All About Me! Teaching kids about diversity and community – part 3
This is part 3 in my All About Me! series. If you missed the first two parts, you can start here.
Some people look different to me
Once we teach kids to think about themselves as individuals, then we can move out one more layer… we can talk about the things that are different between themselves and other people. People are both the same and different from us. An obvious place to begin is by talking about skin colour. Even if you don’t have kids from different cultures or with different skin tones represented in your group, you need to show and teach this.
Sensory Bin ideas for learning about skin colour
One activity my kids enjoy is using beans in a sensory bin with cards that have pictures of kids with different skin tones. You can buy dried beans in a bunch of different colours. Apart from just hunting out the pictures in the sensory bin and talking about those, you can sort the different coloured beans as an extension. The important part is making sure the kids ‘get’ that it doesn’t matter which colour your skin is, we all matter. Little kids aren’t naturally racist or prejudiced – those are learned behaviours. Make sure what they learn about race and skin colour from you is positive.
You can use the skin colour cards to look at both the colour of each child’s skin and that of other people. Be careful to use positive words when describing a child’s skin colour, particularly if it’s different to yours. Even with the right intentions, it can be easy to miss your own value judgements, so maybe take a minute to clarify your own thoughts on this before you start. Have you ever been called a name based on the colour of your skin?
If you’re a white, middle-class educator like me, then possibly not. But if you’re from an indigenous culture, or from another country to your kids, then you probably have. If we’re going to teach kids how to treat each other with respect, we need to come from a place of respect ourselves.
Talk to your families
Ask your kids’ families how they would like you to refer to their culture and characteristics. Apart from being a kind and respectful thing to do, (your main priority), this also contributes to diversity and family input outcomes for your documentation.
The resources I’ve mentioned in this post come from my All About Me! unit. You can download the preview of the complete unit for free to see the full list of activities .
If you would like to snag the Skin Colour Sensory Bin Cards for free then pop your email into the form below and I’ll send it straight to your inbox. Also, if you would like to listen to the podcast for this blog series, you can find it below.
Thanks for being here!
