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Broken Crayons Still Color

Authors: Toni Collier and Whitney Bak

Illustrated by: Natalie Vasilica

This book helps to show positive and confident self-identities by

showing that everyone has all different emotions and feel

different things. It is ok to feel your feelings and express

how you feel.

https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Crayons-Still-Color-Collier/dp/1400242908/ref=asc_df_1400242908/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=642056849247&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13699093632015148591&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9018738&hvtargid=pla-1944375585342&psc=1&mcid=d699de3281ba3bad84ee6f501246c0bf

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I can say NO

Authors: Jenny Simmons

Illustrated: Kristin Sorra

This book teaches kids boundaries and standing up for

themselves. Whether it's saying no to bullies or someone

invading their space or when playing with s friend and they

need some alone time. It helps children learn to use their

voice to stand up for what they want or need.

https://www.amazon.com/Can-Say-No-Jenny-Simmons/dp/1937870774/ref=asc_df_1937870774/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=475750951675&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6059734434368872870&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9018738&hvtargid=pla-1003191725896&psc=1&mcid=963802d0019a3b8abb8ef467756948d1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI86PY34iThAMVUzfUAR1o3Ax0EAQYBSABEgJR__D_BwE

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In I Can Say No , Jenny Simmons teaches children the power of the word "no." Whether it's saying no to bullying or someone invading their personal space or simply to playing with a friend when they need some alone time, children learn that they can use their voice to stand up for what is good in the world, and good for themselves.

I learned a little word, And even though it's small, When I use it with authority, I'm the strongest of them all!

NO That's right. I can say NO.

I can say no to a movie I don't like. I can say no if I'm not into riding bikes. I can say no if I want to be alone, Or I'm feeling kind of tired and would rather stay at home.

As parents and educators, we often teach children to use the word "no" when they are in danger or when someone is trying to harm them. But "no" is powerful in other areas of life, as well. Learning to say "no" without feeling guilty or needing to explain themselves gives children the power to protect their boundaries, energy, convictions, and time. Saying "no" also allows them to create space for saying "yes" to the things that matter most. By teaching children how to use this small but mighty word, they will be able to face life with confidence, independence, and a positive sense of self-worth!

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I Can Say No: Help Kids Protect Boundaries and Build Confidence

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I Can Say No: Help Kids Protect Boundaries and Build Confidence [Jenny Simmons, Kristin Sorra] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. I Can Say No: Help Kids Protect Boundaries and Build Confidence

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What If We Were All The Same

Author: C.M Harris

Illustrator: Ashlynn Feather

What if we lived in a world where being different was celebrated instead of being hurt or made fun of. That is what this book is about. Talks about the differences in hair and foods and wheelchairs or different things we can do. We all have unique qualities that make us special. Bonus the book also has discussion questions for teachers or parents.

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C.M. Harris is an independent children's author writing picture books to motivate and inspire every child. Every book has a special message and a lesson to ponder.

​

Living in Southern California, Charity is an award-winning author. Charity loves traveling to schools for author visits, spreading the importance of friendship, acceptance, and disability awareness. In 2019, she founded her children's book publishing company, Purple Diamond Press, Inc. We publish picture books that make a difference.

Award Winner in the Children's Picture Book: Softcover Fiction category of the 2019 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest

What If We Were All The Same! is a Mom's Choice Awards® Gold Recipient.

Featured on BBC CBeebies Lunchtime Stories (October 2020)

To read more about the author, visit her website. CMHarrisBooks

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What If We Were All The Same!: A Children's Rhyming Book About Ethnic Diversity and Inclusion

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What If We Were All The Same!: A Children's Rhyming Book About Ethnic Diversity and Inclusion [Harris, C M, Press, Purple Diamond, Feather, Ashlynn] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. What If We Were All The Same!: A Children's Rhyming Book About Ethnic Diversity and Inclusion

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This article talks about the 4 core goal of anti bias education. Identity, diversity, justice, activism.

The four core goals provide a framework for practicing anti bias education.  They support children’s development of a confident sense of identity without needing to feel superior to others; an ease with human diversity; a sense of fairness and justice; the skills of empowerment; and the ability to stand up for themselves or for others.

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Anti-bias education is not just doing occasional activities about diversity and fairness topics (although that may be how new anti-bias educators begin). To be effective, anti-bias education works as an underpinning perspective, which permeates everything that happens in an early childhood program-including your interactions with children, families and coworkers-and shapes how you put curriculum together each day.

This article is an excerpt of the second edition of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, by Louise Derman-Sparks and Julie Olsen Edwards. An NAEYC bestseller, this book helps early childhood educators fulfill their mission of helping all children reach their full potential. The new edition-with major updates to all chapters, including gender identity-will be available early in 2020.

The four core goals of anti-bias education

Four core goals provide a framework for the practice of anti-bias education with children. Grounded in what we know about how children construct identity and attitudes, the goals help you create a safe, supportive learning community for every child. They support children's development of a confident sense of identity without needing to feel superior to others; an ease with human diversity; a sense of fairness and justice; the skills of empowerment; and the ability to stand up for themselves or for others.

Goal 1: Identity

Teachers will nurture each child's construction of knowledgeable, confident, individual personal and social identities.

Children will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.

This goal means supporting children to feel strong and proud of who they are without needing to feel superior to anyone else. It means children will learn accurate, respectful language to describe who they and others are. Teachers will support children to develop and be comfortable within their home culture and within the school culture. Goal 1 is the starting place for all children, in all settings.

Adding to early childhood education's long-term commitment to nurturing each child's individual, personal identity, anti-bias education emphasizes the important idea of nurturing children's social (or group) identities. Social identities relate to the significant group categorizations of the society in which we grow up and live and which individuals share with many others. Social identities include (but are not limited to) gender, racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and economic class groups. (In the forthcoming book, social identity is described in detail in Chapter 2.) A strong sense of both individual and group identities is the foundation for the three other core anti-bias goals.

Goal 2: Diversity

Teachers will promote each child's comfortable, empathetic interaction with people from diverse backgrounds.

Children will express comfort and joy with human diversity, use accurate language for human differences, and form deep, caring connections across all dimensions of human diversity.

This goal means guiding children to be able to think about and have words for how people are the same and how they are different. It includes helping children feel and behave respectfully, warmly, and confidently with people who are different from themselves. It includes encouraging children to learn both about how they are different from other children and about how they are similar. These are never either/or realities because people are simultaneously the same and different from one another. This goal is the heart of learning how to treat all people caringly and fairly.

Some teachers and parents are not sure they should encourage children to "notice" and learn about differences among people. They may think it is best to teach only about how people are the same, worrying that talking about differences causes prejudice. While well intentioned, this concern arises from a mistaken notion about the sources of bias. Differences do not create bias. Children learn prejudice from prejudice -not from learning about human diversity. It is how people respond to differences that teaches bias and fear.

Another misconception about Goal 2 is that exploring differences among people ignores appreciating the similarities. Goal 2 calls for creating a balance between exploring people's differences and similarities. All human beings share similar biological attributes, needs, and rights (e.g., the needs for food, shelter, and love; the commonalities of language, families, and feelings) and people live and meet these shared needs and rights in many different ways. A basic premise in anti-bias education is " We are all the same. We are all different. Isn't that wonderful! "

Goal 3: Justice

Teachers will foster each child's capacity to critically identify bias and will nurture each child's empathy for the hurt bias causes.

Children will increasingly recognize unfairness (injustice), have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts.

This goal is about building children's innate, budding capacities for empathy and fairness, as well as their cognitive skills for thinking critically about what is happening around them. It is about building a sense of safety, the sense that everyone can and will be treated fairly.

Learning experiences include opportunities for children to understand and practice skills for identifying unfair and untrue images (stereotypes), comments (teasing, name-calling), and behaviors (isolation, discrimination) directed at themselves or
at others. This includes issues of gender, race, ethnicity, language, disability, economic class, age, body shape, and more. These are early lessons in critical thinking for children, figuring out what they see and hear and testing it against the notions of kindness and fairness.

These lessons build on young children's implicit interest in what is "fair" and "not fair."

As children come to identify unfair experiences and as they learn that unfair can be made fair, children gain an increased sense of their own power in the world. Children cannot construct a strong self-concept, or develop respect for others, if they do not know how to identify and resist hurtful, stereotypical, and inaccurate messages or actions directed toward themselves or others. Developing the ability to think critically strengthens children's sense of self, as well as their capacity to form caring relationships with others.

Goal 4: Activism

Teachers will cultivate each child's ability and confidence to stand up for oneself and for others in the face of bias.

Children will demonstrate a sense of empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discriminatory actions.

Goal 4 is about giving children tools for learning how to stand up to hurtful and unfair biased behavior based on any aspect of social identity. Biased behavior may be directed at oneself or another. It may come from another child or adult or from children's books, television, and films. This goal strengthens children's development in perspective taking, positive interactions with others, and conflict-resolution education.

Actions of teasing, rejection, and exclusion because of some aspect of a child's social identities are a form of aggressive behavior. They are just as serious as physical aggression. The old saying "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me" is false. Children's developing sense of self is hurt by name-calling, teasing, and exclusion based on identity. And children who engage in such hurtful behaviors are learning it is acceptable to hurt others, the earliest form of bullying. An anti-bias approach calls on teachers to intervene gently but firmly, support the child who is the target of the biased behavior, and help both children learn other ways of interacting.

Children's growth on Goal 4 strengthens their growth on the other three goals. If a child is the target of prejudice or discrimination, she needs tools to resist and to know that she has worth (Goal 1). When a child speaks up for another child, it reinforces his understanding of other people's unique feelings (Goal 2). When children are helped to act, it broadens their understanding of "unfairness" and "fairness" (Goal 3).

Guidelines for your curriculum

Just about every subject area in the typical early childhood program has possibilities for anti-bias education themes and activities. For instance, early childhood education themes of self-discovery, family, and community are deeper, and more meaningful, when they include explorations of ability, culture, economic class, gender identity, and racialized identity. So, too, issues of fairness (Goal 3) and acting for fairness (Goal 4) arise as children explore various curriculum topics.

Differences do not create bias. Children learn prejudice from prejudice -not from learning about human diversity. It is how people respond to differences that teaches bias and fear.

The ideas for specific anti-bias education content and activities come from three major sources. One is from children's questions, interests, or interactions with each other that classroom teachers see as important to respond to and develop. Teacher-initiated activities are a second source of anti-bias activities, based on what classroom teachers and families think is important for children to learn. A third source is significant events that occur in the children's communities and the larger world that classroom teachers think need to be explored with children.

Here is an example of an anti-bias education topic at snack time.

It is snack time in the 4-year-old room. The teacher sets a small pitcher of water on the table for children to pour and drink. Lupe, whose home language is Spanish, looks up and asks, "Agua?" Casey, sitting next to her, says with annoyance, "No! It's water-not ahhgwa" (exaggerating the pronunciation). The teacher stops what she is doing and turns to Casey and says, "Lupe is right. What you call 'water' her family calls 'agua.' There are many words for water, for crackers, for oranges, for everything! We all have words. We have different words. It's pretty wonderful!"

At group time, the teacher follows up by asking children about the different words they have for people in their family. As the children call out Grandma, Oma, Pops, Daddy, Papa, Abuelita, and more, she writes them on a chart. She assures them that none of the words are wrong. They are just different. And they all mean someone who loves them.

Meet anti-bias goals in every corner of the classroom

The ongoing examination of how people are simultaneously the same and different provides children with a conceptual framework for thinking about the world they live in. For example, children playing with blocks can learn that although some children like to build tall towers and some like to build long, flat structures on the floor, all the children like to build. Art projects can show enthusiasm and admiration for blacks and browns along with all the other wonderful colors of the spectrum. The common curriculum topic of harvest time can include respecting and making visible the people who grow, pick, and transport our food.

Everyday activities offer opportunities for Goals 3 and 4 as well. Arguments over toys can include discussion of fairness and kindness. Exclusionary play, stereotypes in books, or teasing are experiences open to critical thinking about hurtful behavior and for problem solving toward just solutions.

Planning Anti-Bias Education Activities for Your Program's Curriculum

An anti-bias education approach is not a recipe. Rather, teachers include anti-bias issues in their planning by considering the children and families they serve and the curriculum approach their program uses. Here are key questions to ask yourself as you and your colleagues plan learning activities and environments. Begin by asking yourself these questions for one or two activities a week, and see how they change what you do and how the children respond.

Where do I best fit anti-bias goals and issues into my curriculum plans for the day and the week?

Who might be left out of this curriculum? How will I use the topic to include each child, connecting to the diversity of their social identities and to their individual needs? How can I be sure no one is invisible or unnoticed?

What ideas, misconceptions, and stereotypes might children have about this topic? How can I learn what these are and provide accurate information and counter misinformation and stereotypes?

How can I use this topic to support and strengthen children's innate sense of justice and their capacity to change unfair situations to fair ones?

What learning materials do I need to gather to incorporate an anti-bias perspective into this curriculum topic?

Use child-initiated and teacher-initiated activities

Children's questions, comments, and behaviors are a vital source of anti-bias curriculum. They spark teachable moments as well as longer-term projects. However, it is not sufficient to do anti-bias activities only when a child brings up a relevant issue. Teacher-initiated activities are also necessary-be they intentionally putting out materials and books to broaden children's awareness or planning specific learning experiences around issues that matter to families and the community.

You do not wait for children to open up the topic of reading or numbers before making literacy and numeracy part of the daily early childhood curriculum. Because you have decided that these understandings and skills are essential for children, you provide literacy and numeracy discussions and activities in your classroom. A balance between child-initiated and teacher-initiated activities is as vital in anti-bias education as in any other part of the early childhood curriculum.

Here's an example of how a teacher begins with a children-generated teachable moment and follows up with teacher-initiated activities:

After a windstorm broke dozens of small branches off of the trees surrounding their preschool, several 4- and 5-year-old boys begin building a "club house" by dragging branches and bunches of leaves to a corner in the playground fence. Valeria (4 years old) starts dragging a branch to join them and the boys shout, "No girls allowed! No girls allowed!"

The teacher considers encouraging the boys to welcome their classmate into their play-but then she hesitates. There are larger societal issues embedded in this interaction. As an anti-bias educator, she decides she needs to address the underlying ideas, especially that girls can't or shouldn't engage in play that emphasizes physical strength or that "real boys" don't include girls in their play.

Deciding to find out what the children are thinking, the teacher asks, "Why do you think no girls are allowed?" She listens carefully to the boys' responses: "Girls can't move the big branches." "And they can't build high!" "We're going to be superheroes! Girls can't be heroes." And, finally, "We don't like girls." All these statements reflect commonly held stereotypes about girls. Additionally, she thinks, not seriously addressing the situation reinforces the additional stereotype that boys don't have to pay attention to the feelings of others.

Seeing an opportunity to expand their thinking, the teacher suggests testing these claims. She says, "Well, let's find out if girls can move the big branches and build high or not." Since many of the children are now gathering around, she invites everyone to join in the challenge. "What do you think is going to happen?" she asks. With much laughter the children run and gather branches. Some girls are faster than some boys, some boys are faster than some girls. Everyone is able to add branches to the club house, which is suddenly much higher!

Bringing the children back together, the teacher says, "It looks like both girls and boys can lift big branches and build high. Thinking that boys would be better at these things than girls was a stereotype." Several children repeat the word stereotype (preschoolers love big words!). Still holding their attention, the teacher clarifies and gives words to the program's values: "Stereotypes are unfair. In our school we want everyone to be treated fairly. What can we do so that we can be sure that we play together fairly?" The next steps are suggested by the children. One suggestion is a sign that says "Everyone can play here." "How about," says one of the boys who began this episode, "how about if we want to play alone, we just say 'you can have a turn in a few minutes'?"

Knowing that one interaction is never enough to help children think in new ways, the teacher plans and carries out further activities. She adds to the classroom library books in which female athletes and firefighters are strong and fast. At circle time, she reads books in which girls and boys play together in big muscle games. She invites a female carpenter in to help the children build with real tools. And she begins a curriculum on "Being a hero," about all the ways boys and girls can be powerful helpers.

In the next staff meeting, the teacher relates what she has done and is planning to do, and why. She asks her colleagues to consider the frequency of gendered exclusionary play in the program and they agree to take the important step of identifying how (explicitly and implicitly) they may be supporting a binary view of gender (see Chapter 9 in the forthcoming book) in their classroom. For example, how often do they call out "boys and girls" rather than "children"? Do they ask "strong boys" to help move furniture and big blocks? Do they comment on girls' clothing or hair instead of asking about their interests and accomplishments?
Do they support boys' tender, sharing, inclusive behaviors or mainly comment on their noisy, power-focused play? The teachers agree to observe each other as well as the children and see what changes they can make to avoid the damage that gender stereotypes have on children's sense of themselves and of others.

Using a combination of child-initiated, teachable moments and teacher-initiated, pre-planned activities is the most effective way to expand children's ability to grow in the four anti-bias education goals and to talk about, think about, and understand the world around them.

Pay attention to the realities of children's lives

While the four core anti-bias education goals are the same for all children, specific activities should be relevant to the children's backgrounds and their lives. Some children need support to resist messages of racial or cultural inferiority; others need guidance to develop a positive self-concept without absorbing social messages that they are the "normal" ones and other children are less than, strange, or negatively different. Children of wealthy families need help resisting the message that material accumulation defines their worth and that of others; children of families with fewer resources need support to resist messages that undercut their families' worth. Some girls may need extra support to develop confidence and interest in experiences that are math and science related; some boys may require help to develop skills for having nurturing, cooperative interactions with their peers
and to engage in play that reflects these attitudes.

Closing thoughts

As in all other areas of the curriculum, teachers tailor and scaffold anti-bias education materials and activities to each child's cognitive, social, and emotional developmental capacities. They plan and choose learning experiences that stimulate children to explore the next step of new ideas and skills and allow each child to apply new understandings and behaviors in his or her daily life.

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Understanding Anti-Bias Education: Bringing the Four Core Goals to Every Facet of Your Curriculum

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This article is an excerpt of the second edition of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, by Louise Derman-Sparks and Julie Olsen Edwards.

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This is a youtube video about empathy surrounding ELL students.  Students who may primarily speak another language need to feel supported in the classroom so they know that they can feel heard.  Being in a classroom with kids who speak a different language than you can become hard for these students.  This was a good video to watch and see how to support those kiddos.

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Activities for Developing Empathy in ESL Classrooms

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This article is about different strategies for talking to kids about different disabilities.  You want to embrace their curiosity, let them ask questions.  Be honest and direct with them telling them facts and keeping it positive.  Avoid making assumptions or interpretations.  Lead by example.  Show them how we treat people who may have disabilities or who may look a little different then us.  They are still a person just like they are. Help them try and find shared interests so maybe they can connect to them in a familiar way.

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Whether it is a person who uses a wheelchair that you see in the grocery store, a child in their class that has Autism, or a sibling with ADHD your child has someone in their life that has a disability that they might have questions about. Talking openly and honestly about disability with your kids is a critical first step in living in a more inclusive community that celebrates and embraces diversity.

So let kids ask their questions. When your child asks a question about someone with a disability consider it an opportunity to talk about a new and interesting topic rather than turning disability into a topic to be avoided.

2. Be honest and direct. Give direct answers to your child's inquiry. For example, if a child asks, "Why can't she walk?" if you reply with a response like, "Oh, we don't need to talk about that right now" or "It's okay that she doesn't' walk, she has her wheelchair to help her" you are not really answering their question and the child is left wondering. Instead, you could say " Are you curious about how Therese moves? We can go talk to her and ask her to tell us more about herself if you'd like."

With younger kids a simple statement will normally give them what they are looking for. For example, in response to the question "What is that thing in his stomach?" you could reply, "This is Jack's feeding tube. Some people eat through their mouth like you do, and others eat through their stomach like Jack." Simple. Honest. Direct.

As children get older, you may give a more complex response such as "Some kids have medical problems that make it hard for them to get enough nutrition by mouth. A g-tube is a tube that brings food directly to the stomach. It's one of the ways doctors can make sure kids who have trouble eating get the food they need to grow." By elementary age or middle school kids become more aware of less-visible disabilities like those associated with learning or behavior. Again, try to answer your child's questions with facts and be honest. If you don't know much about the person your child is asking about, find a way to respectfully talk with that child's family or teachers to learn more or facilitate a conversation between the children themselves.

3. Avoid making assumptions and interpretations. Whether you know the person your child is asking about or not, avoid adding your interpretation of how a person may feel about their disability or what caused it. You don't know what that person is feeling or experiencing if you haven't taken the time to get to know them.

There are many assumptions and misconceptions about disability that hide under the surface of our interactions such as "people with disabilities are special and should be treated differently" or "people with disabilities lives are hard and challenging." These incorrect assumptions stem from fear, lack of understanding and/or prejudice. You can help your children talk about disability in a more accurate and respectful way by avoiding assumptions and taking the time to get to know someone on an individual level.

4. Keep your explanations positive. Kids are like sponges. If you use positive language with your child, they will continue to use that kind of language on their own. For example, explain that hearing aids help others hear and wheelchairs help others move around, instead of using a negative connotation (he can't hear, she can't walk, etc.) Use the term "disability," and take the following terms out of your vocabulary when talking about or talking to people with disabilities. Don't use the terms "handicapped," "differently-abled," or "special needs" or "retarded" as these terms frame disability as a negative thing and thus further perpetuate the exclusion, isolation and negative stigma of people with disabilities.

6. Prepare for tough questions and avoid shushing their questions. It is not uncommon for kids to ask questions like, "What's wrong with that girl?" When an adult hears this, they often try to shush their kids. They are embarrassed that their child said something rude and potentially hurtful to another person. However, it is key to remember that children are not trying to be rude, they are trying to make sense of what they are seeing. A question like that however can be damaging if not addressed in an appropriate way. Explain to your kids that there is nothing wrong with people with disabilities. Explain that a child may have trouble talking or difficulty in a group situation but that doesn't mean there's something "wrong" with them.

Here are examples of some tough questions we get asked often at the PlayGarden.
How can you prepare yourself to be ready to answer these kinds of questions with your kids or the kids you work with?
Is he really 5?

Why can't she walk?

Can he talk? Will he learn how to talk?

What's that thing? (in reference to... tracheostomy tube, a g-tube, a ventilator, or orthotics).

Why does she make those sounds?

Why does she always do that? (in reference to self-stimulating behaviors)

What is that in her stomach? (in reference to a g-tube)

Why does he eat that way?

Why doesn't ________come to circle time?
7. Talk about human diversity (and neuro-diversity) with your kids.
We are all different in some way and that we all do things every day to adjust to our unique circumstances. For example, someone who wears glass uses them to correct blurry vision, just as someone who is non-verbal may use an assistive device like an ipad to communicate. None of these things are "wrong" they are just different ways of being in the world. Kids use the word "wrong" because they have been socialized by adults and society's attitudes about what is considered "normal" versus "abnormal".

We can expand the notion of "normal" by talking about neurodiversity with kids and talking about how ALL body types, ways of moving, communicating, thinking and behaving are normal and healthy.
8. Emphasize similarities and shared interests.
Avoid focusing solely on differences, doing so sends the message that people with disabilities are inherently different than the other kids. Instead, emphasize similarities. ALL kids are kids first and foremost and everyone wants the same things- to have friends, to play, to be loved, to laugh, feel included and to participate in activities together with their friends and family. We are relational beings at our core and emphasizing similarities helps kids relate to one another. The more we can relate to each other the more understanding, compassion and interest we can develop. This is true in any teaching context across all different ages. What is something that the kids have in common? Are they both learning something new they could share with each other? Are they the same age? Go to the same school? Or like the same activities?
9. Learn about disabilities together.
As kids get older they are able to ask more complex questions and are hoping to get more complex responses. Take your kids questions as opportunities to learn about different disabilities together. What do you know about Downs Syndrome? Autism Spectrum Disorder? Cerebral Palsy? Sensory Processing Disorder? If your child asks about one of these and you don't feel prepared to answer your child's question in the moment you can always say, " I'm not sure. I will think about it and get back to you." or " I don't' know much about Cerebral Palsy, let's learn more about it together."
10. Facilitate conversation.
No matter the age, social interaction with kids and teens stems from having shared experiences together. In school settings taking classes together, participating in an after school club together or sport create these opportunities. Outside of school, kids interact with each other in places like the playground. For some kids, making a friend on the playground is easy. For others, and many children with disabilities this is not as easy. Adults can help kids with and without disabilities talk to each other, to help them find common ground, understand different forms of communication, slow down a conversation if kids need more time to process or to help the kids really hear what the other said.

Have questions, comments or feedback about this blog you'd like to share with us? Send us an email to hannah@childrensplaygarden.org

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10 Strategies for Talking to Kids About Disability - The Seattle Children's PlayGarden

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Whether it is a person who uses a wheelchair that you see in the grocery store, a child in their class that has Autism, or a sibling with ADHD your child has someone in their life that has a disability that they might have questions about.

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Different diversity activities for preschoolers or families.  From dress up play, making paper plate faces, making different art projects from different parts of the world. Eating different foods from around the world.

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Help preschoolers embrace diversity, develop empathy and foster a sense of inclusivity within the classroom, home and the wider world with these simple ideas.

Much like teaching tolerance and values to young children, learning about diversity is not really something that can be achieved in a lesson or a single week of planned activities. Rather, many of these types of activities can be ongoing or visited weekly, such as reading a diverse story or learning a new phrase in a different language each week.

Learning about diversity in early childhood involves more than just exposing kids to different cultures - it also includes appreciating and accepting differences in religion, age, gender, identity, sexual orientation, ability, education, ethnicity and origin.

Here are 22 basic diversity activities for preschoolers.

1. Dress-Up Play

A simple way to introduce diversity into children's free play and dramatic play is to have a dress-up area in the home/classroom with clothing and props from different cultures. You could also include diverse dolls and toys.

2. Friendship Chain

Create a paper chain with each child's name and a drawing representing themselves to illustrate that diversity makes a strong, interconnected community.

Or, make a chain of paper dolls, each one decorated by a different child to show their uniqueness.

3. Paper Plate Faces

For this craft activity about uniqueness, make faces with paper plates. Children can draw the faces and stick bits of coloured paper or other materials, such as ribbon or string, to make the features.

Have a conversation beforehand about what makes each person unique physically. Ask children to identify their own features such as different hair types (hair texture, hair colour, straight or curly hair, etc.), skin colour, eye colour, facial features, etc.

4. Art from Around the World

Use art activities as a hands-on way of exploring diversity while creating beautiful things. Teach children that different people around the world express themselves creatively in different ways and that certain types of art can be prevalent in certain cultures.

Explore art projects inspired by different cultures, such as attempting some Japanese paper folding (Origami), pottery from Morocco, or colourful beadwork from South Africa.

5. Food From Around the World

Cultural differences can also be seen in the food that is unique to certain countries/groups of people.

Make some basic cultural foods together, or invite children to bring in some food from home that is typical of their culture and have a day of sampling and chatting about foods from around the world.

6. Storytime

Reading to children is an easy way to expose them to cultural diversity and to other topics of diversity that may be challenging to introduce in other ways, such as sexual orientation or gender stereotypes.

A home or classroom library should be filled with stories of all kinds of diverse characters. Books about diversity can include themes of disability, race, religion, identity, culture, language, gender, age, fitting in and feeling different, etc.

After reading the stories, discuss the themes involved and ask lots of open-ended questions.

7. Collage Flags

Pick a few country flags (perhaps that represent the history of children in your class or your own family) and teach kids the flags with an art activity.

Making collage flags is a great way to memorise the colours of certain flags and is far more effective than just showing a picture and expecting kids to remember the colours.

Kids will also build fine motor skills as they tear and stick down the pieces of paper in different colours. They can also work as a group decorating one large flag.

8. Multicultural Music and Dance

Have some fun with music from different cultures. You could:

Teach some basic dance steps to traditional and cultural dances - such as Greek or Irish dancing.

Explore traditional musical instruments, allowing kids to touch, feel and hear the sounds these instruments make.

Listen to songs and different types of music from around the world, or sing songs about diversity.

While you can introduce these in a lesson, you could also make it part of the home/class culture to regularly play music from different places.

9. Traditional Games

Have fun playing some games from different countries.

Why not try Egg Jousting from Armenia, Pass the parcel from the UK, or Skippyroo Kangaroo from Australia? Here are the rules for these kids' games from around the world.

10. Show and Tell

Have a cultural show and tell where everyone brings in an item or something special that they can share with the others. This will spread cultural awareness and help children see that their peers are all different and that these differences can be celebrated.

11. Exploring the World Map

This is a project best done over the long term, especially with younger kids. Keep a large world map up on the wall and add to it over time.

You could label certain countries as they come up in context (such as a place one of your kids went to on holiday), add interesting facts about certain places (such as animals that we find in parts of the world), or add images of famous landmarks.

Younger children will enjoy seeing pictures and symbols, more than words.

12. Handprint Mural

A unity mural is a fun diversity craft. Collaboratively create a mural with handprints from all the children in the class, celebrating diversity and unity.

13. Introduce New Languages

Teach children to appreciate different languages by exposing them to some new ones. Pick a few languages - these could be the home languages of children in your class, or just popular languages - and teach a few basic greetings.

Use them with the children every day so they get to practise them. Put the greeting words on bulletin boards so the staff learn them too.

14. Special Celebrations

Keep a large calendar up on the wall and make a point of talking about special cultural events as well as religious holidays as they come up.

15. Family Trees

Provide an outline of a family tree and parents can help their children to put it together, filling in details of family members as well as where they came from. This activity will show kids how many different nationalities are represented in their backgrounds.

They can paste photos of their family members or draw pictures of them.

16. Playdough People

For this activity, make a batch of homemade playdough, but separate it into batches and colour each batch different shades of peaches and browns, to represent shades of skin tones.

Get kids to create playdough people of different ethnic groups, with various skin tones.

17. Dress-Up Day

A fun way to celebrate diverse cultures is to have a multicultural dress-up day. This could coincide with bringing in different foods from around the world and even playing cultural music in the background.

18. Storytelling Circle

Have a class discussion or storytelling circle where everyone can share stories about and answer questions about their families, heritage, traditions or memorable experiences.

19. Parent Talks

Invite parents or community members from different cultural backgrounds to talk to the children about their traditions, jobs or hobbies. This will provide kids with a different perspective and introduce them to diverse role models.

20. Puppets

Puppet play is a wonderful way for children to act out the world and try to make sense of it. Provide some diverse puppets or get kids to make puppets and set them up in a quieter area, where children can interact with the characters on their own terms.

21. Role-Playing Scenarios

In this activity, the adult guides the role play by presenting a scenario that involves embracing diversity, such as welcoming a new friend who speaks a different language or has different traditions. You could also use the puppets for this. Involve the children in deciding how the characters can respond to and support each other.

22. Virtual Field Trips

Why not make use of technology to broaden children's experiences of the world and its diversity? Play them video clips of unique experiences or take them on virtual tours of beautiful places.

I hope you've enjoyed these examples of multicultural activities. Many of these can be adapted to suit kids of all ages and can help set a foundation for social studies, which kids will begin later on at school

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22 Simple Diversity Activities for Preschoolers

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Teach tolerance and inclusivity with these 22 engaging diversity activities for preschoolers. Try these ideas for role-play, crafts, stories, discussions and more. diversity activities for preschoolers.

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This article is about ways to remove gender bias from the classroom.  Like thinking girls can only wear dresses during dres up play. Or boys can only play with trucks and cars.

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Play is fundamental to every child's learning and development. As a parent you have a key role in all of this - both in the time you can bring to playing with your children and which toys, games and activities you select.

As you do so, have you considered whether you might be, even unconsciously, contributing to reinforcing stereotypes about gender, disability, race, ethnicity or culture? How you parent your child at home contributes to the socialization of children (how they learn to behave according to social norms), and play is one area where this happens.
>>Read What is gender-responsive parenting?
For example, thinking about gender stereotyping, girls might be encouraged to play with dolls indoors while boys are encouraged to play outside. While this teaches girls to be caregivers from an early age, it can also impede their ability to develop other types of cognitive, physical and social skills. Boys are often given toys such as guns to play with and encouraged to participate in physical, and often more aggressive, activities with other boys or male caregivers, which can promote unhealthy expressions of masculinity.

Children with disabilities, as well as children from marginalized groups, may not be represented at all in the toys your children play with or the books they read, or they might be shown in stereotypical ways that has a harmful impact on them.

As a parent, you have a direct influence on your little one and the ability to prevent this kind of bias while you engage in playful learning with your child. Here are some ways you can encourage gender-equitable and inclusive playtime at home.

1. Encourage school attendance and give girls and boys equal and adequate time to play and participate in household chores, regardless of gender.

2. Make sure your children play with toys and games that develop the complete set of social and cognitive skills. For example, look for games that develop literacy, numeracy, spatial, cognitive and social skills or toys that stimulate creativity and problem-solving.

3. Help your children read books and watch media that tell inclusive and positive stories about children in all their diversity, that celebrate different cultures, include children with disabilities, and provide positive portrayals of gender roles.

4. Have your children play with toys and games traditionally associated with the opposite gender. Both girls and boys can play with dolls and cooking toys as well as engage in physically active games and sports. Toys and games should ultimately be tools that enable children to become agile and adaptive learners, and teach skills such as creativity, communication and problem solving.

5. Avoid toys and games that deliberately encourage gender stereotypes, such as pink packaging, unicorns, rainbows and hearts for girls versus blue packaging, robots, spaceships and toolboxes for boys. Ensure that toys and games given to children are inclusive and diverse in their representation.

6. Be aware of the way marketing and advertising can reinforce harmful gender norms and exclude children. Choose toys, books and games that send positive messages to your children.

7. Prevent children from playing with guns and violent toys, including overtly violent or sexualized digital games. The digital gaming industry is a fast-growing sector which is also deeply gender-biased, sexualized, and condoning of violence in much of its content. These kinds of games, often played by children and targeted at adolescents, have the capacity to deepen gender biases and promote unhealthy and harmful behaviour and attitudes in future generations.

8. Replace or supplement digital games with constructive physical activities, such as sports and outdoor games. Physical activity is essential for the healthy development of all children, no matter their gender, and children should be encouraged to engage in physical play as early in life as possible through sports, going to the playground or playing games with their friends. As a parent, try to support a full range of cognitive and creative skills for your children and ensure that girls and boys receive equal play time, indoors and outside.

9. Encourage your child to translate anger and frustration into problem-solving, positive communication and constructive physical activity rather than use aggression or bullying.

And remember, play builds the relationship and bond between parent and child so make sure to savour every moment you have together!

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How to remove gender stereotypes from playtime

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https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/children/resources.htm

Different resources for families and children who are from Wisconsin who need support in different areas.

https://dpi.wi.gov/sped/families/agency

family support and advocacy

https://www.walkingandwheeling.com/resources

resources for children with special needs or disabilities.

https://www.waukeshacounty.gov/BirthToThree/

birth to three programs

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The Milwaukee Ballet, along with Children's Hospital, has created a program that allows children with special needs try ballet. They have several classes that accommodate varying levels of needs, with physical and occupational therapists that work alongside students in some of their classes. At the end of their training, the students perform in a special on stage Milwaukee Ballet performance.

Adaptions by Adrian is a website that offers clothing and accessories for your child with special needs, and much more. Here is a sampling of some of the things they offer on their website:

Arm & Leg Warmers

WC Bags

Capes

Footwear

Hats

Jackets

Loungers

Mittens

Pants & Shorts

Protectors

Suits

Toys

Check out these boots that work with orthotics! These boots can also be purchased on Amazon.

Sit skis offer the opportunity for people with mobility impairments to get out into the solitude of a good ole Wisconsin winter. The sit skis are available for free use at the state parks listed below. All of these spots have flat, groomed trails allowing for easier maneuvering.

Buckhorn State Park - Necedah

Governor Nelson State Park - Waunakee

Harrington Beach State Park - Belgium

Kettle Moraine State Forest - Lapham Peak Unit - Delafield

Mirror Lake State Park - Baraboo

Richard Bong State Recreation Area - Kansasville

There are three prominent disability groups in Wisconsin that provide enhanced fishing experiences to people with disabilities. From adaptive equipment to numerous events throughout the year, these organizations offer a variety of opportunities for people with disabilities to get out on the water fishing.

See their websites to find out more:

Many of our state parks with beaches feature different elements of accessibility on normally rather inaccessible terrain. Some parks have specialized beach wheelchairs which have large inflatable tires allowing for easy rolling on sand and entry into the water. Others have laid accessible beach trails providing a solid surface for people in wheelchairs or those with difficulty walking. Click on the Links to be directed to their info:

Suggest a Resource

If you know of a great resource for children with special needs that we don't have on our website please let us know.

Suggest Resource

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The Milwaukee Ballet, along with Children's Hospital, has created a program that allows children with special needs try ballet. They have several classes that accommodate varying levels of needs, with physical and occupational therapists that work alongside students in some of their classes.