Drawing, Arts and Crafts

Fun Ways to Learn about Respect and Diversity

My Handprint

What you need: washable paints in a variety of skin tones, paper, paper plates, newspaper to cover your work surface, an old shirt or smock

Work with your child to mix the paints to create tones similar to your skin tones. Put each new color in a paper plate, then each place a hand in the dish that has the color that matches your skin. Press your hands down on the paper side by side. Help your child write both of your names underneath the handprints. Talk about how the prints are similar and different. Then work together to create a page including both of your handprints and ask other family members to add their handprints. Talk about how other family members' prints are similar and different.

Diversity Collage

What you need: old magazines, construction paper, scissors, glue or paste

Help your child look through the magazines and find pictures of people he would like to cut out. Work side by side, creating a collage that includes a diversity of people. Suggest that he try to find some babies, children, and grown-ups. Point out people of different colors as well. If your child only chooses one kind of person, say, "It looks like you only chose people who look like you. Can you find some that look different from you?" Tell him you want your picture to look as beautiful as the whole world, so you are choosing many different kinds of people to put in your picture. When you have selected and cut out the pictures, glue them onto a large piece of paper. Encourage your child to find similarities and differences among the people in the collage.

Puppets

What you need: empty toilet paper tubes, straws or popsicle sticks, glue, scissors, different colored and textured yarn, crayons or paint in a variety of skin, hair, and eye colors, scraps of fabrics

Work together to make puppets from the materials. You can draw or paint faces at the top of the empty tubes, then glue yarn to the top for hair, and wrap fabric around the rest of the tube for clothes. When you have each finished, tape or glue a straw or popsicle stick inside the bottom of the tube. When the puppets are done, you can use them to act out situations or to talk about topics you might have trouble addressing directly. You might say, "Hi, my name is Joshua. The other day someone called me a bad name. That made me feel really sad." Encourage your child to respond with her puppet. Use language such as, "I like who I am and it makes me angry and sad when someone calls me names." and "Name calling is wrong. You hurt Joshua's feelings."

Our Rules

What you need: poster board, drawing materials such as crayons, paint, or markers

Talk with your child about the rules that your family has to make sure everyone is treated fairly. You might say, "How do we make sure that you and your sister play fair when you both want to play with the same toy? We take turns." Explore the concept of fairness together. While it might be easy for young children to see the fairness in sharing two cookies between two friends, it is not so easy for them to see why it is fair to include someone that they don't want to play with or why they have to take turns playing with a treasured toy. Help your child choose one to three rules about fairness to make into a sign. Help him write the rules, and then provide drawing materials to use to decorate the sign. Hang the sign in a visible area in your home.

Recommended Reading

All the Colors of the Earth by S. Hamanaka

All the Colors We Are/Todos los Colores de Nuestra Piel by K. Kissinger

The Berenstain Bears No Girls Allowed by S. Berenstain and J. Berenstain

Crow Boy by T. Yashima

No Fair to Tigers/No Es Justo Para los Tigres by E. Hoffman

Play Lady/La Señora Juguetona by E. Hoffman

The Land of Many Colors by Klamath County YMCA Family Preschool