How Has Immigration Changed America?

I asked the children this question several times and we had a few brief conversations about their ideas but mostly I just let the idea sit in their brains. I know that this is a lot of work to share at one time but I couldn't choose  between them. Treat this like a museum of ideas. Read what interests you.

I think an important point to make is that these drawings are not illustrating ideas that were already solidified in the children's minds. It was through drawing and discussing their drawings that the children really worked through most of the idea they communicate here. The drawing was one more way to process. It slowed us down to let us think more deeply.




My mural represents an immigration liner. The immigration liner has flags from all different countries such as Brazil, Argentina, England and Scotland and the American flag. I did the flags because I thought it represented all of the different countries and nationalities coming to form America. I think immigration has changed America because it has made more countries come together.

My mural represents how all of the cultures came together. Like in New York all of the cultures came together in one place. I drew four buildings, each from a different culture. I drew a Chinese temple, a castle for Ireland, a pueblo from Zimbabwe and a sky scraper for modern America. It shows how all the cultures came together to make a city.

Immigration has America in a lot of ways and I tried to represent how we got all of our different ideas for our architecture and buildings.

My mural represents what things people built or brought to America. Some things on this mural are things that we use today. The calendar came from Egypt. The tea cup came from England. The castle came from Ireland. Immigration has changed America by bringing cultures and different things like animals to America.

The picture I made is a bunch of flags of the world, but not all of them because the piece of paper wasn’t big enough. The flags I made represent a bunch of people coming from different place to America. The way immigration has changed America is that without all of these people coming America would be tiny and boring. There wouldn’t be certain foods, any cool designs of houses, it just wouldn’t be right without these people coming.

This is basically showing how immigration has changed American fashion. Each of these pictures represents a different country and their fashion. Each country is equaling our fashion these days. You could take the boots and the shirt from England and mix it with a purse from Russia and a sash from Italy and you will get an American kind of fashion. It is basically kind of saying how immigration has encouraged new fashion in America.

My picture is of a bunch of restaurants from all over the world. At the beginning of the mural, the restaurants are only American. Then as time goes on, the restaurants become a wider variety and there are a lot more than just American restaurants. It shows that if there were no immigrants then there wouldn’t be any dumplings or pizza or burritos or curry.

My mural represents a bunch of people coming from all different places across the world until in the United States they can meet up somewhere and become friends and know each other but they are still from different places. For example, in the post office a person from Belgium and a person from Ireland meet together and become friends. But then the person from Ireland meets another person from Japan and they become friends. But then the person from Japan also meets the person from Belgium and then it is three people from different countries. The main idea of this mural is that there are different people from different places in our country.

I did a picture of the Mayflower to represent the pilgrims and how they changed America. They changed America because they went over there and started the country America. If they had never come we wouldn’t be here. We would be in a different country with different cultures or would we exist at all?

I put the different flags on my mural to represent how many people in the world came to America and how much it has brought us different food, clothing, style, languages and how much it has contributed to the country. The names of the countries on the mural are individual different colors to represent that each one brings one piece of America.

I chose to draw a big ship with people on it that are from different places and have different things and different clothes. It represents all of the different kinds of people in the world and I have a big American flag over top of the ship to represent the United Sates. All of the people came to America for different reasons. That is why everyone has something different, to represent what they do.

My mural is food from different countries, like for instance pizza or tea. If we didn’t have immigration we couldn’t have foods like that. I drew pictures of the foods and then drew the flags representing the country they came from.

If other people come to America, then it actually changes America and America changes them. They can change America by teaching other people how to say words in their language and people in America help them understand the American language. I drew people with their flags on a piece of paper and would come to America. Each one is saying “hello” in their language.