recognise their origins, value different identities and develop attitudes of respect, belonging and living together.
The approach sees the child as a historical, social and cultural subject, able to build knowledge, form hypotheses and give meaning to the world through the relationships they create. It is also grounded in Brazilian Laws No. 10.639/2003 and No. 11.645/2008, the National Curriculum Guidelines for the Education of Ethnic-Racial Relations, the DCNEI and the BNCC, respecting the specific nature of early childhood education.
General aim
To promote educational and investigative experiences that allow children to know, recognise and value African ancestry and its contribution to everyday life, strengthening identity, ethnic-racial belonging, respect for diversity and the building of an anti-racist culture from early childhood.
How the project works
Activities are organised through investigative contexts, research sessions, conversation circles, artistic experiences and small-group explorations, and in the African Territory.
Investigative contexts
Research sessions
Conversation circles
Artistic experiences
Small-group explorations
The African Territory
The African Territory
The African Territory is one of the main spaces where the project takes shape.
Set up as a space for research and cultural immersion, it brings together elements that invite children to observe, touch, experiment, compare, create and make connections between African and Afro-Brazilian cultural expressions and their own experiences.
The space holds fabrics, baskets, musical instruments, photographs, children’s books, works by African and Afro-Brazilian artists, natural elements and a variety of materials.
The space is not meant to portray Africa as a single culture, but to show its diversity, making connections with the local context and with the children’s own experiences.
The project in pictures
Discover the pedagogical approach
The project is part of the nursery school's educational approach, which sees the child as the protagonist of their own learning.