Class Parent: Mama, What Is Our Culture?

"Mama, what is our culture?" my son Lev, who is 4, asked the other morning while we were getting ready for work and school.

"Jewish, sweetie," I responded without thinking.

"You have to write it on the back of our culture flags," Lev said.

"Sure," I told him, having no idea what a culture flag was or was for, but happy to oblige. "I'll do it when we get to school."

When we got to school — Public School 11 in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, where I am the class parent — it turned out that we were actually supposed to have decorated the culture flags, which the teachers had cut out of thick white paper and sent home with Lev and his twin sister, Shayna, the day before.

Because of baby sitter/husband communication bobbles, our undecorated flags were apparently sitting on the kitchen table rather than ready for posting outside the prekindergarten classroom. No problem, the teachers said, bring them Monday.

But I did have a problem: What is our culture, and how could we possibly depict it on a flag?

The culture flags were a great idea, bringing together December's two curriculum themes of transportation and "cultures around the world." The children had been talking for a few days about how they were "going on a cruise," and we had already filled out faux passports.

On Friday, the teachers had planned to screen an Elmo movie about a world cruise, and that morning we arrived to see a cool ship on the bulletin board outside the classroom, just waiting to be surrounded by an array of diverse culture flags.

In a majority-minority school like P.S. 11, where 10 percent of the students are white like my children, sharing and studying roots is important and interesting both. There is a boy in our class whose dad is Austrian and mom Japanese — his flag looked awesome.

Before Thanksgiving, there had been a multicultural potluck, with chicken tikka masala, Irish soda bread, Korean sushi and be bim bop, potato latkes, chicken wings, coconut chicken, beef patties mac ’n’ cheese, and kabak goregi filled with spinach. But what did my little towheaded twins have to add?

We could, of course, make American flags — we are, after all, American. (Then again, so is everyone else.) One classmate had done a classic pre-K American flag, from the abstract-scribble school, and another had done one with silver-star stickers, the kind you use on behavior charts.

Maybe we should make an American flag with six-pointed stars, signifying Jewish-American. Or would that feel like defacing the flag? Did I want them primarily identified as Jews? (I know, I already sent them to public school with Hebrew and Yiddish first names.)

What about the Brooklyn flag — is there a Brooklyn flag? Lev loves rainbows: if we did a rainbow flag, would everyone assume he has two mamas (and would those who have met my bald, goateed husband be very confused)? Maybe we should just leave the flags white, since that's how I was feeling: white; bland; boring.

Over the weekend, Lev was playing with blue paints, making what he described as a pool, and we decided to do the same for his flag. Shayna messed around with some reds and browns on hers. So for now, our culture is, um, free artistic exploration for 4-year-olds.